Ginger-Snaps. Fern Fanny
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those around them from worship, through pity for their evident uncomfortableness. I don't think it is "of course" when I see this. To be sure, there are mothers whose pockets contain alleviations for this juvenile restlessness, in the shape of sugar-plums, or picture-books; but all the time they are being applied, the mother's eye must be on the child instead of the clergymen, lest sticky fingers intrude upon silk or velvet, or a too hasty rattling of leaves in reading the book drown the sound of the preacher's voice. "They should be taught to behave," gravely asserts some person, who, perhaps, has forgotten his own childhood, or has never been a parent. That is true: we only differ as to the question whether church is the place to pursue that education. "Well, suppose you keep a child of that age at home?" asks another. "Of course he ought not to play with his toys as on other days, and he can't read all day, and no one can read or talk all day to him, and what are you going to do then?" In the first place, I, for one, should never "take away its toys" before I could enable it to pass Sunday pleasantly without them; and, of course, I should not allow them directly to interfere with other persons' enjoyment of quiet on Sunday. It is a very difficult problem to solve, I know; but I am sure, to make Sunday a tedium and disgust, is not the way; we have all known too many sad instances of the terrible rebound of adult years from this un-wisdom. We have all known instances where "going to meeting" was not prematurely forced upon the restless little limbs of children, who have, when a little older, asked to accompany the family to worship, and been pleased to go. Nor would I deprive a child of its accustomed walk in the fresh air on that day; on the contrary, I should be most anxious that it should as usual enjoy the out-door brightness. I would also always have for that day some little pleasure which belonged especially to it. It may be some plain little cakes or nuts of which it was fond. I would always have on hand some stories to read, or to tell it, on that day. If possible, I would have flowers on Sunday placed at the child's plate; I would strive that Sunday should be the cheerfullest day of all the week to it – not a bugbear. I believe all this might be done, without disturbing any Christian's church-membership, or perilling any child's salvation. In the country it is much easier to make Sunday pleasant for children than in the city. You have only to let them stray into the garden or field, and be happy in the best way a little unformed mind can he. Or, if the weather interferes with this, the barn and the animals are a never-failing source of pleasure to it.
There are those who might think it "wicked" to do this. The wickedness, to me, consists in making Sunday, which should be a delight, such a tedium, that, in after years, whenever the word strikes upon the ear, or the day returns, the first impulse is to shun and evade it. Oh, let Sunday be what the memory of "mother's room" is to us all – radiant with perfume of flowers and sunshine. The bright spot to look back upon, when old age sits in the chimney-corner, with the sweet psalm from voices hushed by death, or far removed, still sounding in the ears; with the memory of happy faces over the Sunday meal; the glad "Good-morning" and the soft "Good-night."
Surely the God who opens the flowers on Sunday, and lets the birds sing, did not mean that we should close our eyes to the one or our ears to the other, or that we should throw a pall over the little children.
MY HOUSE IN THE COUNTRY
WHEN I live in the country, the front door of my house shall be made for use, and not for show; and the blinds and windows shall be thrown wide open from sunrise until sunset; and I will issue invitations to the bees and birds and butterflies to come in and out at their own convenience, without fear of molestation from me, or of danger to my furniture or belongings. If a few mosquitoes follow suit, I will accept them as a necessary evil, and not to be compared, in the way of annoyance, with that air of sepulchral gloom which, like a wet blanket of mist, surrounds the exterior of most country dwellings, where the men, women, and children skulk round like burglars to the back of the house to effect an entrance, and the closed door and blinds are suggestive of a corpse awaiting burial. And yet I think I understand how this bad custom came about. It was from many babies and much darning and baking, and the dread of impending fly-specks on the gilt frame encircling General Washington and the large looking-glass. But, dear friends, put a mahogany frame round the General, and banish the looking-glass, which will, in a few years, if you neglect all that makes home cheerful, reflect only the imprint of life's cares, instead of its pleasures and contents. "They are so very few," you say. Well, then the more necessity for letting in the sunshine. As I walk about, I notice the careworn, pallid faces of the wives and mothers about many of these country homes, and the careless untidiness of dress which, in a woman, means that she has given the whole thing up, either from overwork or lack of sympathy from the one person for whom the shining hair was once neatly combed, and the strip of white collar carefully pinned, although it might be late in the day before time was found to do these things. When I see these women at nightfall, in this neglectful dress, sitting alone upon the back door-step, while the husband and father has strolled off to some neighbor's, and lies flat on his stomach on the grass, with half a dozen other husbands and fathers, browsing like so many cattle, without a thought of those weary women, I fall to thinking how much life would be worth to me reduced to this utilitarian standard of cow and cabbage. Then I wonder if those women were to throw open the blinds and doors and windows of the front of the house, and smooth their hair a bit, and let one of the children pick some grasses and wild flowers for the mantel, and then tell their respective Johns and Toms to bring into the house the men they like to talk to at that hour, so that all could be jolly together, whether it wouldn't change things for the better. If that plan didn't work, do you know what I would do? I would shoulder my baby, and trot down the road to the nearest neighbor's, and let the old coffin of a house take care of itself. I wouldn't rust, anyhow.
Now, it may be that these women wouldn't know how miserable they were, if I didn't tell them of it. So much the worse, then. I only know that if life were all work to me, it should go hard but I would try to catch a sunbeam now and then, if it were only that the children might not be demoralized by growing up to look at me in the light of a dray-horse; if it were only that my boys need not expect their wives to close their eyes and ears to the beauty and harmony which God had scattered so lavishly about them. Because there are rocks, shall there be no roses? Because there is dust, shall there be no dew?
Do you do well, my sisters, to make your houses so gloomy that your husbands would rather roost outside upon the stone fences, than stay in them? Don't have a "best carpet;" don't have a "best sofa." Let in the sun, and the birds, and the children, though it involve bare floors and wooden chairs, and the total banishment of General Washington and that best looking-glass. Eat in your "best parlor," and laugh in it; don't save it up to be laid out in! Try it now, and see if life isn't a different thing to you all. As to your "work," a great deal of it is unnecessary. John and the children would be much better without pies, cakes, and doughnuts. Make it your religion to give them wholesome bread and meat, and then stop and take a little breath. Nobody will thank you for turning yourself into a machine. When you drop in your tracks, they will just shovel the earth over you, and get Jerusha Ann Somebody to step into your shoes. They wont cry a bit. You never stopped to say a word to them except "get out of my way." To be sure, you were working hard for them all the while, but that wont be remembered. So you just take a little comfort yourself as you go along, and look after "№ 1." Laugh more and darn less; they will like you twice as well. If there is more work than you can consistently do, don't do it. Sometimes there is a little blossom of a daughter in a family who makes everything bright with her finger-tips; if there is none in yours, do you be that blossom. Don't, even for John, let your children remember home as a charnel-house, and you as its female sexton.
WHY WEAR MOURNING?
I WISH that a few sensible, intelligent, wealthy people would cease draping and festooning themselves like engine-houses, when a death occurs in the family. I use word "wealthy" advisedly; because it is only that class who can really effect a reformation, for the reason that they will not be supposed unable "to pay a proper respect," as the phrase runs, to the deceased. Proper respect! Do yards of crape and bombazine never express the opposite emotion? Is real heart-breaking grief to be gauged by the width of a hem, or the length or thickness of a veil? Have not many a widow and orphan woke up, the morning after a funeral, to find the little left by the deceased, expended in funereal carriages, for people who would not lift a helping finger