Caper Sauce Part 6

_LETTER TO HENRY WARD BEECHER._

"There has been a very jolly set of children in my house since the box [of mixed candies] came. I have made a scientific a.n.a.lysis with such means as I had at hand--my tongue and palate--and am of opinion that it is pure, and am sure that it is _good_ (I know that f.a.n.n.y Fern is sorry that she ever wrote a word against candy, and stands pouting, to think that I have all the sweets on my side)."--_Mr. Beecher in N. Y. Ledger._

Pouting? Not a bit of it. After I make up my mind a thing is past being helped, I always turn my giant mind to something else.

Now, "your riverence," your love for "sweets" is not a thing of yesterday. I mind me of a young man, of your name, who once came to a boarding-school, where I, at sixteen, was placed for algebra and safe-keeping, both of which I hated, and who invited me to take several surrept.i.tious rides with him, which I did; and which will probably first come to the knowledge of his sister, my teacher, through this number of the New York _Ledger_. What Plymouth church has escaped, in the way of an infliction, by that young man's going to college about that time, and my return to the "bosom of my family," to learn the "Lost Arts,"

bread-making and b.u.t.ton-hole st.i.tching, Plymouth church may now for the first time learn.

And now, having paid you off for your little public dig at me, I proceed magnanimously to admit, that I believe a bit of _pure_ candy, given to a child as dessert after a wholesome meal, is perfectly harmless. But not even the gifted pastor of Plymouth church, whose sermons, to me, are like a spring of water in the desert, can ever make me believe that an indiscriminate nibble of even _pure_ candy between meals is good for any child.

Now, Mr. Beecher, we are both grandfathers--I mean, _you_ are a grandfather, and I am a grandmother. I now propose to pit my grandchild against yours on the candy question, and see which, in the future, brings us the heaviest dentist and doctor's bills. We won't scratch each other's eyes out now, both on account of "auld lang syne," and on account of the dignity of our position--I mean the dignity of _yours_.

I have one thing against you besides candy, and that is, that I can never get a seat at your church. As everybody is giving you advice, of which, by the way, I too have plenty, I advise you to remove to New York, that I may be able, without getting up in the middle of the night in order to cross the ferry, to get a seat in one of your pews. You have been in Brooklyn now for a long time, and if the people over there haven't yet become angels, it is high time you tried your hand on the other kind in New York.

I propose the site of the present Bible House, as being a nice walk from my residence, which is the main thing to be considered. I will agree to find your pulpit in flowers--(not of oratory; that is for you!)

Hoping that you will be able to turn from your beloved box of candy to an early consideration of this question, I am--leaving out candy--

Your faithful adherent, f.a.n.n.y FERN.

ONE KIND OF FOOL.--It is very instructive sometimes, at a place of country resort, to watch the woman who has come only to exhibit her changes of wardrobe. For a day or two, possibly longer, she goes through her solitary dress-rehearsals. Finding at last that the rest of the boarders wear rubbers and water-proofs, and live out of doors in all weathers, the woman who came to dress, gets weary of waiting for admirers, and reluctantly joins the sensible majority, rather than be left alone; but generally with an apologetic, "How odd it seems, not to dress for dinner as one does in the city," by way of letting herself gently down from her sn.o.bbish pedestal. We are happy to add, however, that the number of women who go into the country to dress is becoming fewer every year; folly in this regard having reached its ultimatum of loathsomeness.

_THE AMENITIES OF THE TABLE._

Fastidiousness, in any regard, is a misfortune, as two-thirds of mankind have no such word in their dictionary. But in matters of the table we claim for every human being a large margin of license as to peculiarities of taste. Now _helping at table_ is a science. To tact and skill your helper must needs add benevolence. He or she must be capable of comprehending that too large a slice, or too br.i.m.m.i.n.g a spoonful, may save the trouble of helping twice, in more ways than one, as it may effectually destroy the appet.i.te. Your helper must not suppose that safely to land a piece of meat on the plate, instead of the table-cloth, his or her duty is done; on the contrary, the boundary line between squash and spinach, cranberry sauce and cauliflower, may be distinctly defined with advantage to many stomachs and palates. Nor must your helper close his or her eyes to the fact that some specified joint, or bone, or slice, may be disagreeable, through some unexplainable though very decided antipathy. Nor must he or she disdain to be informed, if ignorant of the fact, that a bit of b.u.t.ter has a better relish if it be not flattened down on your plate, after the manner of an apothecary spreading a plaster. Then gravy is undoubtedly a meritorious liquid when one has a confidential physician, and money enough to fee him; but as this is not always the case, one may be pardoned for not wishing to have it taken for granted that it is to be soused over his food, without permission. _Once_ I saw a philanthropic carver. His patience and a.s.siduity were beyond all praise; but in an evil day, in a philosophical mood, inspecting him too closely with admiring eyes, I discovered the fatal spring of his amiability. It was only a blind for the secretion of his favorite t.i.tbits till, his labors over, the delicious process of mastication should commence for _him_! That's what comes of looking too closely into things. It has happened to me before.

The Smiths believe that edibles were made to eat; and that digestion is a humbug invented by the doctors; and that milk and cider, and pastry and vinegar, and candy and raisins, and flapjacks and pickles, and jellies, can be eaten in successive strata at any hour in the twenty-four, and in any condition of body or mind, and repose quietly together like "the Happy Family." The Smiths believe in getting up in the middle of the night to eat and then going to bed upon it; they believe in taking a bath alike on a full or an empty stomach, and they utterly despise exercise. If they are sick, it is never on account of any of _these_ barbaric heresies.

Now, the Joneses, having studied physiology, look upon food as a necessary evil. No Rabbi could more utterly sniff down pork. Grease in every form is tabooed; preserves and pastry sent to Coventry, or only set before company, who have an undoubted right to kill themselves if fashion requires it. The Joneses, when helping you at table, always prefix the offered morsel with, Pray take it, it is so healthful; or, It will a.s.sist your digestion; or, It is an excellent corrective; till the a.s.sociation between potatoes and physic, meat and medicine, is so intimate, that one ceases to regard these edibles in the light of food.

You are cautioned against veal because of necessity it must be _young_ meat; against fish, lest it may aggravate a possible scrofulous tendency; against tea, because the leaves may have been dried on copper; against milk, because you are unacquainted with the pedigree of the cow from whence it came. Bread is microscopically inspected for imaginary adulterations, and after all these precautions the timid Joneses, restricted to the simplest forms of two or three permissible and monotonous eatables, swallow even these nervously, and with an eye to the undertaker; and if attacked by headache, submit to it meekly, as a penance for some unknown infringement of nature's law.

Now the Adamses believe in _quant.i.ty_, not _quality_. An ounce of paving-stones is as good as an ounce of mutton; in other words, you may eat your grandmother with impunity, if you only confine yourself to a small piece, and are jolly over it. Luckily for butchers, confectioners, grocers, doctors, and s.e.xtons, each of these hobbies finds its followers.

I believe in eating. The person who affects to despise it either comforts himself with private bites, or is unfitted by disease to eat at all. It does not disenchant me, as it does some, to see "a woman eat." I know that the dear creatures cannot keep up their plumpness on saw-dust, or the last "Lady's Book." I look at them as the future mothers of healthy little children; and I say mentally, Eat, my dears, and be satisfied; but be sure that you take a good walk after you have digested your food. Still there may be limits to one's tolerance even in this regard. The other morning, at a hotel breakfast, I had been contemplating with great interest a fair creature, who took her seat opposite to me, in all the freshness of a maiden's morning toilette.

Smooth hair, tranquil brow, blue eyes, and a little neat white collar finishing off a very pretty morning-robe; and here you will permit me to remark that, if women did but know it, but they don't, and never will, a ball-room toilette is nothing to a neat breakfast dress. Well, my fairy read the bill of fare, while I admired the long eyelashes that swept her cheek. Straightway she raised her pretty head, and lisped this order to the colored waiter at her elbow:

"John! Coffee, Fried Pigs' Feet, Fried Oysters, Omelette, Pork Steak."

_MANY MEN OF MANY MINDS._

It is very curious with what different eyes different people may look upon the same object. Not long since a lady and gentleman in travelling arrived at the hotel of one of our largest watering-places just at the dinner-hour. The lady, preferring a warm meal to an elaborate toilette, proposed going in "just as they were." Seating themselves in the places designated by that important personage, the head waiter, they inspected the tempting bill of fare, gave their orders, and bided their time, longer or shorter, for their completion; the hotel being overcrowded, it proved to be _longer_. The lady solaced herself by reviewing the guests.

Presently, touching her companion's arm, she exclaimed: "Look! did you ever see a more beautiful woman? Look at her throat, and the poise of her head, and her lovely profile. See! how she smiles! hasn't she a lovely mouth?" "Pshaw!" replied the gentleman, "I dare say she's well enough, but do you suppose that boiled mutton I ordered will ever arrive?"

The other day a beautiful child came into an omnibus with its nurse. It commenced smiling at all the pa.s.sengers, pointing its tiny forefinger at this one and that, by way of making acquaintance. One old gentleman in the far comer responded by a series of signals with a red-silk pocket handkerchief, to which the social little baby made ready response.

Another gentleman near, upon whose newspaper the smiling child laid its hand with trusting fearlessness, looked over his spectacles at it with a frown, gave an ugly grunt, and shortly turned his back, to prevent a repet.i.tion of the familiarity.

"How did you like the Rev. Mr. ----'s sermon?" asked a gentleman of another, as they were leaving the church. "Solid gold, every word of it," replied he; "sound doctrine eloquently presented." "Strange!"

replied the querist; "for my own part, I was so disgusted, that I could with difficulty keep my seat." "What! a minister raise a smile on the faces of his audience in such a solemn place! I wonder what my old pastor, Dr. Dry-Starch would have thought of such a proceeding! _He_ always taught us that this was a solemn world; and that the man who laughed in it might very likely be laughing over the very spot where in time he might be buried."

"How do you like Mr. Theophilus Tennant's new novel?" asked one lady of another. "Well, if you want my honest opinion," replied the latter, "I consider it a shallow, egotistical, inflated affair, whatever paid critics may a.s.sert to the contrary." "Possible?" exclaimed the querist; "why, I was so delighted with it that I had serious thoughts of addressing a letter of thanks to the owner for the pleasure he had afforded me, although I never saw or spoke to him."

"What a splendid specimen of a man!" exclaimed Miss Twenty to Mrs.

Thirty-five. "It makes one feel stronger and better to be in the same room with him." "Heavens!" exclaimed the matron; "I can think of nothing when I see him but a great, lumbering, overgrown, Newfoundland dog. A man with so much surplus body to look after can't have much time for anything else."

And so we might multiply instances _ad infinitum_ (which is about all the Latin I know). For my own part I don't quarrel with that diversity of taste which finds pretty wives for ugly husbands, fine, smart husbands for silly women, full congregations for prosy ministers, overflowing audiences for flat lecturers, and a reading parish, notwithstanding her faults, for f.a.n.n.y Fern.

_MY NOTION OF A WALKING COMPANION._

Of all small miseries, an uncongenial _walking companion_ is the most annoying. Some people take a walk as they would study the multiplication table. It is a necessary performance, to be got over as soon as possible. I am not alluding to that cla.s.s of human oyster, but to those who, after close application, or the exhausting wear and fret of everyday life, feel as though the four walls about them were gradually contracting, and their chance for breath growing fainter and fainter; to whom fresh air and the blue sky are as necessary as is dew and sunshine to flowers; and like them, without which, they as certainly droop and die;--such will understand what I mean by that misused term--_a walk_.

Not a dawdle, not a feminine "calling" tour; nor an errand of any sort, for any purpose under heaven, that can be construed into business; but a dreamy lounge, irrespective of anything but the cool feel of the air on the heated temples, and the great, ceaseless, murmuring wave of life beating against the sh.o.r.e of time, bearing you and others on its bosom wheresoever G.o.d willeth. People pa.s.s you like moving shadows, you hear the pleasant hum of their voices, but do not know in your somnambulistic mood whether they are familiar faces or not. You only thank G.o.d for unfettered limbs, and fresh air, and motion; beyond that, for the time being, you desire to know nothing. Ah, _then_--to be unexpectedly linked to some human fidget! Whose limbs jerk this way and that, as if they were pulled by invisible wires; who goes first fast, then slow; then pulls you up with a short jerk to look at something; who bothers you with infinitesimal small talk; who ceaselessly interlards inquiries which chain you remorselessly to the tug-boat of his or her ideas, without leave of mental absence for one reprieving moment; and all this very likely accompanied with the most friendly and amiable intentions on the part of your entertainer (?). To say "No" and "Yes"

recklessly--and laugh in the wrong place, and go home a million times more weary than when you started, beside feeling that you have hopelessly excluded yourself from the list of sane human beings--that's what I call misery.

But, ah! the ecstatic bliss of walking with one who thinks with you, as he moves dreamily on without speech--to be free to utter or to be silent, and no offence given or taken. To be allowed to wander leagues off, without fear of being rudely jerked back to time, at any unpropitious moment.

To turn this corner and that, by some mutual magnetic understanding, that you smile at afterward, when you come to think of it, as strangely funny and agreeable. To reach your own door-step as rested and refreshed, and with as cool and tranquil a brow, as if your own mother had sung you to sleep with the old-time nursery lullaby. To go back with fresh heart and spirit, to take up your burden of duty where weary nature had lain it hopelessly down. That's _my_ kind of "walk."

There are certain persons whom to meet is like opening the window of a close apartment on a delicious June day. The first breath is an inspiration. You throw back your locks from your heated forehead, and your weary eyes, and ask nothing but to sit down and let this soother minister to you. All your cares, and frets, one by one creep away, and a new life and vigor seem infused into every nerve and muscle. You are not the same creature that you were ten minutes before. You are ready after all to do valiant battle with life, though you had supposed yourself quite surrendered to its everyday, petty, and hara.s.sing tyrant necessities. Exuberant animal strength must needs carry with it hopefulness and courage; and they whose nerves have been strained and weakened by past trouble, welcome the breezy, fresh influence of such, like Heaven's own dew and sunshine. It is a tonic, the blessing of which the unconscious giver knows not how to appreciate perhaps, but oh how invaluable to the receiver! A soulful face, an exultant word--a light, springing step! We raise our weary eyes first in wonder, then in admiration; and the sympathetic chord thus struck--the brow clears, the eyes brighten, and life seems--not the curse we morbidly thought it--but the blessing G.o.d intended it.

_MEN TEACHERS IN GIRLS' SCHOOLS._

I am inclined to think, with all due deference to the powers that be, that _male_ teachers are not best for young girls. It takes a woman, who understands all the witcheries of the s.e.x, and off whom they glance harmless, like water off a turtle's back, to deal with these young kittens; they have more fun than geography can absorb, and are not to be feruled like a great cub of a boy, whose whole future life will be license after jacketdom, as decreed by society and the laws; while a severe woman-discipline surely awaits the most frolicsome girl, beginning from the moment when she first learns what her heart is made of, till death stills its yearnings.

And yet I pity a male teacher of girls, whose studied dignity is in a second dethroned by a single pantomimic gesture of some bright-eyed young flirt, who _feels_ her power without yet being old enough to understand it, and with an instinctive coquetry gets on his blind side, turning all his foreordained frowns into ill-suppressed smiles. How can he box those little round ears? How can he disfigure those soft, white palms? How can he--sending all the other pupils home--trust himself, after school, alone with those bright eyes, to put them through a subduing tear process? Ten to one the "subduing" is on the other side!

Said I to a little girl, not many mornings since, who was getting ready for school, "Why do you put on that bright new dress to go, when your old brown one would do as well?" "Oh," was her reply, "I haven't got my lesson to-day, and of course I must look pretty." There's fourteen-year-old female knowledge of human nature for you! Imagine a boy putting on his best jacket for such a purpose.

There must be discipline, that's certain; but, in my opinion, a man's head must be gray, not brown or black, if he would enforce it; his blood must be cold and sluggish, and his ear deaf to the charmer, charm she never so cunningly, or, certes, his magisterial chair will be set at naught. Don't I know! Answer me, thou now "Reverend" gentleman, who once kept me after school for a reprimand, and spent the precious moments rolling my curls over your fingers, while my comrade was bursting off her hooks and eyes as she peeped through the key-hole. Not that I uphold it, but every animal naturally fights with the weapons a good Providence has given it--and somehow or other I had found that out; though whether France was bounded south by Rhode Island or not was still a mystery that I was not in a hurry to solve.

Still, for all that, I pity a male teacher who is set to the impossible task of making girls "behave." I _should_ pity them more, did I not know that they keep them in school about four or five hours longer than they ought. Did I not know what they know, but will persist practically in ignoring, that the fun has got to come out somehow, or turn to poison in the blood, and that if teachers won't give it whizzing time _out_ of school, they must needs have it fly in their faces _in_ school. I should pity them more, did I not, every day, see their pupils staggering home under a pile of stupidly written school-books, fit only to kindle the kitchen fire--thank goodness their little beaux sometimes save their arms from dislocation, by gallantly carrying them home for them. Do I approve of boy-beaux? Why not? Don't every rosebud draw its humming-bird? Did not G.o.d make them both for this harmless, innocent delight? You had _your_ boy-beaux, madam; I had mine, by the score. Only teach your daughter to love you well enough to conceal nothing, however minute, from you; only show her that you have a heart, and don't want her to pluck out her's, and my word for it, no harm will come of her "boy-beaux." It is your repression that does the mischief--your ignoring your own youth and hers. The child who has leave to pluck the apple often leaves it untouched, _undesired_, on the tree.