Ginger-Snaps. Fern Fanny
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and are quite astonished, and, perhaps, disgusted when they come back that the good lady is not in excellent spirits, as they are, and wonder what she, with a comfortable home, and nothing but house matters to attend to, can find to worry her. Now, Mrs. Jones, and Mrs. Jenkins, and Mrs. Smith, I'll lay a wager with each of you, that your husbands have done that very thing, more times than you can count, and on "Blue Monday" too.
Ah! these "chance words," and the thick-skinned utterers of them. Ah! the pity that the needle is no hindrance to the bitter thoughts they bring; but that over the little torn apron or frock, the tears of discouragement fall; the bitterest of all – that he hasn't the least idea "he has said anything," but is, very likely, inviting some fellow that very minute to "take a drink" with him, or to smoke a dozen cigars more or less, spite the "expense." My dears, wipe your eyes. If you look for consistency in the male creature, you'll need a microscope to find it. Your expenses hurt him dreadfully; when I say yours, I mean not only your personal expenses, but the house expenses; for don't you see, had he staid a bachelor, he wouldn't have had a plumber's bill to pay – and that's all your fault, because you said "yes," when he got on his knees to implore you that he might have the felicity of paying your mutual plumber's bill.
But that was then, and this is now!
But isn't it perfectly delicious when those men come home, after making some such blundering speech, the innocent way, after hanging up their hats, that they'll walk into your presence, rubbing their hands, and fetch up standing in the middle of the room with, "Why! what's the matter?" as they catch sight of their wives' lugubrious faces. I tell you, Mr. Smith, and Mr. Jones, and Mr. Jenkins, whatsoever else you do, don't hold your wives responsible for that which they are no more to blame for than yourselves. Or if you will insist upon going over their hearts with a cart-wheel, in this manner, have the manliness when you come home, not to pooh-pooh the resentful tears you have caused.
The fact is, you are but blunderers as far as women are concerned. You are elephants trying with your huge paws to pat humming-birds. Nine out of every ten you demolish. Only physicians understand a woman; and they don't always act up to the light they have.
I would like to write a book on some kinds of legal murder; that is if really good people had not such moonshine notions about "delicacy." This class are really the drags on the wheel of reform. I don't say that sometimes it is not necessary, and even right, to drive rough-shod right over them, if they will persist in walking in such a narrow path; but one does it after all with regret, because they so sincerely believe themselves to be in the "path of duty," as they call it. Dear me! if there ever was a perverted phrase, this is one! It makes me sick to hear it.
What do I mean by "legal murders"? Well, if a woman is knocked on the head with a flat-iron by her husband and killed, or if arsenic is mixed with her food, or if a bullet is sent through her brain, the law takes cognizance of it. But what of the cruel words that just as surely kill, by constant repetition? What of the neglect? What of the diseased children of a pure, healthy mother? What of the ten or twelve, even healthy children, "who come," one after another, into the weary arms of a really good woman, who yet never knows the meaning of the word rest till the coffin-lid shuts her in from all earthly care and pain? Is the self-sacrifice and self-abnegation all to be on one side? Is the "weaker" always to be the stronger in this regard? I could write flaming words about "the inscrutable Providence which has seen fit to remove our dear sister in her youth from the bosom of her young family," as the funeral prayer phrases it.
Providence did nothing of the sort. Poor Providence! It is astonishing how busy people are making up bundles to lay on His shoulders! I imagine Providence meant that women, as well as men, should have a right to their own lives. That they, equally with men, should rest when they can go no further on the road without dying. That while the father sits down to smoke the tobacco which "Providence" always seems to furnish him with, although his family may not have bread to eat, his wife should not stagger to her feet, and try to shoulder again her family cares and expenses.
Sometimes – nay, often – in view of all this, I rejoice in regarding the serene Mrs. Calla-Lily. She goes on just like a man. When she is tired she lies down, and stays there till she is rested, and lets the domestic world wag. If she don't feel like talking, she reads. If the children are noisy, she sweetly and cunningly gets out of the way, on that convenient male pretext, "putting a letter in the post-office." She don't "smoke," but she has her little comforts all the same, and at the right time, although the heavens should fall, and little Tommy's shoes give out. She looks as sleek and smooth and fair as if she were really a lily; and everybody says, "What a delightful person she is! and how bright and charming at all times!"
Now this spectacle soothes me, after seeing the long procession of bent, hollow-eyed, broken-spirited women who are legally murdered.
I exclaim, Good! and think of the old rhyme:
"Look out for thyself,
And take care of thyself,
For nobody cares for thee."
Of course this is very "unamiable" in me, but amiability is not the only or the best quality in the world. I have seen people without a particle of it, as the phrase is often understood, who were the world's real saviours; and I have seen those human oysters, "amiable" people, till sea-sickness was not a circumstance to the condition of my mental and moral stomach.
What a millennial world this would be, if every one were placed in the niche for which he or she were best fitted. Now I know a capital architect who was spoiled, when he became a minister. A dreadful mess he makes of it working on the spiritual temple, as pastor of a country church; whose worshippers each insist upon shaping every brick and lath to their minds before he puts them together; and then they doubt if his cement will do. Poor man! – I know of a merchant, helplessly fastened to the yardstick, who should be an editor. I know of a lawyer, who has peace written all over him, and yet whose life is one interminable fight. I know scores of bright, intelligent women, alive to their finger-tips to everything progressive, good and noble, whose lives, hedged in by custom and conservatism, remind me of that suggestive picture in all our Broadway artist-windows, of the woman with dripping hair and raiment, clinging to the fragment of rock overhead, while the dark waters are surging round her feet. I know little sensitive plants of children, who are no more understood by those who are daily in their angel presence, than the Saviour was by his crucifiers. Children who, mentally, morally, and physically, are being tortured in their several Gethsemanes to the death; and I know sweet and beautiful homes, where plenty, and intelligence, and Christianity dwell, where no little child's laugh has ever been heard, and no baby smile shall ever fill it with blessed sunshine. I know coarse-natured men and women who curse the earth with their presence, whose thoughts and lives are wholly base and ignoble, and yet who fill high places; and I know heaven's own children – patient, toiling, hopeful – sowing seeds which coarse, hurrying feet trample in the earth as they go, little heeding the harvest which shall come after their careless footsteps.
Life's discipline! That is all we can say of it.
How any one with eyes to see all this, can doubt Immortality, and yet bear their life from one day to another, I cannot tell. How persons can say, in view of all these cross-purposes, I am satisfied with this life, and – had I my way – would never leave it, is indeed, a mystery. It must be that the soul were left out of them.
But this doleful talk wont do – will it? I should not dispel illusions – should I? Now, that last is a question I can't settle: whether it were better, if you see a friend crossing a lovely meadow, rejoicing in the butterflies, and flowers, and lovely odors, to warn him that there is a ditch between him and the road, into which he will presently fall; or to let him enjoy himself while he can, and plump into it, without anticipatory fears? What do you think? Anyhow, it is no harm to wish you all a happy summer.
Would it not be well for those who report the "dress" of ladies at a public dinner to instruct themselves in advance as to color? One can always tell whether a man or a woman is the reporter, by the blunders of the former in mistaking blue for green, lilac for rose, and black for pink. The world moves on, to be sure, in either case; but since reporting must be done on