Folly as It Flies Part 12

He wants--this wise man--to hear some merry little child sing:

"Hickory, d.i.c.kory, dock, The mouse ran up the clock; The clock struck one, And down he ran: Hickory, d.i.c.kory, dock."

Or he wants to lean over a fence and see the turnips grow. It rests him to think that the fat, lazy pigs never think, but lie winking their pink eyes forever at the sun. In short, as I told you, he wants just the antipodes of himself.

The sentimental will perceive, from this, the small chance they stand for edification, or amus.e.m.e.nt, from "literary people" when off duty.

Blithe ladies will see, how very jolly it must be to marry a poet or an author. But what shall we say of "the situation" when a literary man and a literary woman are yoked? When the world abroad demands the best of each, and nothing is left for home consumption? When, instead of writing sonnets to each other, and looking at the chaste moon in their leisure moments, as the sentimental have arranged it, they are too used up to do anything but gape? When a change of programme would not only be a blessing, but absolutely necessary, to stave off a Coroner's Inquest? When the sight of a book to either, is like water to a mad dog: particularly the sight of their own books, which represent such an amount of headache, and bother, and sleepless nights, to enable a critic to notice _only_ a printer's mistake in a date, which is generally set down to the author's "want of knowledge of his subject?" When they wonder, in the rasped state of their nerves, what life is worth, if it is to be forever pitched up to that key? When they can't open their mouths on any subject, without perversely saying everything they _don't_ mean, and nothing that they _do_?

Ah! then is the time for them to catch sight of that athlete--the day-laborer, in red flannel shirt-sleeves, whistling along home with his tools. Do you hear? _Tools!_ Happy man! He won't have to manufacture _his_ tools before he begins to-morrow's work. He can pound away all day, and sing the while, and no organ-grinder has power to drive him mad.

It is a difficult thing for literary people, as well as others, to tell the truth sometimes. Now here is a letter containing an article by which the writer hopes to make money; and of which my "candid opinion is asked, as soon as convenient."

Now in the first place, the article is most illegibly written; an objection sufficient to condemn it at once, with a hurried editor--and all editors are hurried--beside having always a bushel basket full of MSS. already in hand to look over. In the second place, the spelling is wofully at fault. In the third place, the punctuation is altogether missing. In the fourth place, if all these things were amended, the article itself is tame, common-place, and badly expressed. Now that is my "candid opinion" of it.

Still, I am not verdant enough to believe that the writer wished my "candid opinion" were it so condemnatory as this; and should I give it, there is great danger it would be misconstrued. The author, in his wounded self-love, might say, that, being a writer myself, I was not disposed to be impartial. Or he might go farther and say that I had probably forgotten the time when _I_ commenced writing, and longed for an appreciative or encouraging word myself. Now this would pain me very much; it would also be very unjust; because when I began to write I called that person my best and truest friend who dared tell me when I was at fault in such matters. I have now in my remembrance a stranger, who often wrote me, regarding my articles, as they appeared from time to time; who criticised them unsparingly; finding fault in the plainest Saxon when he could not approve or praise. I thanked him then, I do so now; and was gratified at the singular interest he manifested in one unknown to him. I have never seen him all these years of my literary effort; but I know him to have been more truly my friend than they who would flatter me into believing better of what talent I may possess than it really merits.

This is the way I felt about friendly though unfavorable criticism.

The question is, have _I_ sufficient courage to risk being misunderstood, should _I_, in this instance, speak honestly and plainly. Or shall I write a very polite, non-committal answer, meaning anything, or nothing. Or shall I praise it unqualifiedly, and recommend the writer to persevere in a vocation in which I am sure he is certain to be doomed to disappointment; and all for the sake of being thought a generous, genial, kindly, sympathetic sort of person.

_Which shall I do?_

The writer would not like to descend from his pedestal, and hear that he must begin at the foot of the ladder, and first of all, learn to spell correctly, before he can write. And that after words, must come thoughts; and that after thoughts, must come the felicitous expression of thoughts. And that, after all that, he must then look about for a market for the same.

This, you see, is a tedious process to one who wants not only immediate but _large_ pecuniary results, and evidently considers himself ent.i.tled to them, notwithstanding his deference to your "candid opinion."

But what a pleasure, when the person appealed to, can conscientiously say to a writer, that he has not _over_ but _under_-rated his gifts!

What a pleasure, if one's opinion can be of any value to him, to be able to speak encouragingly of the present, and hopefully for the future. And surely, he who has himself waded through this initiatory "Slough of Despond," and, by one chance in a thousand, landed safely on the other side, should be the last to beckon, or lure into it, those whose careless steps, struggle they ever so blindly, may never find sure or permanent foot-hold.

"What did I do, after all, about _that letter_?" Well, if you insist upon cornering me, it lies unanswered on my desk, this minute: a staring monument of the moral cowardice of f.a.n.n.y FERN.

_SOME VARIETIES OF WOMEN._

Chief of all sublunary abominations is the slatternly woman. I blame no man for longing to rush from a house, the mistress of which, habitually, and from choice, pays him the poor compliment of pouring out his coffee in curl-papers, or tumbled hair, or dingy, collarless morning gown, and slip-shod feet. If there is a time when a pretty woman looks prettier than at any hour in the twenty-four, it is in a neat breakfast toilette, with her shining bands of hair, and nice breakfast robe, (calico, if you like, provided it fit well, and the color be well chosen); and if there is a time when a plain woman comes the nearest to being handsome, it is in this same lovable, domestic dress.

I will maintain that the coffee and eggs taste better, and that the husband goes more smilingly and hopefully to his day's task, after helping such a wife to bread and b.u.t.ter. I could never comprehend the female slattern--thank heaven there are few of them--or understand how a woman, though she had no eye to please but her own, should not be scrupulously neat in all the different strata of her apparel.

I repeat it, I blame no man from rushing in disgust from a house whose mistress is a slattern; who never pays her husband the compliment to look decent in her person or in her house, unless company is expected; who reserves her yawns and old dresses for her husband, and strikes an att.i.tude for his male friends; whose pretty carpets are defaced with spots; whose chairs are half dusted; whose domestic dinners are uneatable; whose table-cloth, castors, and salt-cellars are seldom regenerated; and whose muslins look as if they had been dipped in saffron.

Not to speak of the _wastefulness_ of this crying fault: bonnets, shawls and cloaks will not long retain their beauty if left on chairs or tables over night, instead of being carefully put away; bracelets and brooches are not improved by being trodden upon, or ribbons and laces by being hastily wisped into a corner. To such an extreme do I carry my horror of an untidy woman, that I would almost refuse to believe in the virtue of such an one. Not that I admire the woman who is always at her husband's heels with a brush and a dust-pan; who puts him under the harrow if he does not place his boots under the sc.r.a.per before entering the parlor; who has fits if his coat is not hung up on the left side of the door instead of the right; who when he has but ten minutes to spare after breakfast to enjoy the morning paper, drives him out of his comfortable corner by the fire, to brush up a spoonful of ashes on the hearth; who is always "righting," as she calls it, his own particular den, which I am convinced all husbands must be allowed to enjoy, neck deep in confusion unmolested, if their wives wish the roof to stay on.

I once had the misfortune to live in the house with such a female, whose husband roosted half his in-door time on the top of the table, to keep clear of the mop. How her cap-strings flew through the doors; what galvanized broomsticks she wielded; how remorselessly she ferreted out closets, and disembowelled cupboards; how horribly she sc.r.a.ped gla.s.s and paint; and how anxious she looked to begin again when it was all done. How I slunk behind doors, and dodged behind screens, and jumped out of windows, to get out of the vixen's way; and how I sat swinging in the elm tree in the orchard at a safe distance till the whirlwind was past.

Heavens; how that india-rubber woman would go to baking after she had done cleaning, and to ironing after she had done baking, and to sewing after she had done both; how vindictively she twitched her needle through, as if she wished it were some live thing, that she might make it feel weariness and pain. How like whipped spaniels her children looked; and what a reverence they had for washing and ironing days; how remorselessly she scrubbed their noses up and down of a Sunday morning, and shoved them into their "meetin clothes," turning the pockets carefully inside out, to see that no stray bit of string, or carnal marble, or fish-hook remained, to alleviate the torture of the long-drawn seventeenthlies of the parson's impracticable discourse.

Still this female gave her husband light bread to eat; his coffee and tea were always strong and hot; he might have shaved himself by the polish of the parlor table; his b.u.t.tons were on his shirts, and his stockings always mended; but the man--and he was human--might as well have laid his night-cap beside a sewing-machine. And oh, the weary details of roasting, baking and broiling to which he was compelled to listen and approve between the pauses. The messes, which in any other female hands but hers, would inevitably have stewed over or burnt up or evaporated. The treasure he had in her, culinarily and pecuniarily, though he didn't know it!

What I want to know is this:

Must a model housekeeper always have thin lips, thick ankles, a bolster-figure, and a fist like an overgrown beet? Need she take hold of her children as if total depravity were bristling out of every hair of their heads? Need the unhappy cat always take its tail under its arm and creep into the ash-hole whenever she looks at it? _Is_ a sweet temper foreordained to be incompatible with sweet cupboards? Would it be unchristian to strangle such women with their own garters?

I pause for a reply.

I don't like to admit it, but there are two things a woman can't do.

First, she _can't sharpen a lead pencil_. Give her one and see. Mark how jaggedly she hacks away every particle of wood from the lead, leaving a spike of the latter, which breaks as soon as you try to use it. You can almost forgive the male creature his compa.s.sionate contempt, as chucking her under the chin, he twitches it from her awkward little paw, and rounds, and tapers it off in the most ravishing manner, for durable use. * * * * * * *

Last week a philanthropist (need I say a _male_ philanthropist) knowing my weakness, presented me with a two-cent-sharp-pointed-lead-pencil. My dreams that night were peaceful. I awoke like a strong-minded woman to run a race. I sat down to my desk. I might have known it; "I never loved a tree or flower," etc. Some fiend had "borrowed" it. Oh the misery that may be contained in that word "borrowed." When you are in a hurry; when the "devil" is waiting in the bas.e.m.e.nt, stamping his feet to get back to the printing-office; when you've nothing but a miserable little "chunky"-old-worn-out-stub of an inch long lead pencil to make your "stet"-s and "d"-s. Shade of Ben Franklin! _shall_ I, before I "shuffle off this mortal coil"--though I don't know what _that_ is,--ever own another two-cent sharp-pointed-lead-pencil?

I have said that there are two things a woman can't do. I have mentioned one. I wish to hear no argument on _that point_, because when I once make up my mind "all the king's men" can't change it.

Well, then--Secondly: A woman can't do up a bundle. She takes a whole newspaper to wrap up a paper of pins, and a coil of rope to tie it, and then it comes unfastened. When I go shopping, which it is sometimes my hard lot to do, I look with the fascinated gaze of a bird in the neighborhood of a magnetic serpent, to watch clerks doing up bundles. How the paper falls into just the right creases! how deftly they turn it over, and tuck it under, and tie it up, and then throw it down on the counter, as if they had done the most common-place thing in the world, instead of a deed which might--and, faith, _does_--task the ingenuity of "angels!" It is perfectly astonishing! It repays me for all my botheration in matching this color and deciding on that, in hearing them call a piece of tape "a _chaste_ article," and for sitting on those revolving stools fastened down so near the counter, that it takes a peculiarly constructed shopper to stay on one of them.

Thirdly--I might allude to the fact that women cannot carry an umbrella; or rather to the very peculiar manner in which they perform that duty; but I won't. I scorn to turn traitor to a s.e.x who, whatever may be their faults,--are always loyal to each other.--So I shall not say, as I might otherwise have said, that when they unfurl the parachute alluded to, they put it right down over their noses,--take the middle of the sidewalk, raking off men's hats and woman's bonnets, as they go, and walking right into the breakfast of some unfortunate wight, with that total disregard of the consequent _gasp_, which to be understood must be _felt_, as the offender c.o.c.ks up one corner of the parachute, and looks defiantly at the victim who has had the effrontery to come into the world and hazard the whalebone and handle of _her_ "umberil!" No, I won't speak of anything of the kind; besides, has not a celebrated writer remarked, that when dear "woman is cross, it is only because she is _sick_?" Let us hope he is right.

We all know that is not the cause of a MAN'S crossness. _Give him his favorite dish, and you may dine off him afterward--if you want to._

Amiable creatures are the majority of women--to each other; charitable--above all things _charitable_! Always ready to acknowledge each other's beauty, or grace, or talent. Never sneer down a sister woman, or pay her a patronizing compliment with the finale of the inevitable--"_but_." Never run the cool, impertinent eye of calculation over her dress, noting the cost of each article, and summing up the amount in a contemptuous toss, whether it amounts to fifty cents or five hundred dollars, more likely when it is the latter! Never say to a gentleman who praises a lady, what a pity she squints! Never say of an auth.o.r.ess, oh yes--she has talent, but _I_ prefer the domestic virtues; as if a combination of the two were necessarily impossible, or as if the speaker had the personal knowledge which qualified her to p.r.o.nounce on that individual case.

Well-bred, too, are women to sister woman.--Never discuss the color of her hair, or the style of its arrangement, her smile, her gait, so that she can hear every word of it. Never take it for granted that she is making a dead-set at a man, to whom she is only replying--"Very well, I thank you, sir." Never sit in church and stare her out of countenance, while mentally taking her measure, or nudge some one to look at her, while recapitulating within ear-shot all the contemptible gossip which weak-minded, empty-headed women are so fond of retailing.

Now just let a dear woman visit you. Don't you _know_ that her eyes are peering into every corner and crevice of your house all the while she is "_dear_"-ing and "_sweet_"-ing you? Don't you know that her lynx eyes are on the carpet for possible spots, or mismatched roses?

Don't she touch her fingers to the furniture for stray particles of dust? Don't she hold her tumblers up to the light, and examine microscopically the quality of your table-cloths and napkins, and improvise an errand into your kitchen to inspect your culinary arrangements, to the infinite disgust of Bridget? Don't she follow you like a spectre all over the house, till you are as nervous as a cat in a cupboard? Don't she sit down opposite you for dreary hours, with folded hands, and that horse-leech--"now-talk-to-me" air--which quenches all your vitality--and sets you gaping, as inevitably as a minister's "_seventeenthly_."

Ah, the children! How could I forget the little children? _I clasp the hand of universal woman on that_; Heaven knows I don't want to misrepresent them. And after all, do I ever allow anybody to abuse them but me? Never!

There are many kinds of women. Of course I adore them all; but there is one who excites my unfeigned astonishment. I allude to the rabbit woman. She has four chins and twelve babies. She has two dresses--a loose calico wrapper for home wear, and a black silk for "meetin'."

She eats tremendously, and never goes out; she calls her husband "Pa."

She is quite content to roll leisurely from her rocking-chair in the nursery to the dining-room table, and thence back again, year in and year out. She knows nothing that is pa.s.sing in the outside world, nor cares. She never touches a book or a newspaper, not even when she is rocking her baby to sleep, and might. She never troubles herself about Pa, so long as he don't get in her way, or sit on the twelve babies.

She has a particular fondness for the child who cries the most, and won't go to sleep without a stick of candy in each fist. She has a voice like an auctioneer, and prefers cabbage to any vegetable extant.

"Pa" is devoted to her, _i. e._, he calls her My dear, and as soon as he enters the house, before hanging up his hat, kisses all the twelve children immediately, whether dirty or clean, and inquires tenderly after her health: keeps her stupid on a full diet, and flirts desperately, at a safe distance, behind her back.

Secondly, there is the _prim_ woman, with her mouth always in a prepared state to whistle; who crosses over if she sees a man coming, and tosses up the end of her shawl when she sits down, lest she should crease it; who keeps her parasol in several layers of tissue-paper when not on duty: puts her two shoes on the window-sill "to air" every night, and suggests more indelicacy by constantly running away from it, then she could ever find by the most zealous search.

Thirdly, there is your b.u.t.terfly woman, who, provided her wings are gay and gauzy, is not particular where she alights. Who cannot exist out of the sunbeams, and dreads a rainy day like an old gown. Who values her male acquaintance according to their capabilities for trotting her to b.a.l.l.s, operas and parties, and giving her rings and bouquets. Who spoils all the good looks she has, trying to make herself "look better," and turns into a very ordinary caterpillar after marriage.

Fourthly, there is your library woman, steeped in folios; steeped in languages, both living and dead; steeped in ologies, steeped in politics; who walks round a baby as if it were a rattle-snake, and if she was born with a heart, never has found it out.

Fifthly, there is your female viper--your cat--your hyena. All claws, nails and tongue. Wiry, bloodless, snappy, narrow, vindictive; lapping up your life-blood with her slanders, and clawing out your warm, palpitating heart. Out on her!

Sixthly, there is your woman--pretty or plain, it matters not; lady-like by nature; intelligent, but not pedantic; modest, yet not prudish; strong-hearted, but not "strong-minded" (as that term is at present perverted); no "scholar," and yet well read; no b.u.t.terfly, and yet bright and gay. Merry without noise, silent without stupidity, religious without fanaticism, capable of an opinion, and yet able to hold her tongue. If married, not of necessity sinking into a mere machine; if unmarried, occupying herself with other things than husband-hunting. Liking books, yet not despising needles and brooms; genial, unaffected, good-natured; with an active brain, and a live heart under lock and key. G.o.d bless her! wherever she is, for she redeems all the rest.