Ginger Snaps Part 16

without any puppy saying, at every step, "A pleasant evening, Miss."

But this costume isn't exactly festive for the concert or lecture room. However, with other ingredients, this topic may be tossed into the caldron above mentioned, and perhaps, after much boiling, may deposit some substantial sediment of benefit to women. I see so many men nowadays who ought to be women, that I am positively ashamed of usurping the place of one. I am quite willing to abdicate, whenever any one can be found to take a woman's place; but the joke begins here, that the silliest man who ever lived has always known enough, when he says his prayers, to thank G.o.d that he wasn't born a woman. So you see how hopeless the case is.

_WHAT MARY THOUGHT OF JOHN._

There's John, reading his newspapers. You might drive nails into his temples, and he wouldn't know it. Look at him! Legs up. Head thrown back. The inevitable and omnipresent pipe in his mouth; the very picture of absorbed enjoyment. Three papers he has there. He will read every one, criss-cross, cornerwise, upside down, and inside out, till he has gleaned every particle of news. One good hour he has been at it. Now if I say to him, "John, what is the news this morning?" that man will reply, "Oh, none--nothing in particular; there they are; take 'em, if you would like."

Now n.o.body in his senses believes that John has been employed one good hour reading "nothing." He is only too lazy to tell what he has read; that's the amount of it. Now I had much rather read those papers than mend this coat of his. It is really too bad in John: he might have given me something to think about, while I was doing it. An idea!

Suppose I try this lazy system on _him_! Now if there's anything men like, when their wives come home with a budget of news, it is to have them sit down and entertain them with it. Not about troubles of servants and broken crockery, of course; but spicy little bits of gossip; about their friend Jones' wife, and what the witty Mrs. ---- said on such an occasion, and how the pretty and saucy Miss said if _she_ were Smith's wife she would ----. How they like to hear all about it! and how they like to question them as to how women think and feel on such and such subjects, which information they can only obtain by their wives turning state's-evidence! Of course they do; and when a bright little woman has chattered to them an hour or more, and told them more funny and amusing things than you could count, and they have laughed and enjoyed it, what return do they make? Why they just stretch their length on the sofa and go to sleep. Now I for one have borne this state of things long enough! It is all owing to that vile lethargic tobacco. Before long women will be expected to cut up their food and feed them; they will be too lazy even to eat. Now I'll tell you what I mean to do. I am going to stop giving out, and cut off supplies, till I get something back. I'll just try the monosyllabic system on John. He will say to-night, "Well, Mary, where have you been to-day? and what have you seen?" And I'll answer, bending over my work, "Oh, I went round a little, and I didn't see anything in particular." Then John will take a scrutinizing look at me, and ask if I have the headache; and I shall answer sweetly, "No, dear." Then John will try again: "Well, Mary, did you go shopping?"--"I? no--oh, no, dear. I didn't go shopping today." Another look at me, and another period of reflection. "Have you heard any bad news, Mary?"--"No, John, I hope not."--"Well--what the mischief makes you so silent? You generally have so much to tell me, and you sometimes get off a very bright thing, if you did but know it. _Something_ is the matter with you; what is it?" and John will come round and peep into my face. "Oh!

pshaw--_I_ know; you are paying me off for not talking," he will say, half-vexed, half-repentant.

Then I shall get up on a chair, in the middle of the room, and preach after this course: "Yes, John, that's just it. You haven't an idea how stupid you've grown. I hate that lethargic tobacco! It is going to revolutionize society; women are squirrel-like creatures and can't stand it. No wonder all these spicy trials fill the papers. You needn't laugh. It takes _two_ to make home bright. Don't you suppose that a woman is as much perplexed and worried and sick of the practical, at the end of the day, as a man can be? Do you suppose she always feels like giving out the last remnant of her vitality to amuse a statue? she wants a response; and she would have it, too, if a man's soul and body were not so tobacco-steeped, that every sense and feeling is merged in the one drowsy desire to let the world and everything in it, including its wives, go to the dogs. _And they are going, John!_ Now, lastly and finally, I tell you and all other Johns who may read this, that it is the worst possible policy on your part, as you would see if you ever read the papers with an eye to your own firesides, which you don't. You can wonder how Smith's wife, or how Jones' wife, could ever have done thus and so; but it never enters your slow heads to ask, if the homes of these wives were silent and cheerless, and if their husbands took all their attempts to enliven them as matters of course, and gave no echo back; and that being the case, whether the bright sunbeams outside, might not glitter too temptingly for their weariness." And here I shall jump down from the chair, and, looking at John, shall see--that he is _fast asleep_!

Sometimes I sit and laugh, all by myself, over the newspapers and magazines in which the "Woman Question" is aired according to the differing views of editors and writers. For instance, one gentleman thinks that the reason the men take a nap on the sofa evenings at home, or else leave it to go to naughty places, is because there are no Madame De Staels in our midst to make home attractive. He was probably a bachelor, or he would understand that when a man who has been perplexed and fretted all day, finally reaches home, the last object he wishes to encounter is a wide-awake woman of the Madame De Stael pattern, propounding her theories on politics, theology, and literature. The veriest idiot who should entertain him by the hour with tragic accounts of broken teacups, and saucepans, would be a blessing compared to her; not that he would like that either; not that he would know himself exactly what he _would_ like in such a case, except that it should be something diametrically opposite to that, which, years ago he got on his knees to solicit.

Another writer a.s.serts that women's brains are too highly cultivated at the present day; and that they have lost their interest in the increase of the census; and that their husbands, not sharing their apathy, hence the disastrous result. I might suggest in answer that this apathy may have its foundation in the idea so fast gaining ground,--thanks to club-life, and that which answers to it in a less fashionable strata of society,--that it is an indignity to expect fathers of families to be at home, save occasionally to sleep, or eat, or to change their apparel; and that, under such circ.u.mstances, women naturally prefer to be the mother of four children, or none, than to engineer seventeen or twenty through the perils of childhood and youth without a.s.sistance, co-operation, or sympathy.

Another writer thinks that women don't "smile" enough when their husbands come into the house; and that many a man misses having his shirt, or drawers, taken from the bureau and laid on a chair all ready to jump into, at some particular day, or hour, as he was accustomed, when he lived with some pattern sister or immaculate aunt at home.

This preys on his manly intellect, and makes life the curse it is to him.

Another a.s.serts that many women have some female friend who is very objectionable to the husband, in exerting a pugilistic effect on her mind, and that he flees his house in consequence of this unholy influence; not that this very husband wouldn't bristle all over at the idea of his wife court-martialling a bachelor, or Benedict friend, for the same reason; but then it makes a difference, you know, a man not being a woman.

Another writer a.s.serts that n.o.body yet knows what woman is capable of doing. I have only to reply that the same a.s.sertion cannot be made with regard to men, as the dwellers in great cities, at least, know that the majority of them are capable of doing anything, that the devil and opportunity favor.

It has been a practice for years to father every stupid joke that travels the newspaper-round on "_Paddy_"--poor "Paddy." In the same way, it seems to me that for every married man now, who proves untrue to his better nature, _his wife_ is to be held responsible. It is the old cowardly excuse that the first man alive set going, and which has been travelling round this weary world ever since. "The woman thou gavest to be with me"--_she_ did thus and so; and therefore all the Adams from that time down, have whimpered, torn their hair, and rushed forth to the long-coveted perdition, over the bridge of this cowardly excuse.

_TRAVEL-SPOILED AMERICANS._

This is one of my character tests,--to p.r.o.nounce none of my fellow-creatures _wise_ until they have gone through the crucible of "going abroad." So many who started with a fair average of common-sense have returned from their European tours minus this article, that I need not apologize for my views on this subject. No one can be more reverent in their admiration of all that the slow, busy ages have heaped together in the Old World of the beautiful, and scientific, and curious, and rare. But having looked at and enjoyed them,--having breathed the enervating air of luxury the appointed time,--I think I should gasp again for a strong, crisp breath of that _New_ World, which is my grand birthright. You may scare up hideous abuses of to-day, and point to convulsions of all sorts that are seemingly upheaving us, root and branch. I care not. The greatest of all crimes, in my eyes, is stagnation. We are _moving_, thank G.o.d!

There may be rough roads, and ruts, and stones, and rocks in the way, and some of us may be crushed, and maimed, and jolted off, and scarcely know our lat.i.tude and longitude for the fogs, and false guides, and dark clouds, and fierce storms of debate. But still we _move_! We are thinking of something beside a new way of frica.s.seeing frogs, or "rectifying frontiers." We are neither children or slaves.

More! we have a _future_ before us--grander to those who will see it than has any nation on the face of the earth. For one, I glory in it all. And when I see an American, male or female, returning to their native land, sighing for the nice little dishes one gets in Paris, dilating on its superior costuming, prating forever of "The Tuileries," and such like, and finding America "so in the rough," I want to place my arms a-kimbo, my nose within an inch of his, and my eyes focussed--anywhere--so that it will make him feel uncomfortable, and address him thus: My beloved Idiot--Did you, while abroad, ever compare the condition of the "common people," if I may be allowed to allude in your presence to so vulgar and disgusting a theme--did you ever compare the condition of the common people there with those of the same cla.s.s in your own country? Did you see, in Italy, or France, or England, any such homes for the working-cla.s.ses as are to be seen, for instance, in New England? Those thrifty kitchens, where neatness proclaims itself from the symmetrical wood-pile in the "shed" to the last shining pewter-plate and spoon on the well-polished dresser?

Where even the old dog wipes his paws on the mat before stepping on the snowy floor; where every child can read and write, and "do ch.o.r.es"

instead of begging its bread one half the day and lying in the sun the rest. Where the women churn, and bake, and brew, and sew, and have babies, and read books, aye, and _write_ them too. My beloved Idiot, did you ever think of all _this_? Did you ever think, also, of the difference it would make in your views of "life _abroad_," if instead of going there with a pocket full of money to _spend_, you went there to _earn_ it?

Aha! wouldn't your chances be splendid in _that_ case?

But, Heaven bless us! what is the use of showing a mole the sun? I wish it here distinctly understood that I pause at this period of my discourse, that every discontented American, so unworthy of his glorious birthright, may get his pa.s.sport, pack his trunk, and go back to his peppered frogs, and toasted horse-steak, and diseased geese livers, and liveried flunkeys, and be ingloriously content, while he makes room here for his betters.

_LIFE'S ILLUSIONS._

Did you ever stop short in the midst of the grind, and toil, and whirl of life, at the thought. After all, what will this never ceasing fret of body and soul amount to? Did you ever then begin to reckon upon your fingers the unfulfilled promises of life within your knowledge, as if you had but just heard of them? First, there is your acquaintance, Mr. ----, who, since he came to years of maturity, has had but this one object: to secure a pecuniary independence for himself and his children. At fifty he has achieved it; and now he has nothing to do but to enjoy himself. But _how_? That is the question which racks his brain day and night. He has his library, to be sure; that was part of the furnishing of his house; but, alas! he has no taste for reading. He has fine pictures upon his walls; but he has no eye for their beauty. He has daughters; but they are devoured with the love of finery and fashion. He has sons; but they are emulating each other in spending money, criminally and foolishly; and now he stands aghast at the goal, to reach which he has sacrificed the better part of himself and them; his sun is setting, and he has only the ashes of the Dead Sea Apple of Victory between his fingers.

Then there is Mrs. ----, who has staked all on her beautiful young daughter. She was educated at home, for fear of the contamination of a.s.sociates; she was never from under the watchful eye of her parents, lest her manners should receive a flaw. She was drilled to speak, step, look, smile, eat, and drink, according to prescribed rules. She must perfect herself in music, in the languages, in drawing. Her eyes, hands, teeth, nails, must undergo a careful supervision each day, lest any attraction should be prematurely shorn of its glory. At last she dawns into beautiful womanhood. The evening is fixed for her triumphant entrance into society. Dress-makers, hair-dressers, jewellers, and florists are called into requisition. The important toilette is finished; when suddenly the house is thrown into consternation by her violent indisposition; and before morning the young girl sleeps in her shroud.

The anguished woman groans out, "Ye have taken away my idol, and what have I left?" and she feels that life for her has nothing left but a dreary waiting for its close.

Then there are the great army of parents, whose heart-strings are wrung with pity at the little eyes which may never see, the little ears which may never hear, the little feet which may never skip or run, and the mute tongues which may never syllable the sweet words, "Father!" "Mother!" Then there are sons whose G.o.d is the wine-cup; and living daughters whose own mothers had rather look upon their dead faces. These heart-wrenchings and disappointments, are they not legion? And yet, like children, whose toys, one after another, are broken, or taken from them, we still reach out our hands for the gilded bubble of hope, all the same as if it had never burst between our fingers. When our dearly-loved children are taken from us, our torn heart-strings hasten to twine about _their_ children; forgetting the _little_ feet that have also trod "the dark valley." Surely, by this love-yearning, which may never die in us, shall we find in another world than this, its uninterrupted and perfect fruition.

_JACK SIMPKINS._

It is a miserable thing to be born a philanthropist. Jack Simpkins can tell you that. He thinks that one ought not to be merry, while the world is so much out of joint. When his sister Betty tells him that cheerfulness conduces to longevity, and that it is useless to make one's self miserable about inevitables, Jack lifts his eyebrows and accuses her of triviality and want of feeling. Not long since this pair went into a place which shall be nameless, for some refreshment, after an evening's public entertainment. While they were waiting to be served, Jack's eye fell on the clerk at the desk, who, pen behind his ear, was taking money and making change. "Betty," said Jack, "look at that poor devil; week in and week out, there he stands, seeing other people eat and counting money. Now, I'll be sworn he has never a holiday, and not even Sunday. Do you suppose he has, Betty?"--"I am sure I don't know," Betty replied, looking over a tempting bill of fare, with the accompaniment of an extended forefinger; "he is a _man_, isn't he? and that implies every kind of liberty. Were he a woman, and restricted to the choice of one or two occupations, and not half paid at that, I might possibly make myself unhappy about it; as it is, let us have some oysters, and be jolly."--"But," persisted Jack, "just think of his confined position, and--"--"But I don't _want_ to think about it," said Betty; "this is a free country; and if he don't like his place, can't he leave it? Come, Jack, eat your oysters." To do Jack justice, he _did_ eat with a will; for such a wide-spread benevolence as his is never supported on an empty stomach.

The oysters eaten, Betty congratulated herself that Jack felt more cheerful. Not a bit of it. While she stood, like a hen on one leg, waiting for him to "settle" at the clerk's desk, he remarked to the latter, in a melancholy, commiserating tone, "Your situation here must be a very tiresome and confining one; don't you find it so?"--"Not at all," replied the clerk, blandly; "quite the contrary."--"Do you ever have a holiday; do you have Sundays?" asked Jack.--"Always when I wish," replied the clerk; "but I don't care to be away much. I see the best people in the city here, and I have a great deal of good conversation." Betty smiled inwardly. It was not in human nature--certainly not in female human nature--to refrain from crowing a little over what she considered Jack's Quixotic philanthropy; and when she laughed at his waste of pity, in this case, that infatuated man replied, "Is it possible you can make merry over it, Betty? Why, to _my_ mind, his not '_caring_ for holidays' was the most melancholy feature of the whole thing; as showing how perfectly benumbed he must be, by such heartless exaction on the part of his employer."--"But you don't know anything about his employer," said Betty; "and it is evident that he _could_ go out, any day he wished." Jack shrugged his shoulders, and replied, "Ah, yes--I know what that '_could_' means, when a man's nature is yielding; ah--yes," and he gave another deep sigh. "Well," said Betty, getting a little irritated, "_I_ don't know what _you_ may think, but if my fellow-creatures are perfectly satisfied with their lot in life, I for one am not going to try to make them miserable about it." Whereupon Jack preached her a long lecture on the sin of selfishness, which quite stopped the process of oyster digestion, and sent her to bed to enjoy the horrors of a well-earned nightmare.

Once, when Betty and Jack were travelling, they stopped at a fine hotel. Everything was as perfect as skill and system could make it.

Jack paid the bill, and Betty launched out in praise of the establishment. "Yes," said Jack, his face lengthening; "but I am afraid that landlord feeds his guests much better than he can afford.

I don't think he charged as much as he ought in that bill of ours. I really feel as if he had cheated himself." Now, Betty's experience in this regard was entirely antagonistic to Jack's, so she replied, with an ironical and not very amiable expression, "that if the gift of a ten-dollar bill to the landlord would lighten her brother's conscience, she would be willing to engage that the former would by no means take offence at it."

Betty says that selfishness is not _her_ besetting sin any more than it is Jack's; and, if you doubt it, you can ask him to transfer his gla.s.s of ale to you when he cannot get another, or you can read his daily paper before he does in the morning, and see what will come of it. She thinks it is not so much philanthropy in Jack, as that the off-side of a question has such an unconquerable attraction for him; in other words, that argument is his very breath; and, therefore, without vexing her spirit any more because he never will agree with her, she has instead made up her mind, that what side soever of a question a person takes when conversing with Jack, it is morally certain that no power in this world or the other will ever prevent _him_ from going to the opposite.

"_BIDING THE LORD'S TIME._"

If there is one piece of advice more bandied about by irresolution, imbecility, and moral cowardice than this, I should be glad to know it. As _I_ take it, the Lord's time is the first chance you get. At any rate, those who act on this principle have, as a general thing, done the Lord more service than they who have folded their hands and sat down upon the stool of conservatism to "bide His time," as they call it. All the great reformers who have blessed mankind have had pioneers, who looked upon "the Lord" as a helper, not a hindrance. The stumbling-blocks which for centuries had impeded progress they vigorously set about clearing away, without stopping to cross themselves for doing that which indolent or timid bystanders excused themselves from, as an irreverence.

This stealing of heaven's livery to serve the devil in, is of all thefts the most disgusting. This "fearing to offend a weaker brother"

is a plea which self-interest should know by this time is getting to be transparent. If the weaker brother can't stand on his own vacillating legs, the rest of the world can't afford to spend their whole existence in propping him. Let him lie down till he can; or till the Juggernaut wheels of progress roll sufficiently near to _force_ him to spring to his feet. I don't believe in weak brothers.

They had better get out of the ranks and join the sisters. It may be the choice between the frying-pan and the fire; for, after all, the silliest woman who ever cried for a ribbon knows enough to dislike the male creature who is neither fish, flesh, nor fowl. But the most trying time, when the plat.i.tude we are considering is thrust into the face by moral parrots, is when they would not lift a finger to ease the burden of a fellow-creature who is staggering and fainting before their very eyes; or when some heart-wrench is being agonized through, and your stoical consoler, who is himself impervious to every suffering save that which is purely physical, iterates in your sensitive ear, a string of such time-worn phrases, because he lacks heart to say, Poor soul--no wonder you writhe; how I wish I could comfort you! "_The Lord_"--and I say it not irreverently--is the first compa.s.sionate human arm which is thrown round the quivering sufferer when he needs it most. "_The Lord_" is the first outstretched human hand which grasps the moral suicide as the last strand of hope is parting. "_The Lord_" is the pitying human heart which draws to itself the poor outcast, and without unrolling his transgressions to the face of the broad day, stands firmly by his side, till he has won the self-respect to stand alone.

"Talk _out_!" exclaimed a little puzzled child to a foolish adult who was speaking to it in a way which it could not possibly comprehend.

Talk _out_! say I, and call things by their right names. Now "_the Lord_," to my way of thinking, don't murder little babies. If a careless mother locks one up, with a cotton pinafore and a blazing fire, and goes away, I should not say over its coffin that it died by a visitation of Divine Providence. Nor when a drunken husband sends a wooden chair, and a tea-kettle, and a small table through his wife's skull, should I say that "the Lord" had seen fit in his inscrutable will to remove Mrs. Smith from this sublunary sphere. Still--I may be hypercritical--and after all, of course, I defer to your better theological judgment--but I will say _this_ much, that _my_ "Lord"

don't do one half the things He is charged with, every day in the year.

_ONE SORT OF FOOL._

Now I like a fool--a genuine fool, who is obliviously unconscious of the fact! Life is too dull at best; a fool has his mission, and where's the harm of laughing, invulnerable as he is in his panoply of self-conceit? The fool I am thinking of this moment, however, is of the feminine gender--one who loomed upon my astounded vision in the cabin of a ferry-boat, gorgeous as a shivered rainbow, or a bed of variegated tulips, or a garden of staring sunflowers, which challenge notice, flauntingly forbidding quiet pa.s.sers-by to go abstractedly on the winding way of their various duties and avocations. Thus challenged, I of course surveyed my challenger. Heavens! what an array of millinery and mantua-making was spread over that human lay-figure.

What a vapid, inane face that gay bonnet framed; what big feet those cream-colored gaiters betrayed! What a sweep of flounce, and ruffle, and ribbon and lace. What an all-over consciousness of "go-to-meetin'"