Caper Sauce Part 3

Some writer remarks, "We blunder fearfully with our domesticity in America. Our wives are only of two kinds: the family slave on one hand; the frivolous woman of fas.h.i.+on on the other!"

"_Our_ wives!" As a _woman_ can't have a "wife," I may logically infer that a man wrote the above paragraph, though without these two helping words I should have come to the same conclusion. Now so far as my limited knowledge goes, we generally find "in the market" that which is oftenest called for. Put that down in your memorandum book, sir. Men are but just beginning to find out that the two specimens of womankind referred to are much more difficult to get along with, in the main, than a woman of intelligence and mentality. I say they are just _beginning_ to understand it. Men are very fond of the results that the "family slave" brings about, in the shape of good food and well-mended clothes, but they dodge with a fox's cunning the creaking and jarring of the machinery by which these results are obtained. They never want to be on hand when any process of disentanglement is necessary that defies temporarily the "family slave." Just then "business" is imperative--very likely in the shape of a journey--till the household machine runs smoothly again; nor does he care to hear how it is done, so that he is not bothered about it. If the "family slave" gets thinner and thinner, why, it is because "she takes everything _so hard_." She ought not to take things hard! That's her fault! It is an unfortunate nervousness which she ought to try to get rid of, because--it worries _him_! She is "no companion" for him--not a bit! When he wants to be amused, she is too tired to do it. In fact she don't see anything to be amused at. That is another unfortunate peculiarity of hers, this looking on the dark side of things. _He_ don't do so. Not he! He deplores it; he sits down and writes just such a paragraph as I have just quoted above, like the consistent man he is.

I once heard a man who was in excellent circ.u.mstances, and whose young wife, just recovered from a severe illness, had taken her twelve-pound baby in her weak arms, and gone into the country for a few days, remark, as she left, "She _would_ take all my old trousers with her to mend--G.o.d bless her!" adding, hallelujah-wise, "_There's a wife for you!_"

Now who made _that_ "family slave"? Because she was magnanimous and self-forgetful, must he need be a brute? Women must take care of themselves in these matters. They must husband their strength for future demands, since their husbands won't husband it. That man was abundantly able to pay a tailor or a seamstress to repair his clothes. Instead of contenting himself with G.o.d-blessing this little meek wife, he should, like a true man, have positively _forbidden_ her to work at all, in this short reprieve from household care. When there is nothing left of her but one front tooth, and a back, bent like the letter C, he will contemplate some round, rosy woman, who has not yet met her doom, and wonder how his wife came "to lose all her good looks so soon."

As to "fas.h.i.+onable women," were there no fas.h.i.+onable men, I don't imagine that they would exist on this planet. "She is so dowdy!" "She is so stylis.h.!.+" Do you suppose the women who hear these masculine comments forget them? And do you suppose when, to use an equine expression, you have once given a wife "her head," by your admiration of "style" and fas.h.i.+on, that you can rein her up short, whenever you take a notion?

Don't she hear you sneering at intelligent women, and don't she see you flattering fas.h.i.+onable fools?

Of course she does. Now let every man ask himself, before he sits down to write against the faults and follies of women, what he, individually, has done to form and perpetuate them? And if ever, in his whole life, when he saw a woman wronging her better self in _any_ way, he extended a manly, brotherly hand to her, in the endeavor to lead her right? or, if he did not, on the contrary, join her, and walk with her, _well pleased_, in her own ill-selected path.

_UNDERTAKERS' SIGNS ON CHURCHES._

It may strike _you_ pleasantly, but when I am about to enter a church, the conspicuous intelligence upon its outside walls, that the "undertaker may be found at such a street," is anything but a pleasant announcement. Now not being myself a theologian of that school which compels a smiling countenance to be left at the _porch_ of the "meetin'-house," I can, therefore, by no means indorse any gloomy surroundings, outside or inside.

One of the princ.i.p.al articles of _my_ creed is, that Sunday should be the pleasantest day of all the week. When I open my eyes to its dawn, I always rejoice, if instead of a gray, cloudy sky, it be a lovely blue, and the sun be s.h.i.+ning brightly; I think upon the thousands to whom this day is the only leisure day of all the seven; the thousands who, without this blessed rest, would scarcely have time to look upon the faces of wife or children; scarcely time to receive the regenerating caresses of little twining arms, or hear the recital of little griefs and joys which it is so blessed to share with one who never wearies in the hearing, and to whose fatherly ear nothing a little child can say is "trifling." It is blessed to me to think of the thousand humble homes where the Sabbath sun s.h.i.+nes upon just such a scene as this; preaching _through the family_ this simple gospel: that the humblest have those for whom they must strive to leave the legacy of a good and honest name. Now when a working-man, with his heart full of love and happiness, walks forth on a Sunday morning, do you think it wise when he approaches a church to shake a coffin in his face? Had I my way, I would tear these undertaker-placards all down to-morrow, and instead, I would write this, "Strangers furnished with free seats here every Sunday." Were I a clergyman, an undertaker should no more use my church walls to advertise his business, than the upholsterer who furnished the pew-cus.h.i.+ons, or the bookseller who provided the hymn-books, or the man who found the gas-fixtures. Ah! but you say it is very convenient to know where the s.e.xton lives. Very well, so it is; but let him advertise in the papers, as other people do, who have no convenient church walls to save their advertising fees. The truth is, that the whole undertaker business, as at present managed, is monstrously mis-managed. The other day, in one of our streets, I saw an oyster shop with heaps of bivalves curiously arranged in the window, over which was written: "_Live and let live._"

Next door, being an undertaker, he had piled ostentatiously _his_ wares, consisting of heaps of "fancy coffins," in his show-window. If he had only copied his bivalve-neighbor, so far as to write over the window, _Die and let die_, the farce would have been complete.

They who please may sniff at Sunday. To us it is a blessed reprieve from care and business, and worry of every sort. The very putting on of the fresh, clean, "best" raiment, is suggestive of best thoughts and best feelings for all whom we meet, and more than all, for the dear ones at home, whose happiness it is ours to make or to mar. Then the sweet, soothing hymn and the pleading prayer; and the sermon, in which it were hard, as a rule, to find nothing that we could not take home with us for our improvement and self-help. Then the pleasant family group at table, where the children _should_ be. Ah! _we_ are glad for this blessed Sunday, let him who will, decry or pervert it.

A PITIABLE SIGHT.--There is no more pitiable sight than that of a husband and father reeling home at the end of the week, having left the greater part of his week's wages at some drinking saloon. We think of the patient, toiling wife and hungry children, and the miserable Sunday, and the coming week in store for them, and the utter hopelessness of their future lot, and can find no words of denunciation strong enough for the man who grows rich by tempting a brother's weakness, knowing, when he does so, that for his victim there is in this world no redemption.

_A VOICE FROM THE SKATING POND._

Coats and trousers have the best of it _everywhere_, I exclaimed, for the thousandth time, as I looked at the delightful spectacle of the male and female skaters at the Central Park. Away went coat and trousers, like a feather before the wind; free, and untrammelled by dry-goods, and independent of any chance somerset; while the poor, skirt-hampered women glided circ.u.mspectly after their much-needed health and robustness, with that awful omnipresent sense of _the proprieties_, (and--horror of horrors--a tumble!) which sends more of the dress-fettered s.e.x to their graves every year than any disease _I_ wot of. That a few women whom I saw there had had the perseverance to become tolerable skaters, with all that ma.s.s of dry-goods strung round their waists, is infinitely to their credit. How much _longer_ and better they could have skated, disembarra.s.sed, as men are, of these swaddling robes, common sense will tell anybody. I should like to see how long a _man's_ patience would hold out, floundering round in them, while _he_ learned to skate! And yet were a lady to adopt any other costume, how decent soever, or how eminently soever befitting the occasion, what a rolling of eyes and pursing of mouths should we see from the strainers at gnats and swallowers of camels. All these thoughts pa.s.sed through my mind as I mixed in with the merry crowd on that bracing winter day, whose keen breath was like rare old wine, so did it stir and warm the blood; and I wondered, as I gazed at those dress-fettered women, whether those heathen nations who strangled their female babies at birth were as naughty as we had been told they were!

"Why don't _you_ get up a skating costume, f.a.n.n.y, and set them an example?" whispers a voice at my elbow. _Me_? why don't _I_? Because, sir, custom has made me a poor, miserable coward in these matters, like the rest of my s.e.x, and because, moreover, sir, you would have no more courage to walk by my side in such a costume, than I should have to wear it. No, no: a crowd of curious men in my wake would be no more agreeable in reality than it is in perspective. It is brave _talking_, I know, but the time has not yet come when men, by refraining from rude remarks on a female pioneer in such a cause, would remove one of the chief obstacles to its advancement. They "like healthy women"--oh, of course they do!

but then, unfortunately, they like dainty prettiness of attire much better. Else, why don't they encourage women when they try to do a sensible thing? Why do they grin, and stroke their beards, and shrug their shoulders, and raise their eyebrows, and go home to Jane Maria, and say, "Let me catch _you_ out in such a costume"? Till all that is done away with, we must be content to see puny, waxy-looking children, and read in "Notes on America" the usual number of stereotyped pages on "the fragility of our women." Now, let me say in closing that I don't wish to be misunderstood on this matter. I approve of no costume which a delicate-minded, self-respecting, dignified woman might not wear in public. But I will insist that nothing _can_ be done in the way of reform, while husbands and fathers and brothers _sniff_ the whole subject "under the table" as soon as it is mentioned. May every one of them have a yearly doctor's bill to pay as long as the moral law!

BEARING TROUBLE.--There are persons who emerge from every affliction and trouble and vexation, purified like fine gold from out the furnace.

There are others, and they are the more numerous, who are imbittered and soured, and made despondent and apathetic. We think the latter belong to the cla.s.s who _try to stand alone_ during these storms of life, instead of looking above for aid. When one can truly say, "He doeth all things well," the sting is taken out of affliction, the tears are dried, and the courage given to bear what the future has in store. This, we think, makes the great difference between these two cla.s.ses.

_THE SIN OF BEING SICK._

I wish women could be made to understand the importance of flannel under-clothing, and warm outer-clothing, and common-sense generally in food and exercise, when they talk about longing to have a "profession"

or a "career." Not that good health should not always be a sort of religion with them; but they should remember that what failings soever men may have, as a general thing they are not such fools as to s.h.i.+ver in insufficient clothing when other may be had, or to go with wet or cold feet, because thick stockings "fill up the boot," or reject thick-soled boots because they make the feet look a size or two larger. They do not, either, think it attractive to bare their throats and necks to a biting wind in the street, thus inviting a blue nose and the pitying contempt of every beholder. Woman's great foe, "headache," is surely invited and perpetuated by these follies, even if no worse punishment follows. "I am so s.h.i.+very all over!" you will hear these silly creatures exclaim, and the red and white located in the wrong spots in their faces attest the truth of it. One would think that, as a matter upon which their much-valued good looks depend, they would "consider their ways, and be wise;" but no. After this they come in and call for some "hot, strong tea." Tea! _that woman's dram!_ morning, noon, and night. It makes her "feel like another being," she says. I'm sure it makes her _act_ like one. This lasts an hour, perhaps; then she has such a "gnawing at her stomach." Then follows depression after the exhilaration. Then she eats nothing, because she has "no appet.i.te." Then--another cup of tea, to "set her up," as she calls it.

I should like to see such a woman having any "career," except fitting herself speedily for a lunatic asylum. Such a course is reprehensible and suicidal enough, when good food is at hand and enough of it, and the women who practise it have money enough to pay a doctor to come and see them, and tell them lies, and give them nice messes to make believe cure them. But unfortunately our working girls and women, who have only a hospital bed to look forward to when sick, go on after the same crazy fas.h.i.+on. There is some shadow of excuse with them for their intemperate use of _tea_; the horrible fare of their boarding-places being so unpalatable and disgusting, and their long hours of labor so exhaustive and discouraging that this stimulant has become _seemingly_ necessary to their existence--the one bit of comfort and luxury that they look forward to with eagerness in the interval of work. "I can't do without it," said a young shop-girl to me, when I remonstrated with her on its use, morning, noon, and night. "I couldn't do my work without it." And how did she spend the wages received for "her work"? In a flimsy, showy dress; in a gay hat; in a fas.h.i.+onable pair of boots with high heels.

Meantime she had no flannel; she had no _thick_ boots; she had no warm outer garments; she had nothing to insure either health or comfort, and she was in the same alternatives of exhilaration and depression as her richer sisters of whom I have spoken. I don't know why, either, that I should call them "richer," except that _they_ could have a rosewood coffin with silver nails, and be buried in a fas.h.i.+onable cemetery, while the working-girl would have a pine one, and sleep her long sleep in the Potter's Field. Oh, dear! I see all these abuses, and I exclaim, Oh, the rare and priceless blessings of good health and common-sense! How I wish that every clergyman in our land--only that I know that in many cases they are as great sinners themselves in the matter of health--would preach on the _sin of being sick_.

Now _there's_ a topic for those of them who have the face to speak of it, and a clear conscience to bear them out in it. For those of them who don't sit in their libraries smoking till you can't see across it, when they should be knocking about in the open air, cultivating a breezy, sunny, healthful state of mind and body--just the same as if they were laymen, instead of "ministers," whom the devil desires, of all things, to see solemn and dyspeptic.

I lately read an article in one of our papers headed, "_Have we a Healthy Woman among us?_" I fully indorse what the writer says as to the marvellous amount of invalidism among our girls and women, and I deplore it as sincerely as he does. But let us have fair play on this subject. If there are few of them who ever ought to be wives and mothers, I ask, how much better qualified--physiologically speaking--are the young _men_ of the present day to be husbands and fathers? Go to any physician of large practice and experience, and if he answers you frankly and truthfully, you will learn that it is six of one and half a dozen of the other. When boys of eight and twelve go to school with a satchel in one hand and a cigar in the other, I wouldn't give much for their future vitality, even without leaving a margin for other violations of the laws of health. It would be well, while publicly deploring "tight lacing" and "tight shoes" for girls, privately to inquire about the practice of smoking for boys in short-jackets. To be sure, I cannot see with what face a father, who is himself a bond-slave to this habit, can ask his boy to refrain from doing that which he, as a man, has not had self-control enough to accomplish. But don't let him then write or speak dolefully about the miserable ill-health of our girls and women, not, at least, till he moves out of his own "gla.s.s-house." If the _truthful_ inscriptions were placed upon the myriad little graves in our cemeteries, it would be _fathers_, not _mothers_, in many cases, who could not read them without pangs of remorse.

The day will, I hope, come, when the marriage question will cease to be decided by Cupid or cupidity; when parents, and lovers, themselves, will consider a sound, healthy body to be of primary importance. Oh! the weary years of watching and dosing and misery for two, consequent upon the neglect of this precaution! Oh! the army of puny and idiotic children, doomed, if they live to adult years, to be a blight in themselves and to all around them! And how distressing is it to see a wife, made gloriously as a woman should be, with a broad chest, a free, firm, graceful step and a beaming face, married to a man whose only claim to be a living being is, that he has not yet ceased to breathe!

And still as mournful is it, to look at a kingly man, whose very presence is so full of life that it is like stepping from a close room into the glad, free, balmy suns.h.i.+ne even to come where he is, married to a little pink-eyed, feeble dwarf of a creature, with little paws like a bird's, and not life enough left even to chirp to him.

"Well, what are you going to do about it?" as the pre-Raphaelite friend asked of a disconsolate widow who kept on crying for her dead husband.

That's just the point where I want to bring _you_, my reader. I want you individually to look first for good health in the chosen wife who is to be the mother of your children. And you, young girl, look first for that rarity, a _clean bill of health_, with your future husband. A brown-stone house and a carriage and livery are nothing to it. Take my advice. Don't take copper for gold on the health question, and _don't give it_.

_ARE MINISTERS SERFS?_

We hear a great outcry occasionally about "ministers who work outside of their profession," as it is called--that is, in the lecture field, or in writing newspaper or magazine articles for pay, or in editing newspapers; and this although the ministers thus censured are faithful to their pastoral duties, and bring forth every Sunday, and during the week, fresh, vigorous thoughts for the profit and pleasure of these complainers.

Now in our view this is a great impertinence.

Suppose a clergyman has a decrepit mother or sister, whose only pecuniary reliance is himself? Suppose he is not willing, from delicacy toward them, to turn his family affairs inside out, and explain _why_ he does this "outside work," which may enable him to meet this or some similar outside demand? _Is it_ properly anybody's business? If he do not defraud his parish, have they any right to hold a coroner's inquest over his "outside" earnings and their possible appropriation? How would his deacons or church-members stand such a scrutiny over their own private affairs? We think that the "old Adam" in them would soon rear and plunge at it. Well, ministers are men too, though you sometimes seem to forget it; and _they_ don't like it either. The parish has not purchased their _souls_, as I understand it, no more than have husbands those of their wives. Let us hope, in this enlightened age, that neither are serfs. Let us hope that all ministers, and all wives too, all over the land, may honestly and innocently earn money, and keep it in a private purse too, without accounting to either the parish or their husbands for the expenditure of the same; or without, in either case, causing unfounded suspicion or breach of the peace, or officious meddling, no more, in my opinion, to be justified, than as if the "boot was on the other foot," where Mrs. Grundy would consider it a great wrong to place it, or to insist upon its being worn, regardless of the limping or contortions of the wearers.

Before either parishes or husbands complain of outside _honest_ earnings, let them inquire if the salaries they give are just and ample.

Let them both inquire whether the objection they have to outside earning in both cases, does not mainly arise from the fear that the curious public will imagine that they are not.

Of course, in saying all this, I am referring to those clergymen and those married women who are sensible and judicious, as well as blessed with ability, and it is my opinion that Mrs. Grundy has meddled long enough with the proper independence and self-respect of both.

One thing I've forgotten, namely, parishes are not to suppose that an increase of a clergyman's salary is to padlock his lips afterward, if he is requested, or if he feels inclined, to deliver his sentiments, even "for pay," on the platform, as well as in the pulpit they have called him to fill. Nor after that, are they to handcuff him either, lest he should write a line "for pay" in a paper or magazine? In short, do try to be willing that your "minister" should stand up straight like any other man, and not go cringing round the world a bought serf, with his "white choker" for a badge of the same. I'm sick of seeing it. If I were a minister, it would take all the religion I could muster to keep me from saying wicked words about it.

"Our minister was away six weeks this summer," said a person complainingly, the other day. Well, are not ministers human? Must they not eat, drink, rest, sleep, sorrow and grieve, like other mortals? Have they not, in addition to all this, a constant and exhaustive demand upon their sympathies for the griefs of other people? And must they not constantly be racking their brains, in and out of the pulpit, to have all their words set fitly, like "apples of gold in pictures of silver"?

And is it not better that a minister should rest "six weeks" than be laid useless upon the shelf for six months, or that his voice should be silenced forever because of the exactions of the unthinking portion of his hearers? And would it not be well if the persons thus complaining spent the time instead in looking to it that they had profited by what they had _already_ heard?

Whatever else you grudge, never grudge a good, faithful minister a breathing spell.

_BLAMING PROVIDENCE FOR OUR OWN FAULTS._