Ginger Snaps Part 14

I always feel as if a coroner's inquest would be held over me, when I cross a steamboat gangway, even though there may be blue sky overhead, and sunshine about me.

Judge, then, of my consternation, as the Baltimore boat pushed off for Norfolk, Va., and I discovered directly beneath my state-room window about a dozen barrels of _kerosene_. In vain did the philosopher try to bamboozle me into the belief that "it was lard." After fifteen years conjugal acquaintance with my nose, it was a stupidity of which only a man could be guilty.

"Lard!" I exclaimed; "it is kerosene! and a military company on board too." Now I _don't_ "love the military." I had one fearful experience with them, on board the ill-fated Lady Elgin, when, in the midst of a howling tempest, with thunder and lightning thrown in, their tipsy howls made a perfect pandemonium.

Military companies smoke too; and there is always fire where there is smoke, says the old proverb; and sparks and kerosene are things better divorced. So I didn't undress that night, and had plenty of time to consider a question which for the first time I asked myself,--whether a steamboat ought not, in a case like this, to forfeit its insurance.

That part of my education having been neglected at boarding-school, I was unable to solve it; so I shudderingly recognized the fact, that men on the upper deck were smoking pipes, and knocking ashes and sparks from the railing with a verdant innocence and stupidity quite astounding.

But the "angel aloft," wafted away the sparks from the kerosene; and a friendly rain coming on, my perturbed spirit had a great calm. So we got to Norfolk whole and alive--no thanks to that steamboat or its owners. It was lucky I had my excitement _going_ there, for a more stagnant, sleepy place--outside of the Dead Sea--never announced itself. Still, there were peach-trees in blossom, and tulip-trees, and the pretty blue periwinkle peeped from the hedges and gardens, and the gra.s.s was green, and--so was everything else there! One day sufficed me, although it was pleasant to sit with open windows. Our coachman dragged us up and down through the narrow, dilapidated looking streets, over pavements that forced to our lips the letter O oftener than any other in the alphabet, while "showing us the city." As the streets were all alike, we cut short his little fun by requesting to be set down at our hotel, while one bone remained undislocated.

The grave-yard was, after all, the pleasantest spot through which we drove in Norfolk. Whole graves there were covered with the blue flowers of the running myrtle; they were even peeping up under the little patches of snow. "Five dollars fine for picking a blossom." A good rule; but I was always unruly, and that blue myrtle is my favorite flower. Still I don't say I plucked one--of course not; how could I, inside a carriage?

Norfolk should be named "Sleepy Hollow." I can't conceive of keeping awake there, unless by help of their corduroy pavements. It was tame, after living in New York, where there is always "a dreadful _la.s.s_ of life," as the newsboys express it, or something that is pleasant happening.

Whoso essays to travel South, and having bade good-by to a certain hotel in Philadelphia, which don't begin with A or B, and which, if you have not, you _ought_ to--C, leaves hope and comfort behind; having then left what, in my opinion, is the perfection of hotel-keeping, in all its myriad departments. Farewell to clean rooms, and _genuine_ coffee, and well-cooked meats, and prompt attendance; and welcome drafts, and cooked poison, in every shape that the fiend of the gridiron and frying-pan could devise. Having exhausted Washington three or four different times from a luxurious standpoint, it only remained on this flying transit through it, for Washington to exhaust me, between the hours of eight in the evening and seven the following morning. In one of the princ.i.p.al hotels of the place, I give you, by way of curiosity, an inventory of the room into which we were ushered. Imprimis--a bed, with sheets still warm with the print of the last occupant; wash-bowls grimy with departed paws; dirty towels; and a broken window pane, through which the snow was sifting; two immense grease spots, each the size of a two-quart bowl, in the centre of the dingy carpet; matches scattered round _ad libitum_; a horror of a spitoon in the middle of the floor; dirty window-curtains, and closets full of old papers; bureau drawers saturated with grease; bedstead cracked across the foot-board, and so rickety, that it was suggestive of a discordant music-box. Sofa dingy, and placed with singular felicity immediately under the broken window; while the looking-gla.s.s was fastened to the top of a bureau, so high, that one need mount a stool to look in it, and located, as usual, in the darkest corner of the apartment; a woollen cloth on the centre-table, approachable only by a pair of tongs. Finally a chamber-maid was procured, and towels, sheets, and a fire followed, while we were at tea. Afterward my companion lay down to rest (?) on the music-box; while I, upon the dingy sofa, front of the fire, listened, laughing, to the squeaks produced on it, by his attempts to sleep.

My reflections were various. I didn't wonder that Congressmen lodging thus, should call naughty names, and tear each other's eyes out at the Capitol. And what disgraceful, broken-down saloon surroundings are about the Capitol building! I never look at its beautiful proportions without incendiary desires to make a clean sweep of the old shanties about it, and in their place introduce cleanliness and beauty. Who knows the Christianizing effect it might have on men and measures? I should like to see it tried.

Well, I went "on to Richmond;" and my first reflection upon getting into it was, Lord! what a place for two big armies to fight about! A cold, piercing, rasping wind blew through the dismal streets from the river--a wind that would have done credit to old Boston at its fiercest. As to hotels, the deterioration begins at Baltimore, and "after that the deluge." As the horror-struck man said, when the tail-board of his cart came out going up hill, and distributed his potatoes right and left, "No swearing could do justice to it!" Amid remains of former splendor, dilapidation and stagnation reign.

Two visits I shall never forget. The first was to Libby prison. I looked through its grated, cobwebbed windows, not with _my_ eyes, but with the hopeless eyes of hundreds whose last earthly glimpse of the sunlight was through them. The walls having been whitewashed, we discovered no marks or writings. Only upon the wooden floor, as the dirt was cleared away for us, we saw a place chipped out, upon which the prisoners had played checkers. Not far off was Belle Isle, where, in just such a biting wind from the river, as excoriated our faces that day, brave men, without shelter, froze and starved to death!

Yes, I pa.s.sed through Washington, and I didn't want office either. Had I, I think my patience would soon have oozed out, in the stifling atmosphere of that room in the White House, where clamorous lobbyists sat with distended eyes, watching the chance of their possible entrance to the President's presence--sat there, too, for weary hours, a spectacle to G.o.ds and men; of human beings willing to sacrifice self-respect and time, and what little money they had left in their purses, for the gambler's chance. Anything, everything, but the open and above-board, and sure and independent, and old-fashioned way of getting a living!

So I thought as the living stream poured in, and I went out, thankful that I desired nothing in the gift of the President of the United States of America. How any man living can wish to be President pa.s.ses my solving, I said, as I stepped out into the clear, fresh, bracing air, and shook my shoulders, as if I had really dropped a burden of my own under that much-coveted roof. I can very well conceive that a pure patriot might wish the office, because he sincerely believed himself able to serve his country in it, and _therefore_ accepted its crown of thorns; but lacking this motive, that a man in the meridian of life, or descending its down-hill path, and consequently with the full knowledge of this life's emptiness, should stretch out _even one hand_ to grasp such a distracting position, I can never understand. The good dame "who went to sleep with six gallons of milk on her mind" every night, was a fool to do it. A step-mother's life under the harrow were paradise to it; only the life of a _country_ clergyman who writes three sermons a week, and attends weddings at sixpence a piece, and hoes his own potatoes, and feeds the pigs, and is on hand for church and vestry meetings during the week, and keeps the run of all the new-born babies and their middle names, and is always, in a highly devotional frame of mind, is a parallel case.

I should like to have taken all those lobbyists I saw in the White House with me the afternoon of that day to "Arlington Heights," and bade them look there at the thousands of head-stones, gleaming white like the billows of the sea in the sunlight, far as the eye could reach, labelled "unknown," "unknown," telling the simple tragic story of our national struggle more effectually than any sculptured monument could have done. I would like to have shown them this, to see if for one moment it had power to paralyze those eager hands outstretched for bubbles.

"Unknown?" Not to him, in whose book every one of those names are written in letters of light! Not to him, in whose army of the faithful unto death, there are no "privates"!

My eyes were blind with tears, as I signed my name in the visitor's book at the desk of the Freedman's Bureau there, once General Lee's residence. All _was_ "quiet on the Potomac," as its blue waters glittered in the sunlight before us. Yet the very air was thick with utterances. The place on which I stood is now indeed holy ground. And far off rose the white dome of the Capitol, crowded with men, some of them, thank G.o.d, not forgetting these white head-stones, in their efforts to keep inviolate what these brave fellows died for; and some, alas! willing to sell their glorious birthright for a "mess of pottage."

The sharp contrast of luxury and squalor, in Washington, even exceeding New York,--the carriages and their liveries, and the sumptuous dames inside; the pigs which run rooting round the streets; the tumble-down, shambling, rickety carts, with their bob-tailed, worn-out donkeys, so expressive of lazy unthrift,--must be regarded with the eye of a New Englander, trained to thoroughness and "faculty," to be properly appreciated. I avow myself, cursed or blessed, as you will, with the New England "bringing up," to which anything that "hangs by the eyelids" is simple crucifixion, whether it be in a cart or a statute-book, unhinged door, or a two or a four-legged dawdle.

"Oh, you'd come into it, and be as lazy as anybody," said my companion, "if you lived here a while."

Shade of the Pilgrim Fathers!--a.s.sembly's Catechism!--baked beans--fish-b.a.l.l.s--"riz" brown bread! Never!

I didn't see Vinnie Ream's statue of Lincoln. It was boxed for Italy, Congress having made the necessary appropriation. But I saw Vinnie.

She has dimples. Senators like dimples. And in case the statue is not meritorious, why--I would like to ask, amid the crowd of lobbying _men_, whose paws are in the national basket, after the loaves and fishes--should not this little woman's cunning white hand have slily drawn some out?

_THE COMING LANDLORD._

It is a marvel to me that country landlords do not better arrange their houses, with a view to keeping their guests later in the lovely autumnal days. The absence of gas, and the omnipresence of bad-smelling kerosene, are great drawbacks to enjoyment in the chilly evenings which follow these golden days. Fires which get low at the very moment they are most needed in the sitting-rooms, and a cold dining-hall, filled with kitchen-smoke, are not incentives to a prolonged stay; add to this, the utter impossibility of finding one's way of an evening through a village guiltless of lights and shrouded in trees, and it is no marvel that city people begin to think of cosey evenings by their own firesides where are both warmth and light, without which Paradise itself were a desert.

I think landlords who have an eye to business should take what may seem to them, perhaps, very _uninfluential_ motives, under serious consideration. I am very sure that if their own houses were made comfortable for the autumn, enough lovers of the season would remain to reward them pecuniarily for any such foresight. Let the fashionists go--there are plenty left to rejoice in the crisp air, the falling bright-hued leaves, the glory of sunshine and shadow on the mountain-tops, and the keen sense of _life at the full_ which comes of wandering among them.

I think _I_ should understand engineering an hotel! I know just where the shoe pinches, at least, which is half the battle. In the first place, I wouldn't smoke a pipe, and then I should not be tempted to put those halcyon moments before the comfort and convenience of my guests, how imperative soever the occasion. Then my temper would be angelic, and I could understand how every lady in the house could "have her room cleared up" at one and the same moment, though the lady-guests numbered a full hundred! Then--I should see my way clear to let every little child on the premises dig deep holes in the gravel walk which leads to the front door, and fill them with water, for infantile amus.e.m.e.nt, and to further the laudable ambition of the nurses, in reading fourth-rate pamphlet novels. Then I should better understand my duty in riding ten miles to get a watermelon for one lady, eleven miles to get a quart of peaches for another, and six miles for grapes for a third; and, at the same time, be on the piazza, to be a walking Time-Table for strangers and others who wish information at short notice on railroad subjects. Were I a non-smoker, I should be consolable under the necessity of remaining out of my bed till the latest midnight reveller had gone to his, and up in the morning before daylight, to be sure that the eggs for the departing Grumble family were cooked neither too hard nor too soft. Also, I would have _one pane of gla.s.s_ in each _chamber_-window in the house a looking-gla.s.s, immovably inserted, for the benefit of those ladies who prefer some light while combing their hair. Those who dreaded the light on that occasion might fall back upon the time-honored looking-gla.s.s which landlords are sure to locate in the darkest corner of the room. Then I could see my way clear to take files of all the city papers for the children in the house to make kites of, or for ladies to wrap parcels or curl their hair in. Also, I should provide compact and portable lanterns, with an accompanying servant, for the use of those ladies who fancy evening rambles through a dark village street.

You will see by this how inexhaustible is this subject, and how much remains to be done, which only a _female_ mind could foresee, or suggest. I generously give these hints to unenlightened landlords, free of charge, and doubt not that my next summer's travels will attest not only their practicability, but their execution; meantime we are going home; to coffee, _real_ coffee, praised be Allah for that!

It is bad to leave the mountains, but chiccory is not palatable either.

It is hard to break up a pleasant summer party, at the close of the season, for we never can take it up again where we leave off. For some there will be weddings, for some there will be funerals--good-by, said so gaily, will surely be final to some of us who utter it. We shall take up the paper some day, and a well-known name will catch the eye in that dark list of bereavement. We shall recall its owner on _that_ morning of the party to the "mountain," or the "lake," and the bright eye, and the flowing hair, and the voice of music--and then the world will close round us, and all will go on as before, till our turn comes, too, to be forgotten.

We never quite realize how dear any particular face is to us until we meet it in a crowd of strangers' faces. It is only then that we begin to know that we do not love it simply for its beauty; that there is something more in it to us than pure outline and sweet color, or whatever its particular charm may be. We have been hurrying on perhaps up Broadway--a stream of unknown people on the left, and another on the right. We have thought "how beautiful" of some, "how ugly" of others. Suddenly we think, "It is ----." We do not compare, we do not criticize. We may vaguely recognize the fact that it is the plainest or the prettiest face we have met; but that has nothing to do with it.

There comes our friend, blotting out the strangers as though they were not. Even if we pa.s.s and do not speak, our hearts meet and soften; and we are happier throughout the whole long day, for having met a friend's face in a crowd.

_OUT ON THE END OF CAPE ANN._

Good-by, City! I'm off! Now that wretched ragman may jingle the six great cow-bells attached to his miserable hand-cart, to his heart's content. They have driven me to the verge of distraction with their monotonous clang--clang--clang, ever since the weather was warm enough to sit with open windows. How many times I have resolved to call the attention of the policeman on our "beat" to this illegal disturbance of the peace; particularly as he chooses _our_ street to meander up and down in, merely because I am a scribbler, and it drives me mad--why else does he do it? For Heaven knows, I never did, or would bestow a "rag" upon him, though I never was to see _paper_ again.

Good-by to the unfeeling wretch; I bequeath him to the unfortunates I leave behind; who like myself are too lazy to chase up a policeman for his summary ejection.

Good-by, I say again. I am going out to gra.s.s. I shall shortly find a clover-field where I intend to bury my disgusted nose until October.

So anybody who chooses may leave their odorous dirt-barrels on the sidewalk till sundown to regale neighborly olfactories. The postman may pull my bell-wire till it breaks; he will get no response from me. I don't care who didn't do what; or when it wasn't done. I'm for _Katy-dids_!

I've done with shopping, thank Heaven! If my clothes or shoes give out, let 'em. I've done with grocer-boys, and ice-men, and bakers, and brewers. I'm going back to milk and nature; and I'm going to be weighed before I go, to see what will come of it.

Perhaps I shall meet you there; and you--and you. If I should, for Heaven's sake don't talk "shop" to me. Speak of "caows" and "medder-land," and welcome--but don't mention books, not even my last new one, "Folly as it Flies," which any of you who can, are welcome to read--_I_ can't. And don't pump me as you always do, to know "what sort of a man is Mr. Bonner?" I tell you, once for all, that he is the _right_ sort, and you couldn't improve on that.

And if you see me coming in to dinner, and think it worth while to announce the fact, in a place where there is a dearth of news, just do it quietly, so that I shan't feel like throwing a biscuit at your head, and don't think, because I am a literary woman, that I live on violets and dew--I don't. I wear awful thick shoes, and go out in the mud, and like to get stuck there; and I am horrid old--fifty-six--and ugly besides; and I shall speak when I feel like it, and when I don't, I shan't, because it is too much to be on my good behavior all the year round, and this is my vacation.

Now we have settled all that, I hope, and there's nothing left but to toss my traps into my trunk, and lock it. I don't care much whether there is anything inside of it or not, for I'm desperate. These few last hot days have finished me. I'm almost afraid to trust myself to "write a character" for my departing chamber-maid, I feel so savage.

You can take her, though; the only crime she will have to "carry to confession" is, that when she puts my room "to rights," she invariably turns the table which has a drawer in it, the _drawer-side next the wall_. To a person of my feeble intellect, this is distracting, especially in the dark; and I have so many distractions, and am so much in the dark, that really, Father Malooney, or some other nice priest, ought to jog her elbow on this point. They who will may abuse Roman Catholic priests--every _sensible housekeeper_ knows their value. Long life to the like of 'em, _I_ say.

Good-by! If I am smashed on the railroad, weep over my _pieces_. I think you told me you had already done that--on less provocation.

Geography never could find a lodgement in my head; but this I will a.s.sert, without fear of being sent to "the foot of the cla.s.s," that granite, fish, and sand, are the princ.i.p.al products of Cape Ann. When you go down Broadway and see those square stone blocks in process of being pounded down for our mutual benefit, know that I am up here, a self-const.i.tuted superintendent of the work. Said a Cape-Ann-der the other day, "When you see six hundred ton of granite taken out of a quarry every week for the whole summer, you'd _not_-erally think that 'twould leave a hole there, but it don't." I mention this remark to you as a proof of the fertility of the soil.

Needle and thread are not to be despised any more than the deft fingers which ply them; but you should sit on a big stone at one of the quarries, and watch four or five of these stalwart fellows, each muscular hand grasping the hammer, coming down rhythmically, surely, powerfully, at the same instant, hour after hour, on the same huge granite block, till it is shaped for its purpose. It was a grand and suggestive sight to me. The men who did it were heroes; shaping--who can tell what?--monuments for history--public buildings--that will stand long after you and I are forgotten. And the other side of these exhaustless stone caverns rolled the broad ocean, waiting to float off on its mighty bosom these huge ma.s.ses of granite to any desired port.

And close by were woods, so filled with song, and perfume, and deep, cool shadows, and soft hum of insect life, and ancient trees, moss-coated, where the swell of the ocean and the sound of all this labor came with m.u.f.fled breath, as if fearful to bring jarring discord to all that harmony. This granite, thought I, may stand for our pilgrim fathers; these woods, with their song and perfume, for their wives and daughters, who brought to this "rock-bound coast" the softening influence of their sweet, holy presence.

Away from all this, over the hill, down in the village, are the stores, and, more important to me, the post-office. I don't know what our pilgrim fathers did, but I know that to-day their descendants close them when they go to tea or dinner, while expectant customers patiently _roost_ on the neighboring fences till their places reopen.

But I am happy to state that the Cape-Ann-ders make up for this placidity when they get hold not only of granite, but of horse-flesh.

It is their stereotyped rule to race up-hill, at break-neck speed. It is therefore needless to state how they go _down-hill_ and how perfectly immaterial to them it is whether the horse fetches up in a stone-quarry or in the ocean. I ought to know, for I have danced often enough into the wet gra.s.s and dust, and over stone walls, in order to save my neck, to know. You see the Cape-Ann-ders, being born with oars in their hands, have not studied horse-flesh like Mr. Bonner. The ocean is their hunting-ground. One can't excel in all the virtues; but such fish as they coax out of it, and such chowder as they make of it, would go far to make one forget their equestrianism. I've seen about every kind of fish on the table except whales, of which I had my first astonished view yesterday. That _bulk can be frisky_ was the first lesson they taught me. As to their spouting, a political meeting is nothing to it! When they came up out of water to breathe, you might have heard them in New York--that is, if the rag-man, with his six infernal jangling cow-bells, hadn't been going through your street.

There is nothing I have sighed for in those streets since I left them, except some digestible bread. I suppose you know _that_ commodity is seldom furnished _out_ of the city. If you don't, you may read it in the faces of nearly every woman, and child too, after a certain age, in the country. The _men_, by virtue of working in the open air, worry through with it better. _Saleratus_, _soda_, _shortening_, _grease_, and sugar! these are as infallibly married to pills, and castor-oil, and rhubarb, and bitters, as are the s.e.xes to each other. All over New England, in these lovely leafy homes, with the blessing of sweet, pure, untainted air, with literally _no_ excuse for sickness, vile bread vitiates and neutralizes G.o.d's best gifts.

The cupboards and closets of these naturally healthy homes are stuffed full of "physic;" and the country doctor, who _ought_, in these lovely villages, to be a pauper, thrives on the disastrous consumption of FRIED _everything_, and clammy bread. Meantime my excellent country friends put up pounds and quarts of "_jell_" every fall. Now, let them know that half, or a quarter of the time spent in making these indigestible sugary concoctions, if spent in learning to make good bread, would obliterate all traces of dyspepsia both under their belts and in their faces. If I seem to speak unkindly, I do not feel so; only it seems to me such a useless waste of material, and what is infinitely worse, such a criminal waste of health, that I cannot help entering my earnest protest against it.