Folly as It Flies Part 5

Physicians will tell you that men who would resent the imputation that they were not good husbands and fathers, will selfishly poison the air of a sick-room and distress the breathing of the invalid without remorse. I repeat it, I am firmly of the opinion, that tobacco brutifies equally with drink. The process may be slower, but it is just as sure. A drunkard will sometimes own that drink hurts him; or that he drinks too much; or would be better without it; a smoker _never_. 'Tis true, he will admit that Tom Jones, or Sam Smith, smokes too much; but not that _he_ ever did, or shall. In fact, he is sure that in _his_ case tobacco is beneficial; "it soothes him when he is irritable," which, thanks to tobacco, is so often, that the soothing process is perpetual. A man said one day to his comrade in the street cars, "Tom, I really think I should have given up smoking long since, had not my wife constantly said it was so disagreeable." What better proof could he have given of its brutalizing tendency?

I know no place where "smoking not allowed," is not a dead letter, except in church. Even there the cigar stump is often tossed away at the church porch, and men sit impatiently fingering the vile weed which is destined to console them, the minute the benediction shall have been p.r.o.nounced; now, when a gentleman (?) becomes so enslaved by this bad habit, that neither the disgust of the female inmates of his own house, or other houses, who suffer by it, fails to move him, even though they may not, for the sake of peace, complain; and when the terrible sight of this smoker's own little son, already going to and from school with cigar and satchel in company, does not shame him; when any society, how intelligent soever, is distasteful, nay, _unbearable_ to him, where tobacco is not permitted, for one I would not toss up a pin for the choice between that man and a drunkard.

People say: Whence all these matinees of all kinds, operatic and other, that are springing up in our cities? I answer--Tobacco! "No smoking allowed here"--if over the entrance of Paradise--and the men would prefer their pipe with the accompaniment of the infernal regions. A man can't very well talk with a pipe in his mouth. If a pipe he prefers to all things else, from the time he returns to his house at night till he goes to bed, his wife naturally wearies of watching that smoke curl, though she may be an angel in his eyes in every other respect. It is dull music, after the petty little musquito-stinging household cares of the day, to which even the best mothers and most capable housekeepers are subject, in a greater or less degree. "When he lights that cigar every night I want to scream,"

said a lovely woman to me. "I am _so_ tired of the house at night; I want him to talk to me, or go out with me; I should take hold of my cares and duties the next day with so much more heart if he did. I love my home; I love my babies; I love my husband; but oh, he _don't_ know how tired and nervous I often get by night, and that silence, and that suffocating smoke, are so intolerable to me then." Why don't she _say_ so? you ask. Why? because women are so hungry for a little love, and find it so impossible to live without it, that they often endure any amount of this kind of selfishness rather than hazard its loss for a day. Now, _is_ this right? Is it what a wife is ent.i.tled to, after trying all day to make home bright and happy for her husband?

"And all this fuss about a little smoke," I hear Tom exclaim.

Not exactly. _It is the injustice of men toward women_ for which it stands the horrible, nauseating symbol. Suppose your wife, fancying the smell of asafoetida, should keep an uncorked phial of it in her parlor and bed-room? How long would _you_ stand it? Suppose she should smoke _herself_ or "dip" in self-defence? Suppose that sweet breath were to become nauseous? her curls unbearable in near proximity?

Suppose she grew slatternly in her habits in consequence, as all smokers eventually do? Suppose her little baby's clothes were saturated with tobacco? In short, that you were disgusted with its presence or results every hour in the twenty-four, as you would be in your wife's case.

Now I ask, isn't it just as much a man's duty to be clean and presentable and inviting to his wife, as it is hers toward him? Well, replies Tom, men don't look at the subject in that way, and never will, and now, what are you going to do about it?

Me? nothing. The men will continue to put up their heels at night, and smoke till bed-time, and think it a bore to go out, _i. e._ with their wives, and the disgusted women, who really _want_ to be good wives, and would, if their husbands were more just and manly, will go as they have begun to do, to the next day's operatic matinee for relaxation; and after the matinee, a cup of chocolate or an ice-cream tastes well; and sometimes one meets an agreeable _male_ friend there, who does _not_ prefer a solitary pipe or a cigar to a little bright and enlivening conversation with this tired lady.

Women have a right to protest against that which withdraws husbands, fathers and brothers from their society as soon as they cross the threshold of home, or else dooms them to inhale a nauseous atmosphere, and watch the unsocial puff--puff--which is monotonous enough to drive any woman crazy who already has had quite too much monotony during the day, and finds little variety enough, in watching the curl from that eternal pipe. I blame no woman whose only evening amus.e.m.e.nt is this, after her children are put to sleep, for protesting, and roundly too, against such unmitigated selfishness; I blame no woman, whose husband, when he does occasionally drum up sufficient vitality to wait upon her out, for requesting that the omnipresent pipe or cigar may for once be dispensed with, as she takes his arm, on that memorable occasion. As I said before, men become so utterly brutified by this disgusting habit, that they lose all sense of politeness and cleanliness. It is quite time they were reminded of it.

_GIVE THE CONVICTS A CHANCE._

It seems to me that of all the charities in our great city, none is more deserving of the attention of the benevolent, than that which takes the little children of our poor, from the moral and physical filth of their wretched surroundings, and places them in healthy, pure homes in the country. No one, who has ever had heart and courage to penetrate the terrible lanes, alleys and by-ways of poverty and crime in New York, but asks himself with a shudder, as he looks at the little ones there, what sort of men and women will these children be?

How far will He who counteth the fall of the sparrow, hold _them_ responsible for the dreadful teachings of their infancy? Infancy? the word is a mockery. They have none. To feign--to cheat--to steal--this is their alphabet. As to the fathers and mothers, who fold their lazy hands and sit down in these pestiferous places to await the "penny"

pittances their children may collect, or their little pilferings which may be turned into "pennies," the sooner the doors of our jails and penitentiaries close on _them_ the better. _Their_ case is hopeless; since sin has reached its climax when it deliberately and systematically debauches childhood. But the little ones? _They_ might be saved. They _are_ being saved; that's a comfort to know. Daily they are being collected, by good men who make it their chief occupation to wash, feed, clothe and transplant these sickly shoots of poverty, into the fair garden of the West. Many a farmer's family there has a rosy face by its hearth, which you would never recognize to be the squalid little creature, whose s.h.i.+vering palm was extended to you at midnight, as you returned home from some place of amus.e.m.e.nt in the city. There it is being taught useful and _happy_ labor. There is pure air--sweet food, and enough of it. Good company and good books. _There_ are Sundays. Blessed be Sundays! for injudiciously as they are sometimes observed even by good people, be sure that sweet old hymn will go singing through the future life of these children, like a golden thread, gleaming out from the dark woof of care and trouble:

"Nearer, my G.o.d, to Thee, Nearer to Thee; E'en though it be a cross That raiseth me, Still all my song shall be, Nearer, my G.o.d, to Thee, Nearer to Thee."

No matter where they go, this hymn, and others like it, shall go with them; cleansing and purifying, like a breath of sweet air, all the dreadful remembrances of that foul home from which they were rescued.

Think what it were to change the life, temporal and eternal, of _one_ such child! And G.o.d be praised, the number of the saved is Legion.

How like a dreadful dream to the girl, in a happy home of her own, with her own innocent baby on its father's knee, will be the pit of degradation, where, but for this charity, _she_ might have been lost.

She realizes it fully now, when she looks into her little baby's face, and grows chill with fear as she kisses it. And her brother! the hale, st.u.r.dy-honest, well-to-do farmer, who comes in of an evening to talk about _his_ farm and _his_ crops, and _his_ barns full of plenty--can that be Johnny? once with the hat guiltless of a brim, the coat with one flap, the trousers with half a leg, and the mouth full of oaths and obscenity! Can that be Johnny, who dodged policemen so adroitly, and was on the high road to the gallows in short jackets? This is not fiction. This is not imagination. The biographies of great men and women will yet adorn your library shelves, whose childhood had such rescuing as this. One gets the heart-ache at every step in New York, if he has eyes or ears for aught save Mammon; and yet how like sun-beams, now and then, across this darkness, comes some n.o.ble charity, of whose existence you knew nothing, till some unpretentious sign arrests the eye, in some street never before travelled by you in your daily rounds--some "Asylum," or "Retreat," or "Home," or Hospital, at whose gate Mercy stands with outstretched arms, nor asks the poor unfortunate whom it shelters, its creed or its nationality, but says only--Here is comfort and help.

This much concerning _organized_ Charities. But of the n.o.ble women, and men, too, who daily and quietly stretch out helping hands, giving time and money, without other reward than the satisfaction such acts bring to a kind heart--of them, surely there is One who will keep record.

I see other signs of the millennium. In Ma.s.sachusetts they have Evening Lectures for the benefit of the convicts in the State Prison.

I shall never forget my tour through a State Prison, one bright summer day. The hopeless faces of the men in the workshops. Their sullen looks when by twos they marched in long procession across the yard, under guard, to their dinner. I shall never forget the poor wretches in the carding-room, breathing all day, and every day, the little fuzzy, floating particles, which set me coughing painfully the moment I entered the door; and when I asked the attendant if it did not injure their lungs, the cool matter-of-fact manner in which he answered, "Yes--they didn't live very long." I remember well the horrid, contracted cells, against whose walls I know I should have dashed out my brains, were I locked in long enough. And well too could I understand what a horror Sunday must be, imprisoned there, _all_ day, with only the interval of an hour of church; alone with torturing memories; till they prayed for the light of Monday morning and work--work!--ever so _hard_ work, so that it only brought contact and companions.h.i.+p with their kind, speechless though it were.

I remember, too, being told, on inquiry, that the convicts were allowed books to read in their cells on Sunday; but on examination of the cells, I found many so dark that even at midday the offer of "books to read" would have been a mere mockery. I remember, too, the emaciated, hollow-eyed sick men, lounging on benches in the yard, and, when I pitied them, being told that they often "feigned sickness."

Heaven knows I should not have blamed them for feigning anything, when humanity so slept that visitors were told _in their hearing_ of their crimes, as they were severally pointed out, and their names and former professions and places of residence given; here a doctor, there a minister, who had fallen from grace.

Surely, thought I, there _must_ come a time when a better way than this shall be found to "_reform_" men. Surely it can never be done by driving them mad with unrelieved severity like this. For I remembered a letter I received from a convict, to whom some printed word of mine had accidentally floated through his prison bars, and "helped him," so he wrote me, "to bear up till the time for his release came, when he hoped to be a better man."

Had I never written but that one word, I am glad to have lived for that man's sake.

And now what a change! These poor creatures, instead of darkness and solitude--with hate, and revenge, and despair maddening them--have evening lectures for their profit and encouragement. Something to _think_ about in the long hours of wakefulness and sickness; something to look forward to when the day's unrewarded toil is done; something to rout the demons that crouch in their cells and wait their coming at night, till any other h.e.l.l than this would seem heaven. Let us hope that the example of good old Ma.s.sachusetts in this and many other praiseworthy regards may be widely imitated.

Surely as G.o.d lives, there is a window in the soul of every debased man and woman, at which Love and Mercy may knock and whisper, and be heard. Nor can warden or overseer or chaplain ever be sure that from those convict cells is not issuing the stifled cry--No man cares for _my_ soul.

_A GLANCE AT WAs.h.i.+NGTON._

I have no means of judging what Was.h.i.+ngton may look like in sunny weather; sleet and rain having combined on my visit there, for a "spell" of the most detestable weather ever encountered by a traveller. The streets were a quaking jelly of mud, filled with a motley procession of dirt-incrusted army-wagons, drawn by wretched-looking horses, the original color of whose hide was known only to their owners. Military men swarmed on the sidewalks, gossipped on the steps of public buildings, filled hotel entries, parlors and dining-rooms, and splashed through mud-puddles with a recklessness born of camp-initiation. To escape from wet sidewalks into street-cars was to wade to them literally ankle-deep in mud-jelly. To the resolute, however, all things are possible; especially when millinery and dry-goods are counted as naught; I went there to see what was to be seen, and I saw it.

The night before I visited the Capitol there came a heavy fall of snow; the long avenues of trees leading to it looked very beautiful, bending under their pure white burden, or tossing it lightly off, as the wind swept by. Every garden seat had a round white cus.h.i.+on, every statue a snow-crown. No art of man could have improved upon this festal adorning of nature. The "prospect from the dome" we had to take, by faith, more's the pity, the snow-king having drawn a veil over it. Of course I stared about the Rotunda, like my betters. As I have never "been abroad," I suppose I am not ent.i.tled to an opinion upon the pictures I saw there; but it _did_ strike me that De Soto, the discoverer of the Mississippi River, who travelled through the wilderness for that purpose, thousands of miles, exposed to all dangers and weathers; who lost cattle and men by fatigue and famine, and was otherwise hara.s.sed to the verge of dissolution, could not, at the moment, when success crowned his efforts, have been found in a rich crimson jacket with slashed Spanish sleeves, and silk stockings drawn over well-rounded calves, and an immaculate head of hair, looking as if it had just emerged from a fas.h.i.+onable barber's shop. I say it struck _me_ so, but then I'm "only a woman," and have never been to Italy. It struck me also that their rags, and their dirt, and their uncombed locks, and their jaded horses, would have looked quite as picturesque, and had the added advantage of being true to nature.

It occurred to me also that some of the horses of the victorious generals in the other pictures were very impossible animals, but that may be owing to some defect in my early education. I could not help thinking that our great-great-great-grand children might possibly wish that we had left the _art-selection_ to themselves. It won't matter much to us then, however.

How patriotic I felt when I stood on the floor of the Senate! A minute more, and I should have forgotten my bonnet, and made a speech myself.

It might not have been "in order," but I think it would have been listened to while it lasted, though when my enthusiasm was over, I should probably have collapsed into shamefaced consciousness, very much as do the restored breathers of "the laughing gas." I never heard a more eloquent or appropriate prayer than was offered at the opening of the Senate, that day, by a clergyman, whose name I did not learn.

Years ago, and what clergyman would have dared utter such bold words in such a place? There were no speeches made that morning; and there was no need; the place itself was inspiration. My breath came quick as I looked about me.

As to the "White House," I have no doubt that the upholstery and carpets are all right--also the chandeliers. For myself I coveted the green-house and garden, and the fine piazza at the back of the house, with its view of Arlington Heights and the white tents of the encampment in the distance. The "East Room," with its Parisian carpet, would have astonished the ghost of Mrs. John Adams, who used to dry her clothes there, when it was in an unfinished state. How very strange it looked to see sentinels on duty before the doors; one realizes that there "is war," when in Was.h.i.+ngton and its surroundings, where railroad gates and public buildings are guarded, and at every few miles of road up starts a sentinel, and camps are so plentiful that one ceases to regard them with a curious eye.

After walking through the Patent Office at Was.h.i.+ngton, I had several reflections. First, a feeling of thankfulness that our innocent ancestors died without knowing how uncomfortable they were,--minus these modern improvements. Secondly, how many heads must have ached, hatching out the ideas there practically perfected. Thirdly, did the _real_ inventors themselves reap any reward, pecuniary or otherwise, or, having died "making an effort," did some charlatan, with more money than brains, filch their discovery and, attaching his name to it, secure both fame and gold?

Leaving these vexed questions unsettled, the place is of rare interest even to the ordinary curiosity-hunter, dest.i.tute either of philosophical or mechanical proclivities. Looking at General Was.h.i.+ngton's relics, one cannot but be struck with the simple tastes of that time. The plates, knives and chairs, which formed part of his household furniture, would--apart from their a.s.sociations--be sniffed at in any fas.h.i.+onable mansion of the present day. And as to his camp-chest and writing-desk, every mother's 1862-pet, whose budding moustache is half demolished by parting kisses, is provided with a better as he goes to "the war." And Was.h.i.+ngton's coat, waistcoat and breeches are of a fabric so coa.r.s.e, that our present officials would decline wearing the like except under compulsion. The same may be said of the coat worn by the immortal General Jackson; at the mention of whose name I will forever remove my bonnet, for his unswerving loyalty toward, and manly defence of, his zealously slandered wife. Alas for some of the pluck and spirit that animated the sometime wearers of those faded old military clothes. But it is too aggravating a theme; though I _did_ linger over those military b.u.t.tons, with divers little thoughts which I should like to have whispered into the President's ear, and which, if properly carried out, would no doubt save this nation!

As to the fifteen flashy silk robes presented by the j.a.panese government to ours, I had no desire to get into them. A strange soldier standing near while I was gazing, stepped up, and with camp frankness said to me: "now I suppose, being a lady, you can form some idea of the value of those things." "Oh, yes," said I, "they are like the bonnets of to-day, expensive in proportion to their ugliness."

Penetrated by the wisdom of my reply, he answered feelingly, "_Just so_,"--and touching his cap, pa.s.sed on. Among General Was.h.i.+ngton's relics I saw a cane presented to him by Franklin, and a chandelier presented to Was.h.i.+ngton by some French magnate, so awkward, inferior and crude, compared with the splendid affairs of the present day, that one compa.s.sionately wishes, for the donor's sake, that his name were withheld. I saw also, under gla.s.s, the original treaties of several foreign nations, French and others, with our government. The autographic signatures of great potentates, yellow with time, was suggestive. The models of steam-engines, revolvers, torpedoes, mowing-machines and excavators, were "too many for me;" I might have looked wise over them, to be sure, like other folks, but had I stood staring till the millennium I couldn't have comprehended them, so where was the use of shamming? I just said, that's not in my line, and inspected the different varieties of hoop-skirts; and though the masculine mind may not recognize the fact, the perfection to which those things have arrived by gradual stages is comforting to contemplate. I say "comforting" advisedly; because if one _must_ drag round so many yards of dry goods, a cage is better adapted to hang them on than the human hips. It is my opinion that notwithstanding the torrent of abuse to which the hoop is and has been subjected, it will never be _dropped_--save at bed-time.

It is a melancholy affair to visit public inst.i.tutions that have sprung from the legacies of wealthy persons, so often do they fail to carry out the philanthropic results so enthusiastically programmed by the donors. This reflection seemed to me not out of place when leaving the Smithsonian Inst.i.tute in Was.h.i.+ngton. The building itself is fine, and favorably located, and the grounds about it very attractive; but dust-covered statues, cobwebs, and a general and indescribable air of inefficiency in the interior, were painfully palpable, and stood as a type of other posthumous charities which have come under my notice. In fact, "_wills_" oftener turn out, "_wonts_" than one imagines, codiciled and guarded as they may be by the best human ingenuity and foresight. Snakes are not the only wriggling animals, and dead men are happy in not being able to return to their old haunts. Some of the pictured celebrities in the place would have leaped from their frames, had they heard the irreverent bystanders, who here "doing" the lions, asking who they were, and gaping at the guide-book recital of their greatness and goodness, from some companion; or turning an indifferent joke, in the middle of the narration, upon the cut of the pictured coat, or hair, or beard. It was an excellent comment upon the wearing, toil and fret of ambition, which eats the heart out of life, and often sets aside everything worth living for, to gain--_a name_. The collection of animals there would be interesting doubtless to the naturalist; but we often wonder who _but_ he, could take pleasure in bottled snakes, sprawling, impaled bugs, and stuffed monkeys and baboons. As to the latter, they are too painful a burlesque upon human beings, to be regarded with complacency. Their horrible and fiendish exaggeration of some faces, which all of us have, once or more, in our lives met, is anything but agreeable. The collection of stuffed birds in this place is exquisitely beautiful. One lingers _there_, oblivious of wide-mouthed, hungry-looking bears, standing on their hind legs, or grinning skulls of Indians, or other delightful monstrosities. These brilliant birds, orange with black wings, or scarlet wings with black bodies, or drab with bright little heads, or with the whole body of the loveliest blue, were beautiful as the most brilliant hued bouquet. So perfectly were they prepared and mounted, that one waited expectant for a sweet trill, or an upward flight. There was also a very curious and pretty exhibition of bird's eggs, of every size and color, some of them "cuddled" comfortably in little nests. I would have agreed to leave to the Inst.i.tution the numerous and precious volumes of "De Bow's Review" which graced it, for the liberty of appropriating those bright birds and those pretty eggs.

One feature in the place was quite novel. Specimens framed under gla.s.s of the hair of some of the Presidents of the United States. Either these gentlemen were not liberally endowed with this commodity, or inveterate lion-hunters had taught them a n.i.g.g.ardly caution on the distribution of this article, in view of baldness or a future wig; for under the names of some of them were only four or six hairs. Most of them were white or grey; suggestive of rather equivalent repose, for the craniums from whence they sprang. Of course, one's organ of reverence would not admit in this case the possibility of the trick adopted by "pestered" celebrities--attacked in the hair--viz: wickedly subst.i.tuting something else for the original coveted article. Of course not! As to the soldiers and military men pa.s.sing through Was.h.i.+ngton, they must be pleased to know how comfortably they can be "embalmed," should a chance shot render it necessary. Large signs to this effect, conspicuously placed, and running the whole length of a block, stare them remindingly in the face, at every turn. As to Jackson's equestrian statue, fronting the President's house, I opine that n.o.body _but_ General Jackson could have sat on a horse's back in that rearing condition, without slipping backward over the tail.

However, one forgives everything to an admirer of General Jackson; and the sculptor evidently had strong faith in his omnipotence, as well as in the wonderful upward, danger-defying curve of his unique horse's tail!

_GLIMPSES OF CAMP LIFE IN WAR TIME._

A visit to the head-quarters of an executive General is a means of grace. I recommend it to all ladies who, year after year, closing their disgusted ears to what limpingly pa.s.ses below stairs, accept its dawdling results as inevitable. For my own part, my back is up. So imbued am I with the moral beauty of military discipline, that unless I can inaugurate its counterpart from garret to cellar, I shall return in disgust to army-life.

The idea struck me forcibly one morning before breakfast as I stepped out into the bright suns.h.i.+ne, to behold a captain drilling his company for the day. As each musket was presented for inspection, turned quickly from one side to the other, and tossed lightly back into its owner's waiting hands, I rushed back to tent and exclaimed: "General, can you give any reason why we ladies shouldn't do with our pots, pans and gridirons, each day, what your captain is doing yonder with the muskets of his men; and with a 'guard-house' to back us up in case of default or impertinence." "Why--_don't_ you ladies inspect your pots, pans and gridirons?" inquired General Butler. "When our cooks are _out_, never for our lives else," I replied. "Poor slaves!" was his feeling reply.

"Poor slaves!" I echoed, as I returned to my lovely "drill" and grew more righteously mad each minute. As I stood there, my dears, I for one resolved never again to be the pusillanimous wretch to say, "If you please, Martha," or "will you please, Bridget, bring me this or that." No--instead, I boldly propose: "Orderly! bring me that baby!"

and when Bridget comes in, with a well-feigned sorrow for the decease of that stereotyped "friend" who is always waiting to be "waked," and begs leave of absence, let us answer, _a la militaire_, "Yes--you can go for awhile; but your 'friend' is not dead, neither are you going to a wake. I want you to understand that I am not deceived." And when, after repeated instructions, the roast-beef is still overdone, with executive forefinger let us touch the bell, and in the _lowest_ but firmest of tones remark, "Orderly! put the cook in the guard-house."