Ginger Snaps Part 13

Failing in this, I propose that each _gentleman_, on his return, should bring in his hand a peace-offering to the ladies in the seat, of a gla.s.s of lemonade and a bit of cake. Why shouldn't _we_ be thirsty too? Mr. Beecher says a woman has a right to--no, I believe he _didn't_ say that, but he ought to have done so; and if he didn't, "fair play is a jewel."

Mr. Smith exclaims, on reading this, "Horrible woman!" because, though a handsome man, he sees himself looking selfish and ugly in the gla.s.s I hold up to him. Now, Mr. Smith wouldn't say that, if he should sit down beside me and let me talk to him five minutes. Not he! You see I have him at a great disadvantage, away off at the other end of the city or over to Brooklyn. I could say the very same things to him I have just said on paper, sitting here on my sofa beside me, and that man would go on lying, as men will, to other men's wives' faces, and be _so_ polite and smiling, that his own wife never would know him, if she happened in; and he'd tell me that "what I said was all true, and that men _were_ selfish animals," meaning Tom Jones and Sam Jenkins, and every other man but just himself. Don't I know them?

_NOTES FROM PLYMOUTH ROCK._

How I ever lived so many years in Boston without coming to see Plymouth, is one of the sins of omission for which I am at this present finding doing my best to atone. I trust all of you who are equally guilty, will come as soon as may be to breathe the fine Newport air of the place, and take time to visit its interesting coast, its numerous ponds, its lovely drives through odorous woods, and all the hallowed spots which ought to be dear to the heart of every true American. Don't go to Paris or London till you have been to Plymouth. It were well to "see Niagara" first; but it were better to have gone with me to the "Record Office" this morning, and seen the yellow ma.n.u.scripts, covered thickly with the small German text-looking handwriting of our Pilgrim Fathers; setting forth, for instance, "the shares they severally held in a cow," in the simple, honest, straightforward manner of the time--one signed by "Myles Standish,"

who, it seems, having the primitive ambition to own an _entire_ cow, kept buying up the shares of the rest as speedily as his means allowed. I thought of Mr. Bonner's stables, and the thousands of dollars his horses represented, and wondered how he dared to say his catechism! Then I saw their veritable "Charter," kept in a dark cupboard, with a silken curtain drawn across the precious signatures, lest the unscrupulous sunlight, invading this "Holy of Holies," should s.n.a.t.c.h them from posterity. And then and there was exploded for me the theory that handwriting is indicative of character. Certainly those effeminate, small, beautiful letters gave no sign or token of the moral strength, the rugged persistence of purpose, of the Pilgrim Fathers. Not one modern young lady in a hundred could write so minute and beautiful a hand. They must have had good eyesight in those days, when gas and furnaces were not. Sharp men they were; disguising the very graves of the first little Mayflower band, lest the Indians should take advantage of the reduction of their numbers. The very house I am in bears the name of the first Indian who visited them,--"Samoset." Whether the fair and tender-hearted Rose Standish quailed before the savage owner of this most musical name, I have not learned. I do not hesitate to say, that _I_ should have made for the bushes on his first appearance. It is curious, in walking the streets of Plymouth, to hear the little children calling to each other, in their play, and using the old familiar Mayflower names of hundreds of years ago.

But Pilgrim ancestry does not insure saintliness in all its descendants, as I found upon visiting the county prison. Within its walls was pointed out to me a woman who had poisoned her husband, when sick and helpless on her hands. For thirteen long weary years she had never been outside those walls; and latterly had declined even walking in the little paved yard allowed the prisoners. She was a large, powerfully built woman, with a skin like the parchments I had been looking at in the Record Office drawn tightly over her high cheek-bones. She sat sewing at her grated window as we entered; and when asked "if she were not warm," as the day was very hot, answered petulantly, "No--I am most always cold; there can't be circulation where there's no exercise." Outside was bloom and sunlight, and song of birds, and merry voices, and blue skies, and pleasant hum of labor, and the faint dirge of the sea. She merited her fate, but I turned away from her sick at heart, and thought, were it my case, how questionable were the mercy that abolished hanging for such slow-dropping torture as this.

In the same room with her were three hard-featured women, placed there for violation of the liquor laws. Each in that room had a babe in her arms, or at her knee--poor little innocent victims of maternal misdoing. One baby was moaning with the teething process, so hard to endure and survive, even with all the appliances of out-door air and wholesome surroundings. Its little waxen face showed signs of severe suffering, and for _three months_ more, if the little life were spun out that long, it must remain there--its only amus.e.m.e.nt rocking the rude box which was allowed for a cradle. The mother answered me roughly enough when I inquired the age of her baby, but G.o.d knows I forgive her any bitterness she might feel at the difference that bright day in our respective lots; but could she have read my heart, and seen how I longed to carry her little one out on the gra.s.s, and among the flowers, and see it smile, she would have known me for its friend.

I never saw a prison more clean, and neat, and well-ordered; and yet I could not help thinking there should be a nursery there, that the little children of these erring mothers need not be punished with them; but, in the graphic language of the Superintendent, "Its original intention was _not_ a fancy boarding-house."

I wish here to place on record that Plymouth can make good bread. I had begun to fear, so long had I been fed on Cape Ann saleratus, that I might lose the taste of wholesome yeast and flour, just as the "marasmus" denizens of the Five Points learn to dislike pure air. A brief heaven of good city bread in blessed old Boston quite set me up; and its unexpected appearance in Plymouth was more than I dared to hope.

I presume to this I may attribute the number of hale-looking, cheerful old people in Plymouth. I have no doubt it has had its effect also on the religious liberality so prevalent here, as I find that n.o.body _makes mouths_ at you for being a Unitarian, or an Episcopalian, or of any other denomination that happens to suit your complaint. Rev. Mr.

Robinson, the minister of the church in Holland from which "the Mayflower" Christians came, inculcated upon his flock this bit of pure gospel, in his parting sermon to them, that, "there was a great deal of truth coming out ahead that they had not even dreamed of as yet;"

and particularly warned them against that spiritual conceit which should close their eyes to the perception of it. Now that's what I call liberal Christianity. Ministers, deacons, and the religious world generally will please take notice.

Since I came here, Plymouth has distinguished itself by a storm of rain and wind, the like of which I never saw before. I began to think over my transgressions; but really there were so many of them, and the house rocked so, and the trees swirled round at such a furious rate, that I had no clear idea then, nor have I since, of their number or enormity. And the very next morning the sun shone out so brightly on uprooted trees and unroofed barns and tumble-down chimneys, and the flowers that from their lowliness had escaped the avenger, that I took heart of grace, and cla.s.sed myself among the latter!

_NO BEAUX ANYWHERE._

No beaux! Absolutely _no_ beaux! Well, young ladies, stop and consider, if, after all, you yourselves have not p.r.o.nounced the sentence of banishment.

We?--we "banish" them? Good gracious! Is it not for them we have devised all this elaboration of adornment? We, indeed! Were we not, for weeks, before we came to these odious mountains, where men are as scarce as French hair-dressers, closeted with our dress-makers and milliners to produce these bewitching "suits," long and short, for morning and evening, out-door and indoor wear? Have we not cool dresses and warm dresses; dresses for rain, dresses for sunshine, dresses for neutral weather, with ribbons, gloves, sashes, parasols, hats and fans to "match," to the minutest shade? For whom should we take all that trouble but for the beaux? And how are we responsible for their disgusting absence?

Listen, my dears, for in that which you have just said lies your offence. Can damsels thus arrayed walk in the woods, climb the mountains (except in poetry)? Can they take even an ordinary, mild walk, without mortal terror of perilling their millinery? Must they not, therefore, "ride," morning, afternoon, and evening, everywhere, to the delectation of stable-keepers, and the consequent pecuniary depletion of the "beaux"? These beaux, whose fathers may be rich, but whose sons have yet to fill their individual coffers; these beaux, who have just so much to expend when they get away for a summer holiday, and who do not desire to pour it _all_ into the pockets of the stable-keepers; these beaux, who can get vastly more fun out of their purses, and make them last longer, with a party of "the fellows,"--this is the reason that, with rare exceptions, you have to throw away these ravishing toilettes on your own s.e.x, when you play croquet, or sit on the piazza, dreaming of the "coming man."

My dears, he _wont_ come! He knows too much. He has seen his sister's milliner and mantua-maker bills, and heard the family discussions thereon; and though he acknowledges your fascinations even through all the absurd toggery you are doomed by fashion's slavery to have and to wear, he has yet to make the fortune to enable him to foot his angel's bills. So he runs away from you, discreetly; runs off fishing, or gunning, with "the fellows," and, wiser than you, comes home brown, hale, and hearty for the winter months, instead of perspiring at your side in tight boots and yellow kids.

Do you begin to understand? Now, my dears, if you have been ushered into the world in a coach and six, till your feet and hands have become paralyzed for want of use, that's your _misfortune_, not your fault, because that necessitates a rich husband. And as there are very few rich _young_ husbands, you will have to bid good-by to your girlish ideal, and marry the bald-headed, gouty Mr. Smith, who was born at the same time as your own father. This, my dears, you will have to do, or face your nightmare, _single blessedness_.

I have looked at you playing croquet, without a coat-tail among you; I have seen you driving yourselves out in your pretty little phaetons; and though you put a brave face on it, I know very well what is going on under that gay little sash of yours; and I think it is a pity that you should have been brought up to so many artificial wants, that your _heart_ must go hungry in life's spring-time because of them.

My dears, _I_ never lacked beaux at your age. But a walk in the woods, or in the city either, involved no expense to _my_ beaux. I could climb a fence, where there was no gate, or where there _was_ either; I was not afraid of dew, or rain, because my dress was simple. My gifts were not diamonds, but flowers, or books. _My_ mother would not have allowed me to ride with gentlemen, had they asked me. When they came to spend an evening, our tray of refreshments did not involve a "French cook." So you see, my dears, though I had no silk dresses, I had plenty of beaux, and a gay heart; and I enjoyed a sail with an old sun-bonnet over my curls, or a moonlight ramble, with a merry party, much better than you do "the German;" and half an hour was sufficient warning for me "to dress" for any kind of a party--indoors or out--because, unlike you, I was not bothered to choose from twenty dresses which to wear; and I will give you leave to ask any of my beaux, who are now grandfathers, if I was not able at that time to settle _their_ accounts! And it is because I had such a good time that I feel vexed that your youth and prettiness should so often go a-begging--through no fault of yours; and you may show this to your mothers and tell them I say so.

In the country, too, matrons, we have full trunks and absent husbands.

It was a quiet little village; just such a place as you, madam, with your six children, sensibly clad in calico, would like to have enjoyed the sweet summer days in. There was no "dress;" there were no "hops,"

in hot halls, by gas-light; there were no masquerade b.a.l.l.s. Everybody was in bed by ten o'clock, save a few smokers, who profaned the sweet, odorous quiet with their vile tobacco fumes. There was plenty of driving through the bewitching roads, plenty of walking, _some_ gossip,--_which I have ascertained has no s.e.x_--some croquet-ing and crochetting, but no _coquetting_, because there was a great vacuum where beaux should be. Altogether, the city residents of Frog-ville were a sensible set.

But, alas! one unlucky day the shrieking cars landed at the door of the princ.i.p.al boarding-house a woman. That was not an event of itself, but this woman was accompanied by many trunks. n.o.body knew whence she came, but conjecture was rife as to the contents of the trunks.

Breakfast, next morning, solved the mystery. Mrs. Fire-Fly--for she was a Mrs.--none the less dangerous for that--on the contrary!--swept into the dining-hall in a train about six yards long. The train was white and spotless; the floor was not. The lady carried her coffee to her lips, with diamond girdled fingers, _steadily_, with an eye to her delicate ribbons. Scipio, who handed her beefsteak over her shoulder, had no time to consider such trifles. Little puddles of milk lay in wait on the floor for that spotless train, dexteriously coiled, by its owner, like an anaconda under the table. Pools of milk, tea-drippings, and bits of omelette, dislodged from their moorings, by hot haste in serving, were dotted, here and there, in the path she would soon be called upon to mop on her exit. At _length_ she rose! Her train followed at a respectful distance. The eyes of the dozen or two sensible women, clad in sensible raiment, followed that train. Its dainty owner, with a disdain of economy, born of many trunks, and their ample contents, did not so much as lift it with one of her jeweled fingers. On she swept, through the coffee-pools--through the gravy-drippings--through the milk-puddles, out into the hall.

The sensible women present looked after her spell-bound. Then they gazed into each other's eyes, and murmured, "Paris!" Alas! the serpent in fairest guise had entered the primitive Eden of Frog-ville. The sensible matrons looked now, through different spectacles, at their alpacas and calicoes. How mean in comparison! Their tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs, how "dowdy"! The fit of their bodices, how awkward! Dinner-time came, with added newness and added splendors. Cobweb tissues, with frost-work tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs, and train longer by two yards than the breakfast train. And such ribbons! And such jewelry! How tasteless was the beef that day; how disgusting the mutton; how prosaic their gingham-clad, rosy children; how tame and humdrum was life generally. And then, this dainty lady had "a maid." _They_ had no "maids." They had never felt the need of a "maid" till now. How had they ever combed their tresses?

How had they ever fastened their own dresses? Pshaw! their _dresses_!

How unworthy the name--mere wrappers. Gracious! how miserable were these heretofore happy women. Never till now did they know how miserable they were. The dainty lady's husband, 'tis true, was not with her. She had to do without him; while they had theirs with them.

_Her_ husband was in the hot, smoky city, earning more money for more "Paris" dresses--that is, he was earning money during the day; what he did with his solitary evenings or nights, the dainty wife did not inquire. She was satisfied; she was br.i.m.m.i.n.g with content, that she alone, amid all these wives and mothers, had "Paris" dresses.

"I really must have some clothes," said one of the hitherto sensible matrons, "the next time I go into the country. I didn't know, till Mrs. Fire-Fly came, how very shabby was my wardrobe."

"I would rather," said a friend at her elbow, "that you, the healthy mother of six healthy daughters, should have said: 'I didn't know, till Mrs. Fire-Fly came, how sensible and befitting the country was my wardrobe; and how proper and right it was that my husband should be taking his rest in the country with me, instead of divorcing himself at the risk of our mutual peace, to furnish me with nine trunks full of Paris dresses.'"

"I have done nothing to-day but keep things straight in the house,"

you say wearily at the close of it. Do you call that nothing? Nothing that your children are healthy, and happy, and secured from evil influence? Nothing that neatness, and thrift, and wholesome food follow the touch of your finger-tips? Nothing that beauty in place of ugliness meets the eye of the cheerful little ones, in the plants at your window, in the picture on the wall? Nothing that _home_ to them means _home_, and will always do so, to the end of life, what vicissitudes soever that may involve? Oh, careworn mother! is all this nothing? Is it nothing that over against your _sometime_-mistakes and sometime-discouragement shall be written, "She hath done what she could?"

_DANIEL WEBSTER'S HOME._

It was not as a mere relic-hunter, that I crossed the threshold of Daniel Webster's home in Marshfield. As a Bostonian, long years ago, I had been spell-bound by those wondrous eyes, and that irresistible eloquence which so seldom failed to magnetize. As to the mistaken words which, had he lived till now, I firmly believe he would have grievingly wished unsaid, and which have palsied many hands that would have been raised over that roof in blessing, I have nothing to say now. As far as the East is from the West, so far do I differ with him on that point. But all these thoughts vanished, and the old Boston magnetism moved me, as I stood in that beautiful library, which, more than any other room of that lovely home, _his_ presence seemed to fill and pervade. The beautiful sunlight streamed in upon the favorite books he loved so well, upon the favorite chair and table, upon the thousand and one tributes of love and admiration from across the sea, and from nearer home, which are still carefully treasured. _There_ only, after all these years, could I really "make him _dead_." My last sight of him was on a public occasion in Boston, sitting in a barouche, with that grand ma.s.sive head uncovered, in recognition of the applause about him. And I am not ashamed, at this distance, to say that when he kissed the forehead of my little girl--now a woman grown--as he took from her hand the flowers I sent him, that I looked upon it as a sort of baptism.

Now, all about his home in Marshfield, are family pictures of the little children he tenderly loved. And what beautiful children they are! or _were_, for many of their names are now recorded on marble beside his own. And above the picture of him--as if such a head as _his_ could ever be faithfully reproduced!--were his hat and stick. I stood looking at them, and wondering if, when he used to sit there he ever thought of _that_--if when resting in that peaceful spot, with bloom and brightness about him, weary with the ceaseless strife, and with the din of life, shut out, for a time at least, he ever longed to lay them aside for ever--thus!

In every house, the individuality of it is that which interests us most. _These_ household G.o.ds all had their little story; all, too, spoke of taste and refinement and culture, and love of the beautiful in form, color, and arrangement. It almost seemed an impertinence to move about from room to room, and gaze at them; and, I think, had it not been that one of the family recognized and welcomed me as a remembered Bostonian, I should have felt very much like an inexcusable intruder there.

All honor to Daniel Webster for having had painted, and hung up in a conspicuous place in his house, _the portrait of his black cook_. It is the most unique object in it; and the feeling which prompted this public recognition of faithful service was most honorable to him.

Alas! had he always been as true to his better instincts!

The simple majesty of Daniel Webster's tomb is very impressive. It is fit that it should be _there_, at Marshfield, within sound of the restless sea--restless as his spirit. For inscription--only the name and date, and those memorable words of his on Immortality. There are no mysteries to him _now_.

Some men--can anybody tell us why?--always gravitate _downward_ in their male friendships. Their boon-companion is sure to be one dest.i.tute of everything that would seem to const.i.tute an equality. Now what can be the reason of this? Is it because such persons need to have their self-respect constantly bolstered up by the flattery of parasites? Whatever the motive may be, the _result_ is certain deterioration. Not, on the other hand, that it is not best to meet with, and know all sorts of persons; but _invariably_ to choose inferiority, for a bosom-friend, argues a flaw, and a serious one, somewhere.

_A TRIP TO RICHMOND._

Beautiful Baltimore! I kiss my hand to beautiful Baltimore! Pa.s.sing through it only on my way to Washington in days gone by, I had only flying, and muddy, and back-street reminiscences of it. _Now_ it seems to me the most elegant of cities. Dear to my New England eyes, above all, are its polished windows, immaculate and s.p.a.cious front-door steps, cleanly gutters, and sidewalks free from defilement of ashes and garbage. The sweet, wholesome air of the place, with no taint to offend the most fastidious nose, contrasted pleasantly with our large New York residences; many of whose occupants, having begun life in tenement houses, still retain their fondness for tenement-house odors and dirty sidewalks. I pa.s.sed through street after street, without seeing an ash-barrel or box, or anything repulsive to neatness; and that, not only where the wealthy reside, but where were houses of very moderate rents and dimensions, yet all shining and clean, and sweet, as a child's face when newly washed, and framed in its best Sunday bonnet. Beautiful Baltimore! I came well-nigh forgetting, as I strolled along, that _you_ ever stood on one side the political fence, and _I_ on the other; but we wont rake up old grievances, or new ones either. Instead, I will say that your new "Druid Hill Park" is a gem, and a big one; and if you don't make the most of it, it will not be because nature has not fashioned its undulating surface, and grown giant trees there ready to your hand with a grace and a profusion which leave you little to do in the way of art. Now, our "Central Park" was fashioned in the face and teeth of every disadvantage; and yet see what a joy and beauty and delight it is to us all. So, shame to you, Baltimore, if you don't far outstrip us! Sure I am, that the occupants of those tasteful and magnificent private dwellings can need no hint from me to contribute liberally toward it.

Elegant stores, too, has Baltimore; and in them all the little last new feminine dodges in the way of adornment, so that no Baltimore husband need heed his wife's prayer to go to New York to see what is the last new fashion in gloves, boots, silks, laces, bonnets, or--hair. Baltimore wives may not thank me for this, but I am not afraid; for I can truly say that their faces were so bright that sunny day, as they nodded smilingly to one another, that I trembled for the wide-spread fame of New York beauties. Little loves of children too, I saw, with their sable nurses; oh! how I like the sable nurses. No _French_ caps _shamming_ it over _Celtic_ faces; but instead, the jolly African physiognomy, framed in its gay turban; and, best of all--forgive me, fair Baltimore!--_receiving_ as well as _earning_ a nurse's wages.