Caper Sauce Part 2

I have another acquaintance. I don't care to ask "Who _is_ that man?" I know that he has _lived_ his life and not slept it away. I know that it has been a pure and a good one. It is written in his bright, clear, unclouded eye; in his springing step; in the smile of content upon his lip; in the lift of his shoulders; in the poise of his head; in the free, glad look with which he breathes in his share of the warm suns.h.i.+ne. Were he taken to the bedside of a sick man, it seems to me the very sight of him were health.

I used to have many unknown acquaintances among the little children in the parks; but what with French nurses and silk velvet coats, I have learned to turn my feet elsewhere. It gives me the heart-ache to see a child slapped for picking up a bright autumn leaf, though it _may_ chance to be "dirty;" or denied a smooth, round pebble, on account of a dainty little glove that must be kept immaculate. I get out of temper, and want to call on all their mothers and fight Quixotic battles for the poor little things, as if it would do any good; as if mothers who dress their children that way to play, cared for anything _but_ their looks.

Then I have some unknown acquaintances in the yard of a large house in the upper part of Broadway. I never asked who lived in the house; but I thank him for the rare birds of brilliant plumage who walk to and fro in it, or perch upon the window-sills or steps, as proudly conscious of their gay feathers as the belles who rustle past. I love to imagine the beautiful countries they came from, and the flowers that blossomed there, and the soft skies that arched over them. I love to see them pick up their food so daintily, and, with head on one side, eye their many admirers looking through the fence, as if to say--beat _that_ if you can in America! Ah! my birdies, stop your crowing; just wait a bit and see how the "_American Eagle_" is going to come out, and how each time they who have tried to clip his wings have only found that it made them grow broader and stronger. Soft skies and sweet flowers are very nice things, birdies; but rough winds and freedom are better for the soul.

I have said nothing of unknown acquaintances among my favorite authors.

How many times--did I not so hate the sight of a pen when "school is let out"--have I longed to express to them my love and grat.i.tude. Nor, judging by myself, could I ever say, "they do not need it;" since there are, or should be, moments in the experience of all writers when they regard with a dissatisfied eye what they have already given to the world, when sympathetic, appreciative words, warm from the heart, are hope and inspiration to the receiver.

A LINK BETWEEN HUSBANDS AND WIVES.--Blessed be the little children who make up so unconsciously our life-disappointments. How many couples, mutually unable to bear each other's faults, or to forbear the causes of irritation, find solace for their pain in these golden links which still continue to unite them. On that they are one. _There_ they can really repose. Those fragile props keep them from quite sinking disheartened by life's roadside. How often has a little hand drawn amicably together two else-unwilling ones, and made them see how bright and blessed earth may become in p.r.o.nouncing that little word--"forgive."

_LIFE AND ITS MYSTERIES._

Was there ever a romance in that man or that woman's life? I _used_ to ask myself, as I looked upon a hard face which stoicism seemed to have frozen over, through the long years. Was there ever a moment when, for that man, or woman, love transfigured everything, or the want of it threw over the wide earth the pall of unrest? Have they ever wept, or laughed, or sighed, or clasped hands in pa.s.sionate joy or sorrow? _Had_ they any life? Or have they simply vegetated like animals? Did they see any beauty in rock, mountain, sky, or river, or was this green earth a browsing place, nothing more?

I never ask those questions now; for I know how much fire may be hidden under a lava-crusted exterior. I know that though the treasure-chest _may_ sometimes be locked when it is empty, oftener beneath the fastening lies the wealth, which the right touch can at any moment set free. There are divers masks worn in this harlequin world of ours. Years ago I met, in travelling, a lady who seemed to me the very embodiment of fun and frolic. Like a humming-bird, she never was still; alighting now here, now there, wheresoever were suns.h.i.+ne, sweetness and perfume. One day, as we were rambling in the woods, we sat down to rest under a tree, after our frolicking. Some little word of mine, as I drew her head into my lap, and smoothed the hair on her temples, transformed her. With a sharp, quick cry of agony, she threw her arms about my neck, weeping as I never saw a woman weep. When she was quiet came the sad story. The trouble battled with, and bravely borne. The short, joyous years--then the long days, and nights, and weeks, and months, so full of desolation and bitterness, and life yet at its meridian. How should she meet the long, slow-moving years? That was the question she asked me. "Tell me how! you who know--tell me how!"

And this was the woman I thought frivolous and pleasure-seeking. Wearing beneath that robe the penitential cross, reminding her at every moment with its sharp twinge of pain, that try as she might, she could never fly from herself.

How often, when I have been inclined to judge harshly, have I thought of that Gethsemane cry. It is sorrowful how we misjudge each other in this busy world. How very near we may be to a warm heart, and yet be frozen!

How carelessly we pa.s.s by the pool of Bethesda, with its waiting crowd, without thinking that we might be the angel to trouble the waters? This thought is often oppressive to me in the crowd of a city hurrying home at nightfall. What burden does this man or that woman carry, known only to their Maker? How many among them may be just at the dividing line between hope and despair! And how some faces remind you of a dumb animal, who bears its pain meekly and mournfully, yet cringing lest some careless foot should, at any moment, render it unendurable; haunting you as you go to your home as if you were verily guilty in ignoring it.

Have you never felt this? and, although you may have been cheated and imposed upon seventy times seven, can you wholly stifle it? and _ought_ you to try, even though you know how well the devil can wear the livery of heaven?

I think it is this that, to the reflecting and observing, makes soul and body wear out so quickly in the city. These constantly recurring, unsolvable problems, which cloud faith and make life terrible, instead of peaceful and sweet; which lead us sometimes to look upon the little child, so dear to us, with such cowardly fear, that it would be a relief to lay it, then and there, in the arms of the Good Shepherd, lest _it_, too, stray away from the fold.

SWEARERS AND SWEARING.--Profanity is such a _cheap_ accomplishment!

"Damme!" "d.a.m.n it!" The idea that "_gentlemen_," so called, should use these expletives, in which the commonest laborer, who can scarcely "make his mark" to a doc.u.ment, can excel him! As a matter of taste, setting aside any question of morality, the practice of it by "cultivated persons" is our daily wonder.

_MRS. WAs.h.i.+NGTON'S ETERNAL KNITTING._

There are many-sided men and women, and there are men and women that are one-sided, both in brains and body. There are men of business who have no surplus left after attending to their business. There are women who have no surplus left after attending to their kettles and pans and their mending basket. On the other hand, there are men whom business does not wholly absorb; who are interested intelligently, and actively, too, in every great question of the day and hour. There are women who order their houses discreetly, tastefully, and economically, and can yet converse elegantly and with knowledge with the most cultured persons of both s.e.xes.

This is a preface to some little remarks of mine on an article lately written by a gentleman in one of our Magazines, on the wife of General (Cherry-Tree) Was.h.i.+ngton.

This writer says that Mrs. Was.h.i.+ngton's "knitting was never out of her hands; that when callers came, the click of her needles was always an accompaniment to her conversation. That she deemed it a privilege to attend to the details of housekeeping, and regarded the days when her official position required her presence in the drawing-room as _lost_."

Now she is a specimen of what I should call a one-sided woman. I am glad she was an accomplished housekeeper, and better still, was not above attending to her duty there. It was splendid, in her high position, that she should set so good an example in this regard. But it was _not_ good to keep her needles clicking when callers came, as if to say, You are an intruder, and I can ill endure your presence. This, I maintain, was neither necessary nor polite. It was _not_ good that she could consider her "drawing-room days" as lost, and not perceive that they might be turned to account in elevating, as an intelligent woman can, the tone of the society she moved in. That she took the contrary view of it shows, to my thinking, that she was _not_ truly an intelligent woman. I believe her duty, as the wife of an American President, lay there quite as much as in looking over her household economies. But that was _Then_, and this is _Now_! In those days one-sided men and women were plenty, and many-sided men and women rare. We can point to-day to many glorious examples of the latter, thank Heaven.

It was once considered a disgrace to a woman to know enough to spell correctly; and if, in addition to committing this indiscretion, she happened to disgrace herself by a knowledge of French or Latin, let her never speak of it, lest it should "destroy her chances of marriage." The idea is losing ground that a woman's mentality perils puddings and s.h.i.+rt-b.u.t.tons. There have been too many s.h.i.+ning, tasteful houses and well-ordered tables presided over by cultivated women, for any man nowadays to drag up that old fogyism, without raising a laugh for himself.

When I read this article about Mrs. Was.h.i.+ngton, who, I admit, was excellent as far as she went, I called the writer to an account. He replied, "Oh, I knew you'd pitch into me, f.a.n.n.y;" and not liking to disappoint him, I have.

RELIGIOUS TOLERANCE.--It would do no harm if Christians who are disposed to judge harshly of each other, were to read occasionally the accounts handed down to us of enormities committed some centuries ago, and even in later years, in the name of religion, upon those of differing creeds; the perpetrators sincerely believing at the time that they were doing G.o.d service. When we are tempted to shut the gate of heaven in any fellow-mortal's face, let us recall these things, at which humanity and Christianity should alike shudder. Said a good old man, in dying, of a son who had embraced another faith than that taught him, "Well, it matters not by which road John gets to heaven, if he only reaches it at last." It seems to us that this, taken rightly, is the true spirit.

_THE WOMAN QUESTION._

I have been sitting here, enjoying a quiet laugh all by myself, over a pile of newspapers and magazines, in which the "Woman Question" was aired according to the differing views of editors and writers. One gentleman thinks that the reason the men take a nap on the sofa, evenings at home, or else leave it to go to naughty places, is because there are no Madame De Staels in our midst to make home attractive. He was probably a bachelor, or he would understand that when a man who has been perplexed and fretted all day, finally reaches home, the last object he wishes to encounter is a wide awake woman of the Madame De Stael pattern, propounding her theories on politics, theology, and literature. The veriest idiot who should entertain him by the hour with tragic accounts of broken tea-cups and saucepans, would be a blessing compared to her; not that he would like that either; not that he would know himself exactly what he _would_ like in such a case, except that it should be something diametrically opposite to that which years ago he got on his knees to solicit.

Another writer a.s.serts that women's brains are too highly cultivated at the present day; and that they have lost their interest in the increase of the census; and that their husbands, not sharing their apathy, hence the disastrous result. I might suggest in answer that this apathy may have its foundation in the idea so fast gaining ground--thanks to club-life, and that which answers to it in a less fas.h.i.+onable strata of society--that it is an indignity to expect fathers of families to be at home, save occasionally to sleep, or eat, or to change their apparel; and that, under such circ.u.mstances, women naturally prefer to be the mother of four children, or none, than to engineer seventeen or twenty through the perils of childhood and youth without a.s.sistance, co-operation, or sympathy.

Another writer thinks that women don't "smile" enough when their husbands come into the house; and that many a man misses having his s.h.i.+rt or drawers taken from the bureau and laid on a chair all ready to jump into at some particular day or hour, as he was accustomed when he lived with some pattern sister or immaculate aunt at home. This preys on his manly intellect, and makes life the curse it is to him.

Another a.s.serts that many women have some female friend who is very objectionable to the husband, in exerting a pugilistic effect on her mind, and that he flees his house in consequence of this unholy influence; not that this very husband wouldn't bristle all over at the idea of his wife's court-martialing a bachelor or benedict friend, for the same reason; but then it makes a difference, you know, a man not being a woman.

Another writer a.s.serts that n.o.body yet knows what woman is capable of doing. I have only to reply that the same a.s.sertion cannot be made with regard to men, as the dwellers in great cities, at least, know that the majority of them are capable of doing anything that the devil and opportunity favor.

It has been a practice for years to father every stupid joke that travels the newspaper-round on "_Paddy_"--poor "Paddy." In the same way it seems to me that for every married man now, who proves untrue to his better nature, _his wife_ is to be held responsible. It is the old cowardly excuse that the first man alive set going, and which has been travelling round this weary world ever since. "The woman thou gavest to be with me"--_she_ did thus and so; and therefore all the Adams from that time down have whimpered, torn their hair, and rushed forth to the long-coveted perdition, over the bridge of this cowardly excuse.

One of the sapient advisers of women ridicules the idea of a woman's voting till she has learned to be "moderate" in following the fas.h.i.+ons; moderate in her household expenses; moderate in her way of dressing her hair; moderate in the length of her party-robes and in the shortness of her walking costume. Till woman has attained this desirable moderation he declares her totally unfit for the ballot.

Granted--for the sake of the argument, granted; but as it is a poor rule that won't work both ways, suppose we determine a man's fitness for the ballot by the same rule. Let not his short-tailed coats refuse to be sat upon by the fat owner thereof. Let not his pantaloons be so tight that he cannot stoop without danger. Let not his overcoat flap against his heels, because a new-fangled custom demands an extra inch or two.

Let not the crown of his hat pierce the skies, or be so ridiculously shallow as to convey the idea that it belongs to his little son. Let him smoke "moderately." Let him drink "moderately." Let him drive "moderately." Let him stock-gamble "moderately." Let him stay out at night "moderately." Let him, in short, prepare himself by a severe training in the virtue of "moderation" for the privilege of casting a vote.

Why, there is not a man in the land who wouldn't sniff at the idea! and yet I suppose it never occurred to the writer of this advice to women that he was uttering impertinent nonsense, or that the rules he laid down were quite as well suited to his own s.e.x as to ours.

Every day I see gentlemen who are as much walking advertis.e.m.e.nts of their tailor's last exaggerated fas.h.i.+on as any foolish woman could be of her dress-maker's newly fledged insanity. If Bismarck be the rage, or Metternich green, their neckties and gloves slavishly follow Fas.h.i.+on's behest. Hats, coats, trousers are long-tail or short, tight or loose, as she bids; and that whether legs are straight or crooked, whether the outline is round or angular, whether the owner looks like an interrogation-point, or a tub on two legs. At least he is in the fas.h.i.+on--that manly thought consoles him.

If "moderation" in smoking were the test of fitness for the ballot-box, how many men do you think would be able to vote?

Oh, pshaw! Advice to women will go in at one ear and out at the other, while male advisers are such egregious fools. The silliest woman who ever cleaned the streets with her silken robe, or exhibited thick ankles in a short one, or froze her ears in January in a saucer of a bonnet, knows that she can find a parallel for all her nonsense in the male side of the question. Men inhabit too many gla.s.s-houses for them at present to hurl missiles of that sort at their fair neighbors. Reform _yourselves_, gentlemen. _You_ who are so much mightier and stronger and more competent, _by your own showing_, show us, poor, weak, "grown-up children" how to behave pretty!

A WORD FOR THE LITTLE ONES.--Have one rough suit for your little ones, this summer, to tumble about the dirt in. The amount of happiness they will get out of that rough suit, and their liberty in it, is not to be computed by any parent's arithmetic. Only a child brought up to city pavements and fine clothes can add up that sum. Will you do it, mothers?

Just for this one summer, if no more. Leave off for a time the sashes and laces, and let the little ones get happily, and, what is better, _healthily_ dirty.

_TWO KINDS OF WIVES._