Caper Sauce Part 16

"I wish my mother looked as pretty as you," said a little girl, one day, to a neighbor.

"But your mamma is much prettier than I," replied the neighbor. The truth was that the child's mother always was in a wrapper, unless company was expected. The rest of the time she was under the dominion of the house-cleaning fiend, and the children fled from such a joyless utilitarian home, where no flower of beauty could ever get time to take root and blossom.

There is little need to misinterpret my meaning. Many a ruined life has come of a joyless home. Your children take to the sunlight as naturally as do the flowers. Shut it out of your houses and they will go abroad in search of it, you may be sure of that. Isn't this worth thinking about, O ye mothers? careful and troubled about many things, and yet so blind to your first and greatest duty.

CO-OPERATIVE HOUSEKEEPING.--When the millennium comes, or when women stand by one another as men do--though I'm free to say, the reason why men do it is, that when one man does anything bad, all the rest defend him, because _they don't know but they may want to do it too_--but, as I was saying, when women will stand by each other, then we will talk about "Co-operative Housekeeping." Or, when men will help their wives out of sc.r.a.pes with other women, instead of running away, or "pooh-poohing" it, _then_ we will talk about a dozen families living in one house. At present Mrs. Smith's boy John _will_ slap your little Sarah in the face, just to show her that he is going to be a man some day. Now, there's but one common staircase, and little Sarah can't go up and down after that without a body-guard; and Johnny's pa and your daughter Sarah's pa are business friends, and "What are you going to do about it?" coolly asks Sarah's pa, of Sarah's irritated ma.

That's the idea; and Co-operative Housekeeping, allow me to tell you, is planned by bachelors and single ladies, and to them we'll leave it.

_SAUCE FOR THE GANDER._

Every written or spoken sentence, not calculated to benefit mankind, carries with it, I verily believe, its own antidote in the shape of narrowness and bigotry.

This comforting thought occurred to me on leaving a lecture hall the other evening, where the speaker, in saying some very good things, had mentioned all female employments, save housekeeping, especially those of writing and lecturing, with utter contempt, averring that the education and training of children were the only things worthy their notice. He did not stop to explain what was to become of all the old maids and single women generally; or whether they might be excused for earning an honest support by pen and ink, or even stepping upon the platform, when they had no "home," and consequently no "home duties" to attend to; and whether, if the lecture they should deliver were as narrow and illogical as his own, the patient public might not, as in his case, be willing to _pay_ and _listen_. Also, while insisting upon every woman being a mother, and desiring nothing beyond her nursery walls, not even her own intellectual progression, to qualify her to meet the questioning _youth_, as well as the dependent _infancy_ of her children, I heard not one syllable from him upon the home duty devolving on the _father_ and _the husband_, as to his share in their government and _home_ education, which, in my opinion, is more important than that of school; nor of the cultivation of his companionable qualities, to a.s.sist in making home pleasant. Not a word did he say on this head, no more than as if these things were not binding equally on him as on the wife. As if that _could_ be "home," in any true sense, where _both_ did not know and practise these duties. He told us it was "of course more pleasant for women to be like the noisy cascade, and to mount the platform, than to imitate the gentle, silent rivulet, and stay quietly at home out of the public eye." As the lecturer had a home himself, and was a husband and father, and not particularly in need of any emolument from lecturing, it occurred to me that the propriety of his own absence from the "gentle rivulet" of home duties might admit of a doubt. It could not be possible that he who could map out a wife's home duty by such strict lat.i.tude and longitude, should himself have wearied of their tameness, and "mounted the platform to keep in the public eye."

What nonsense even a male lecturer may utter! said I, as I left his presence. As if there were no women, good and earnest as well as gifted, who neglected no duties while mounting the platform, but who honored it with their womanly, dignified presence, and made every large-souled, large-brained man who listened to them rejoice that they were there.

This "vine and oak" style of talk is getting monotonous. There is more "oak" to the women of to-day than there was to those of the past. Else how could the great army of drunken, incompetent, unpractical, idle husbands be supported as they are by wives, who can't stop to be "gentle, silent rivulets," but have to "keep in the public eye" as business women? Our lecturer didn't mention this little fact--not he!

LEAVING HOME FOR THE SUMMER.--There is always a certain sadness in leaving home for the pleasant summer jaunt in the country, however glad we may be to get rid of our cares. As we close the door and turn the key, the thought _will_ come: Shall we ever see this home again? Have we really left it, not only for a time, but forever? Of course, new scenes and new objects soon dissipate these thoughts; and it is well it is so, or we should not gain the relief we seek; but we doubt if the thought does not obtrude itself for the moment, even in the case of the most habitually thoughtless.

_MY FIRST CONVERT._

I have just received a letter from a soldier, who was with us in our late four-years struggle for the "Stars and Stripes," announcing himself a convert to the renunciation of tobacco, through my ministrations on this subject. He says that "he has to thank me for the kind encouragement I have held out to him to persevere in this resolve, and for the freedom he enjoys, now that he is no longer a slave to that filthy habit; and that he shall, while he lives, hold me in grateful remembrance for the same."

Now that's encouraging, even though I shouldn't add another member to my congregation. If any other "brother" feels like "speaking out in _meetin'_" and relating a similar experience, so much the better; but in any event I shall not cease doing my best to make proselytes. "You ought to let up on a poor fellow a little," said a smoker to me not long since; "you ought to have a little charity for a fellow." Now I don't think that. My charity is for those who silently suffer from this selfish indulgence. For the poor girls, who stand on their weary feet hours behind the counters of shops, where the master sits with his feet up, smoking till their poor heads ache, and their cheeks crimson with the polluted air, roaring for them to shut the door or window if they so much as open a crevice for relief. My charity is for myself, when, seated in a car or omnibus, some "gentleman" who has just thrown away his cigar stump, places himself next to me, and compels me to inhale his horrible breath and touch his noxious coat-sleeve. My charity is for myself, when Mike O'Brien, who is in my cellar, getting in coal, sits down on the top of it, lights his pipe, and sends up the nasty fumes into the parlor and all over the house. My charity is for myself, when the proofs of my forthcoming book are sent me to read, to be obliged to hang them out of the window, like signals of distress, before I can correct them without absolute nausea. Nor am I to be mollified by the sample-package of "f.a.n.n.y Fern Tobacco" once sent me. Now I felt complimented, when a little waif of a black baby, picked up in the streets of a neighboring city, was named for me; also when a handcart was christened ditto; also a mud-scow; but tobacco--excuse me!

I read in a paper, the other day, of an ancient inst.i.tution called "smoking-tongs," constructed to hold a live coal so securely, as to admit of its being pa.s.sed round the room; _women_, at that time, as an act of hospitality, used to approach their male guests with the same, and light their pipes for them. I should have liked to have had that office; but I _don't_ think I should have applied the live coal to the _pipes_!

_COUNTRY HOUSEWIVES._

I think that between country housewives and their city boarders there is a sort of antagonism, in the very nature of things, intensified, of course, when there is unreasonableness on both sides.

The country housewife rises betimes, and betaking herself to a hot kitchen, either prepares or oversees the preparing of the expected breakfast; and this not only for the boarders, but the "help," men and women, belonging to the establishment. Perhaps her husband, regarding her only in the light of a "farm hand," never speaks to her except on topics relating to the business of the household, and objects to the baby crying, which her diverted attention necessitates, as a "nuisance,"

while he swallows his breakfast.

Heated and worried, she sees her city boarders come down to breakfast in cool dresses and fresh ribbons, to enjoy the result of her toil, perhaps to find fault with it. She sees them after breakfast driving out to enjoy the delicious morning air, while she must iron clothes, or wash dishes, or prepare their dinner. Now don't you see in the differing positions of the two parties material for an explosion? It is no use to reply, if they had each attained a proper and high degree of civilization there would be no need of this. Remember you have to take human nature as you _find_ it, and not as you _wish_ to find it.

_Incessant_ toil coa.r.s.ens and roughens, especially woman nature. It chokes the graces in the bud, and leaves only thorns and p.r.i.c.kers. From my heart I pity such women, with not a flower in their desert lives.

Still, you know city boarders had not the ordering of it; and should not, as they often are, be disliked merely for being able to lead a life of comparative ease. Ease does not always involve happiness; remember this, discouraged country housewife. _Somebody_ has had to work hard for that ease, and it may be the very woman you envy and dislike for it. She has her Gethsemane with it, of which you know nothing, though she wear a smiling face. The landscape upon which she gazes may bring tears to her eyes instead of joy to her heart, as she drives away from your door, where you stand thinking of her only as a heartless idler for whom you are to toil.

Could you sit down together, woman and woman, and talk this all over, how different often would be your judgment of each other! She thinks, perhaps, of graves far away, or worse, _living_ sorrows, which she cannot forget, and that will not bear thinking of, and may only be poured into the ear of "Our Father." She has learned to shut them in, and therefore you see no sign; but they are there all the same. I want you to try and remember this, because else I think many, situated as you are, make themselves unnecessary misery.

Then, again, do not call everything city boarders consider important "only a notion." If you have done making bread because your folks like pies better, try and understand that tastes and opinions may differ on so vital a point of "vittles" and digestion. If your house and its belongings are so constructed that the decencies of life are impossible, remember that because _you_ "don't mind your husband or the men on the farm," your lady boarders _may_, even at the risk of being called "fussy."

To sum all up, there must be consideration on both sides. Still, the cases are rare in which farm-houses can be the best boarding-places for city people. The ideas of the two parties on the most vital questions relating to the topics I have touched upon are so widely apart, that a.s.similation is next to impossible. The country housewife knows much more on many subjects than her city boarder. In return, the former might often be enlightened by the latter, even on purely physical matters. But while one side starts with the "I'm as good as you" motto, and the other feels it necessary to fence this feeling at all points, the millennium of peace and good-will must of course be indefinitely postponed.

_FIRST MORNING IN THE COUNTRY._

Peace, new-mown hay, and a sniff of the sea; I'm content. "Don't the country make you sleepy?" asked a lady of me. Sleepy! why, every part of me is so wide-awake to bliss, that I doubt whether it were not a sin to sleep, lest I might lose some fine note of Nature the while. The music of the s.h.i.+vering leaves, swelling, then dying away so softly; the exquisite trill of some little bird near my window; the march of the waves to the sh.o.r.e; the soft lights and shadows on the far hills; the happy laugh of the little brown children in the hay! I'm afraid I shall quite forget "female suffrage" here! The whirl out of which I have emerged into this temporary heaven seems like a horrid nightmare, from which I have been roused to find myself encircled in loving arms, and looked down upon by a smiling face. I dare say omnibusses are still thundering down Broadway, and piles of stone, and chaos generally, reign therein; but I can scarce conceive it in this sweet hush and prayer of Nature.

I have no doubt doctors may still be found there, giving nauseous pills by the pound, and awful "mixtures" by the quart, when all their deluded patients want is hay--and fresh milk. And I suppose ministers are there, preaching about "h.e.l.l," and I don't wonder at it; but if they came here, I think heaven would come more naturally to their lips. But where _is_ "here"? you ask. As if I should tell you! I shall want all the fresh air for myself. I need a great deal of breath, and the world is wide. The Great Artist too decorates it all over; so that in every spot lovely flowers shall be tinted all the same, though you may never chance to light upon them; and the clouds shall be heavenly blue; and the giant trees shall spread their sheltering, graceful arms, though you may never happen to lie on the gra.s.s beneath; and the birds in their branches will have as much melody in their throats as if you had promised to come and listen. So, you see, I may be stingy of my little paradise, and not defraud you either!

It is often very oppressive to me, the sight of so much beauty, the sound of so much harmony, that none but G.o.d perhaps may ever hear or see. Nothing expresses _Omnipotence_ so well to me as this: the perfect finish of every leaf and blade; nothing left unworkmanlike; even the old rocks coated with soft moss--even the decayed tree-trunk wreathed with a graceful vine. I know there are good, lovely Quakers, but G.o.d is no Quaker. The _red_ wild roses from yonder hedge, advertising their presence with wafts of incense on every pa.s.sing breeze, make that fact patent. The richness of the red clover and yellow b.u.t.tercups, and the myriad rainbow hues on every field and hedge-row, are anti-Quaker. So that, good as they are, I'm glad they didn't make this world. I'm sure that glorious red and yellow oriole looks better on yonder branch than would a _drab_ bird. I like his saucy little ways, too. But there's one thing for which I will always shake hands with all Quakerdom: they allow their women _to speak in_ "_meetin'_!" Nothing hurts a woman like shutting down the escape-valves of talk; but men never learn that until they find them getting dangerous, and then, when a terrible explosion comes off, they wonder "_what's got into 'em_!"

A HINT TO GENTLEMEN CRITICS.--It is a pity men don't praise women when they _are_ sensible in dress. Now, notwithstanding the pressure which fas.h.i.+on has brought to bear upon them to return to the long trailing skirts for street wear, they have courageously resisted it, and sensibly insisted upon the comfortable, cleanly, short walking skirt for the street; and yet men keep on growling all the same about minor matters of no consequence; so that women may well exclaim, "There's no suiting them; so we will just please ourselves." A word to the wise is sufficient.

_CONSCIENCE KILLING._

People seem to think that there is but one form of self-denial; and that is the "_No_" form. Now we maintain that great self-denial is often put forth, and intense mental pain incurred, in the "Yes" form; _i.e._, the gradual acceptance of wrong-doing. Conscience killing is a slow, torturing process, and the successful m.u.f.fling of the protesting voice of one's better nature is at the expense of days and nights of misery.

The son, whose every perverse step away from a loving home is on his mother's heart-strings, cannot at first plant them firmly; many a backward glance, many a sigh and tear, many a half-retraced foot-track marks his downward progress. Is there no self-denial in these abortive attempts? Can he forget at once all her pure aspirations and fond hopes for her boy? Are there not kind words, more dreadful to remember than would be the bitterest curses? Can he turn _any_ way, in which proofs of her all-enduring love do not confront him, and shame him, and sting him into acutest misery? Again, can the husband and father, who screens himself behind the love of wife and children, to perpetrate acts, the constant repet.i.tion of which wears away their hope and life in the process--can he, while saying "yes" to the fiends who beckon him on, be deaf to the despairing sighs that follow him, and blind to the wrecks of broken promises that lie thickly strewn around him? Does he suffer nothing in the attempt to extinguish all that is best and n.o.blest in him? can the mother, who, stifling the voice of nature, perjures her daughter, for ambition, at the altar, face calmly that daughter's future? Are there no misgivings, no terrible fears, no shrinking back at the last retrieving moment, from a responsibility so dreadful? Can she kiss her away from her own threshold, and forget the little trusting eyes of her babyhood, and the clinging clasp of her fingers, and the Heaven-sent thrill of happiness when she first pillowed that little head upon her bosom? Can she _ever_ cut the cord, strive as she may, by which the Almighty has solemnly bound her to that child for this world and for eternity? Has it cost _her_ nothing in the process, this denial of her better nature? And so, through all the relations of society, wherever a sacred trust is abused, and a confidence outraged, and obligations rent recklessly asunder, there this self-incurred species of suffering, in a greater or less degree, exists accordingly as the moral sensibilities are blunted, or the contrary. The Almighty has not ordained that this path shall be trodden thornless. Coiled in it is many a deadly serpent; the balmiest air it knows is surely death-laden. Following its tortuous windings to the close, its devotee comes to no refuge, when his heart and soul grow faint, and he casts a backward, yearning glance for the holy "long ago."

_THE CRY OF A VICTIM._

There's eight dollars gone! If I thought it was the last time I should be cheated, I shouldn't mind it; but I know it isn't. In this case it was friendless eighteen--_female_ eighteen--sole support of widowed mother and an indefinite number of small children, and all that; got her money, and turned out a humbug. I hope the recording angel will remember that in my favor. Not to speak of the man who rushed into the area to tell me that he had just had a baby--I mean that his wife had--and that they needed everything; when I immediately scooped up an armful of whatsoever I could find; and, thanking me with grateful tears, he hastened to p.a.w.n them for rum. Then there was the gifted but unfortunate artist, who had been sketching at the White Mountains and wished me to "lend him" a greenback to carry him home, because he had read my books, and because he wanted it, and because there was not another person in the world of whom he could possibly ask such a favor; oh, no! Then there was the man who looked like the ten commandments on legs, and _must_ see me, if only a few moments; whose sepulchral errand turned out to be a desire to sell me some Furniture Polish, which I bought to get rid of him, and which, when uncorked a few days after, caused the family to rush into the street without the usual ceremonial hat and bonnet. Then there was the interesting child whom I brought in to feed and warm, who helped himself to several things without leave while I was looking for others. And there was the old gentleman who sent me an illegible MS.

story to read and get published; whose i's I dotted, and whose t's I crossed, and for whom I furnished commas and semicolons and periods ad libitum; whose grammar I touched up, and whose capital letters in the wrong place I extinguished; and who abused me like a pickpocket because the Editor to whom I sent it thought that d.i.c.kens or Thackeray wrote quite as well as he. Then there was the young man with a widowed mother, for whom I wore out several pairs of boots "getting him a situation;"

who used to lie in bed till noon, and go to it when it didn't rain, and spend all he earned in cherry-colored cravats.

Now, I'm going to stiffen myself up against all this sort of thing in future. I've done giving pennies to the little street-sweepers to buy cream-tarts with. I hand no more hot buckwheat cakes through the grating of my bas.e.m.e.nt window to red-nosed little boys with ventilator trousers.

I buy no more pounds of lucifer matches from frowsy-headed women at the area door, or "Windsor soap" for sweet charity's sake, knowing it to be only common brown, with a counterfeit label. I shall turn sternly away from the Liliputian venders of flimsy boot-lacings and headless shawl-pins. I wish it distinctly understood that I have no use for corset-lacings, or home-made pomatum, or questionable "Lubin" perfumes in fancy bottles.