Fresh Leaves. Fern Fanny
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comes Mr. Pax with one – good soul – he has been out in his slippers, and bought one. Now I shall find out all about every thing, and – who did what. See what a thing it is to have a husband! No, I shan’t either: may I be kissed if Pax has not sat down to read that paper himself, instead of giving it to me. Now I like that; I dare say he thinks because he is connected with the Press that he should have the first reading of it. Am not I connected with the Press I’d like to know? I guess you’d have thought so, had you seen me squeezing into the Opera House the other night to hear Everett’s lecture.
Perhaps he is going to read it aloud to me – I’ll sip my coffee and wait a bit. Good Pax! how I have maligned him; what an impatient wretch I am. I think impatience is a fault of mine. I wonder is it a fault? I wonder if I can help it, if it is? I wonder if people weren’t made that way the year I was born? Yes; Pax must be going to read me the paper; that’s it. Good Pax – how well he looks in that Turkish breakfast-jacket; he has really a nice profile and pretty hand. I can’t say that he has a very saintly under lip, but I have known more saintly looking ones do naughtier things! Yes; I’ll sip my coffee – he is undoubtedly going to read the paper to me; no, he isn’t either; he means to devour the whole of it solus. I won’t stand it – hem – no reply – hem – none so deaf as those who won’t hear.
“Pax!”
“Well, dear” (without raising his eyes).
“Pax! what is there interesting in that paper?”
(Pax still reading intently.) “Nothing, my dear, absolutely nothing.”
Humph! wonder if it takes a man a whole hour to read “nothing?”
Now, do you suppose I whined about that? cried till my eyes looked as though they were bound with pink tape? Not I. I just sat down and wrote an article about it for the “Weekly Monopolizer,” and when it is published, as published it will be, I shall be disinterested enough to hand Pax my paper to read first! Then – when he reads the article, and looking up reproachfully, says: “Mrs. Pax!” it will be my turn not to hear, you know; and when he gets up, and laying his connubial paw on my shoulder, says: “Mrs. Pax, do you know any thing about this article in the Weekly Monopolizer?” I shall reply, with lamb-like innocence: “Nothing, my dear, absolutely nothing!”
Won’t that floor him?
GIRLS’ BOARDING-SCHOOLS
Had I twenty daughters, which I regret to say I have not, not one of them should ever enter a “Boarding-school.” I beg pardon; I should say “Institute;” schools are exploded; every two-year-older learns his A B C now at an “Institute,” though that institute, when hunted down, may consist of a ten-feet-square basement room. But this is a digression.
To every mother who is contemplating sending her daughter to a boarding-school I would say: Let neither your indolence, nor the omnipotent voice of fashion, nor high-sounding circulars, induce you to remove her from under your own personal care and supervision, at a time when the physique of this future wife and mother requires a lynx-eyed watchfulness on your part, which no institute ever has – ever will supply. This is a point which I am astonished that parents seem so utterly to overlook. Every mother knows how fatal wet feet, or insufficient clothing, may be to a young girl at the critical age at which they are generally sent away to school. It is not enough that you place India-rubbers, thick-soled shoes, and flannels in the trunk which bears the little exile company; they will not insure her from disease there. It is not enough that you say to her, “My dear, be careful of your choice of companions,” when she has no choice; when her bed-fellows and room-mates – the latter often three or four in number – are what chance and the railroads send; for what teacher, with the best intentions, ever gives this subject the attention which it deserves, or which a mother’s anxious heart asks? That the distant home of her daughter’s room-mates is located within the charmed limits of fashion; that a carriage with liveried servants (that disgusting libel on republicanism), stands daily before their door; that the dresses of these room-mates are made in the latest style, and their wrists and ears decked with gold and precious stones – is an affirmative answer to these questions to satisfy a true mother?
No – and it is not the blushing country maiden, with her simple wardrobe, and simpler manners, whom that mother has to fear for her child’s companion or bed-fellow. It is the over-dressed, vain, vapid, brainless offshoot of upstart aristocracy, who would ridicule the simple gingham in which that country girl’s mother studied geography, and which fabric she very properly considers quite good enough for her child, and which is much more appropriate in the school-room than silk or satin. It is this child of the upstart rich mother, whose priceless infancy and childhood have been spent with illiterate servants; with the exception of the hour after dessert, when she was reminded that she had a mother, by being taken in an embroidered robe to be exhibited for a brief space to her guests. It is this girl, whose childhood, as I said, has been passed with servants, peeping into the doubtful books with which doubtful servants often beguile the tedious hours (for there are bad servants as well as bad masters and mistresses) – this girl, lying awake in her little bed, hearing unguarded details of servants’ amours, while her mother dances away the hours so pregnant with fate to that listening child. It is such a girl, more to be pitied than blamed, whose existence is to be recognized by her thoughtless mother only, when her “coming out,” delayed till the latest possible period, forces her reluctantly to yield to a younger aspirant her own claims to admiration. This girl whose wealth, and the social position arising from it, so dazzles the eyes of proprietors of “Institutes” that they are incapable of perceiving, or unwilling to admit, her great moral and mental delinquencies; it is such a companion that a true mother has to fear for her pure-minded, simple-hearted young daughter, leaving for the first time the guarded threshold and healthful atmosphere of home.
And when after months have passed – and insufficient exercise,1 imperfect ventilation, and improper companionship, have transformed her rosy, healthy, simple-hearted child, to a pale, languid, spineless, dressy young woman, with a smattering of fashionable accomplishments, and an incurable distaste of simple, home pleasures – will it restore the bloom to her cheek, the spring to her step, the fresh innocence to her heart, to say, “but the school was fashionable and so well recommended?”
CLOSET MEDITATIONS, NOT FOUND IN JAY OR DODDRIDGE
Shall I ever be unhappy again? Six big closets with shelves and drawers! What a Godsend! You laugh! you are unable to comprehend how such joyful emotions can spring from so trivial a cause.
Trivial! Did you ever board out? Did you ever stand in the midst of your gas-lighted, damask-curtained, velvet-chaired, closetless hotel (yes —hotel) apartments, with a six-cent ink-bottle between your perplexed thumb and finger, taxing your brain, as it was never taxed before, to discover an oasis where to deposit it, when not in use?
Trivial? Did you ever live for a series of years with your head in a trunk? Did you ever see your ghost-like habiliments dangling day after day from pegs in the wall? Did you ever turn away your disgusted eyes, as the remorseless chambermaid whirled clouds of dust over their unprotected fabrics? Did you ever, as you lay in bed of a morning, exhaust your ingenuity in devising some means of relief? Did you ever, exulting in your superior acumen, rush out, and purchase at your own expense, a curtain to cover them? Did you ever jam off all your finger nails trying to drive it up? (for what woman ever yet hit a nail on the head?) Did you ever have that dusty curtain drop down on your nicely-smoothed hair, nine times out of ten when you went to it for a dress? Did you ever set fire to it with a candle, when in an abstracted state of mind?
Trivial? Did you ever implore a white-aproned waiter, with tears in your eyes, and twenty-five cents in your hand, to bring you an empty cigar-box to keep your truant slippers in? Did you ever stifle with closed windows, because if you threw them up, you would throw out your books, which were piled on the window lodge? Were you ever startled in the middle of the night, by the giving way of a solitary nail, on which were hung a bag of buttons, a bag of hooks and eyes, a child’s satchel, a child’s slate, a basket of oyster crackers, a bag of chess-men, and – your hoops?
Trivial?
Is a formal, listless walk, in a half-mile procession, to answer the purpose of