Ginger Snaps Part 9

Perhaps you will answer, Who is to decide what _is_ "a necessary and comfortable support for a family"? I can only ask, if there is not a great wrong unredressed, when a man knows nothing of the different mental or moral characteristics of the children he has launched into a world of temptation and trial, and is also quite content to remain ignorant. I think all intelligent, thinking persons will agree on this point. Also when a man, professional or other, seldom or never addresses a word to his wife about anything but the family expenses, or his favorite mode of cooking any pet article of food. Sure I am that any wife who is not a hopeless idiot, will chafe under such treatment, until, at last, her fate being too much for her, mental and moral deterioration fairly set in, and she hopelessly revolves in her narrow bounds without even a desire that the children, once so dear to her, should ever peep over and beyond them. The friends whom she _might_ and ought to have retained for herself and them, she has gradually, one by one, lost sight of; her husband being never at home to care whether they came or stayed away--his interests, and his friends, being quite separate and apart. Meantime his house shines, his meals are well prepared, and his "b.u.t.tons" are in place.

This picture is not overdrawn. I can produce you its counterparts any hour in the twenty-four. By and by, the oldest boy outgrows pinafores and jackets, and steps round in long-tails. No father has been at hand, to point out the quicksands he should have avoided, or to encourage him by his sympathy or love to do right. But the devil in all his Protean shapes _has_ been at his elbow, delighted at that father's indifference. Presently some wild oat sown, brings to that home, as yet _publicly_ undisgraced, its full-grown harvest of shame.

_Now_ come storms of reproach, under which the loving mother weeps and cowers, as if _she_, G.o.d help her! were guilty. Alas! and alas! were such young wayward feet _ever_ turned right by such injudiciousness and injustice? Does not that boy _know_ that it is the disgrace alone that father feels, and not the shipwreck of his child's soul? Does that father say, even to himself, "Oh, Absalom! my son! my son!" Not at all: he feels only a blind rage, a vexatious thwarting and hindering of his own affairs, which _his son_ has brought about.

"_His_ son?"

It is about the first time he ever regarded him in that relationship.

There is another kind of father and husband, quite the antipodes of this. _He_ devotes himself entirely to the domestic side of the question. He has no "business" to occupy him, nor does he desire to have. He loves his wife devotedly, and the more children he has the better he is pleased. Their mother and themselves are enveloped in a warm atmosphere of love. Never was a harsh, pettish, or fretful word heard from his amiable lips. He plays with the children all day; he fixes kites and b.a.l.l.s without stint for them; he tends the baby; and when a crisis comes, and the maid-of-all-work disappears, discouraged at the eleventh baby, he washes the dishes, if need be, as serenely as if he were born to it. Meantime these really bright children, loving and loved, grow apace. The mother is growing old. Love is a good thing, but there is a far-off questioning look in her gentle eyes, vainly searching those children's future. _Her_ hands are now helplessly tied, and she sees no _outward_ tendency toward business in his. She "loves him"--how can she help it?--_thus far_; but the years move on so quickly, and her children grow so tall! She remembers sadly the advantages of education _she_ had, as she looks into the fair faces of her girls. Ah! how long will she continue to "love" their father? And how will those children, in after years, gauge that "love"

which placed such obstacles between them and their best advancement?

At what point in their young lives will they, chafing, let go the irresolute hand, that could only lead them up and down that narrow garden-path, when the broad highway of development lay in sight, and untrodden?

I am fully persuaded that if _even I_ had created human beings, I couldn't have improved upon the original programme. I used to think that I should like to sweep the whole p.u.s.s.y-cat tribe of my fellow-creatures out of existence, with one wave of my wand. I am convinced now, that as a means of grace, they had better remain. Their sublime indifference as to the period in which the most momentous questions are to be settled, is instructive to hurricane natures. The fatalistic way in which they subside into their own comfortable chimney-corner, while all the moral elements are in a wild tornado outside, is calming to the spirit. The placidity with which they can eat, and sleep, and drink, and be merry, side by side with the corpses of dead hopes and abortive projects, over which humanity stands weeping and wringing her hands, is as good as a dose of opium. We look at them, and, wiping the cold perspiration from our brow, we ask, Is it possible, then, that we have been lashing ourselves into all this fury, when there is _really_ to be no shipwreck? _Are_ we really on the high road to lunacy without knowing it, and in the near proximity to such sublime self-poise and calmness? We slink into our corner to reflect; and get that much breathing-time and wind to go at the demon again. So you see they are of use, as I told you.

Then there are your critical people, like John Randolph, who actually stopped his dying, to correct the p.r.o.nunciation of a friend who was waiting to close his eyes. So they will stop you in the midst of a ravishing bit of poetry, or the narration of a story, to dissect the sentiment of it by some glaring Drummond light, that they keep remorselessly on hand for such purposes, while you, poor wretch, dropped suddenly from your sublime height, lose both your place and your temper.

Now you can't say this isn't educational.

Then there is your human chameleon, who takes its color from the last leaf it feeds on. You quote one of its yesterday-expressed opinions, with full a.s.surance of faith, as exactly coinciding with your own. Up comes a third party, and demands how you can so misrepresent the chameleon's views, because that very day it expressed a totally different opinion to this third party. You ask the chameleon for an explanation; when it coolly informs you that consistency is the vice of little minds; and that to unsay to-day what you said yesterday, is a proof of progress. You retire with a muttered wish that the chameleon would furnish you with a pair of seven-league boots, with which to overtake his "progress."

Then there is that social wasp, "I told you so;" who, vulture-like, hovers over the fallen, ready to insert his cruel beak at any sore place one has made, tripping. The guillotine is nothing to the bits of quivering flesh _he_ tears out.

Then there is your routine person, who sneezes precisely at six, and sits down precisely at seven, and rises precisely at eight, and looks out of the window precisely at nine, and keeps this up month after month, and year after year, without the shadow of turning, and in the teeth of imperative exigencies, and with a stony stoicism, and pettiness of purpose, which is exasperating enough to bring on a fit of apoplexy in the beholder.

n.o.body can say that this is not equal to any authorized penance in the church, to the sufferer, whose blood has not turned to milk and water.

In fact, I have often wondered why our Roman Catholic friends, who have so many excellencies, need trouble themselves to suggest or appoint anything of the kind, when life is so full of crosses and discipline in the raw. When it is so teeming with cross-purposes, that every person you meet seems obstinately bent either upon forming a partnership which, like oil and water, will forever be opposed to mingling, or throwing pebble after pebble into some ocean, expecting that the little circle it makes, will reach to the farthest sh.o.r.e of worldly fame or ambition. In fact, when I have visited lunatic asylums, it has really seemed to me that mad as their inmates undoubtedly are, there is little need to dissever them from their comrades on the outside.

You will perceive from this that I consider life a discipline. _I do._ No response was ever heartier. When one bubble after another bursts, this, you see, is a comforting reflection to settle down upon. There was once a man who read the lists of deaths every day, hoping to see that of some woman, the whole sisterhood of whom he hated. When he came to one, he always exclaimed, "Thank G.o.d, there's another of 'em gone!" My moral is obvious.

Commend me to the person who can say No with a will, when it is needed; who is not deterred from it for fear of being called "disagreeable," or "being thought to be always in hot water." Any water but lukewarm water for me! One of my favorite pa.s.sages in the Good Book is this: "I would that thou wert either cold or hot; but because thou art neither cold nor hot, I will spew thee out of my mouth." The joke comes in here: that your timid conservative is always the first to raise the signal of distress on any emergency for the speedy arrival of "that disagreeable person who is always in hot water." He likes him marvellously as such crises of his existence?

Now, beyond dispute, everybody likes to travel on a smooth-beaten road without jolting, if possible; but in order for this, somebody must make a great turn-over generally, in clearing away the stones that obstruct it. Now, I consider it a cowardly piece of business for either man or woman, to travel miles around that road, rather than take hold and do their fair share of the disagreeable work, either from indolence, or from fear that they might offend one who might possibly prefer that the road should remain in its normal condition.

Oh, how glad they are when somebody else has taken this troublesome pioneership off their shoulders! How they rub their lazy hands, and smirk, and say, "You see _you_ do these things _so_ well! I never was const.i.tuted for it"! Which translated, means, that they prefer sacrificing a principle to sacrificing their ease or popularity; as if anybody liked to keep all the time fighting--as if other people didn't love ease too!

"_A GOOD MISTRESS ALWAYS MAKES A GOOD SERVANT._"

Now I beg leave to place a very sizable interrogation-point just here; at any rate, until I receive an intelligible definition of "a good mistress." A servant's definition of one, in these days, is, "A lady who never comes down-stairs, poking her nose into things;" one who never is so "mean" as to calculate the time that elapses since the last batch of tea, coffee, sugar, or flour was bought, and the possibility, when these stores run short of their proper limit, that they have not been applied wholly to the use of the family. "A good mistress," to their idea, is one who is totally oblivious as to the time the gas is turned off at night, in the lower part of the house, or whether, indeed, it is turned off at all, or how many superfluous burners are constantly swelling up the gas-bill, where one would answer the purpose. "A good mistress," in servants' parlance, is one who scorns to look after any amount of chicken, or turkey, or beef, which may not be all eaten the first time it is set upon the table, and who will cheerfully purchase steaks for breakfast instead. "A good mistress," with many of them, is one who, beside paying good wages, gives them half-worn clothes enough to enable them to spend their money in other directions, and who yet is willing that these clothes should be worn only when they go out visiting, while they are constantly untidy at work.

"A good mistress," with the master of the house, is one who is just the reverse of all this. She is one who is constantly fighting waste and unnecessary outlay, and stupidity, and ignorance, and obstinacy, and impertinence, and unthrift. She is one who, with a constant panorama of Bridgets, and Betseys, and Marys, and Sallys, through her lower domains, at the expense of her own strength, and patience, and temper, and brain, and with no prospect of an end to the same until intelligence-offices contain more intelligence, is yet perfectly seraphic at the idea of being at the head of a training-school for servants, the remainder of her natural life; and smiles constantly at the same time under reminders of the necessity of greater economy in the household department. This is the husband's idea of "a good mistress."

Now I maintain that, with the present _average_ material, ever so good a mistress, with the best intelligence and intentions, cannot "make a good servant." _Pa.s.sable_ they may be; but not "_good_."

The truth is--_brain_ is wanted to make a good servant; and at present there is only muscle. Hence our gas is half turned off. Hence our water is wholly turned _on_, till a flood comes. Hence bits of stick and string and dirt are thrown into pipes--for the benefit of the plumber, and the depletion of our pockets. Hence the devil is to pay generally, till the distracted good lady of the house considers it the last drop in the bucket, when "her Sam" or John is unreasonable enough to expect her, with such brainless material, to present him with workmanlike results.

In America, the word "servant" is hateful to them; they much prefer the word "domestic" to express the same idea. Every servant in America, with few exceptions, dresses to suit herself; and a very bad thing she generally makes of it. Some few families insist on the muslin cap for their "nurses," and the regulation black dress and white ap.r.o.n. But this dress is obnoxious to the majority of servants; nor do I, for one, blame them for it. A most excellent colored woman, in a family of my acquaintance, whose Northern mistress had purchased her freedom before the war, and who was beloved by every member of the family, refused to wear the colored turban-handkerchief at request of her mistress, who had a taste for the picturesque in costume, saying, with much spirit, "I cannot do it, madam,--not even for you;--it is hateful to me; it is the badge of the servitude I suffered so much under." Of course, she was excused.

Now I can understand why so few servants, in this country, white or black, are willing to wear anything that bears the interpretation of "a livery." At the same time, there is hardly a housekeeper or mistress in the land who is not annoyed by the big hoop, and the long dress, which knocks over articles, and catches in doors, and trips up the unlucky wearer in doing her housework, or waiting on table.

Of course, if she understood managing her crinoline as she moved about, as does her "mistress," these things might not happen; but she does not; and it is the biggest and stiffest that she can find that she generally prefers and wears. This is unfortunate for another reason; because it often exposes dilapidated and soiled underclothing, and a very questionable state of shoe and stocking. That her mistress, though cleanly, often dresses in questionable taste, both as regards the adaptability of her dress to the state of her husband's purse, and the artistic selection of colors, does not make these glaring mistakes of her servants less palpable, or less injurious to the servant's morality; for where the pa.s.sion for show, joined to narrow means, effaces that of decency and cleanliness, the downward road to ruin, for a woman in any station, is already entered upon. It needs only a very slight impetus to determine the final result.

Alas! the showy bonnet and gay dress, which must be had by cook or chamber-maid, although they have not a decent change of underclothing, or a whole pair of stockings, a warm shawl, or a pair of India-rubbers, or the least hint of flannel for cold weather! Now, they "have a right," as they say, so to expend their wages, if they choose. They have a right also to languish on a hospital bed, among strangers, when sickness and poverty overtake them. _But is it wise?_

In England, the dress of servants has not hitherto, as I understand it, been a matter of choice to them. I know of an English lady who, not long since, forbade her nurse to wear a dress, which the latter had purchased, because it was like that which one of her own children wore. Servants, in England, have leaped over this form of restriction, it would seem. Among the "reforms" now proposed, there is one respecting domestic servants, whose extravagance in dress, whose depravity of morals, and unreliability of conduct is, they say, becoming "unendurable." A clergyman's wife has started a reform movement, and calls upon the ladies of England to help her carry it out. She proposes "that no servant, under pain of dismissal, shall wear flowers, feathers, brooches, buckles, or clasps, ear-rings, lockets, neck-ribbons, velvets, kid gloves, parasols, sashes, jackets, or tr.i.m.m.i.n.g of any kind, on dresses, and, above all, no _crinoline_.

No pads to be worn, or frizettes, or chignons, or hair ribbons. The dress is to be gored, and made just to touch the ground, and the hair to be drawn closely to the head, under a round, white cap, without tr.i.m.m.i.n.g of any kind. The same system of dress is recommended for Sunday-school girls, school-mistresses, church-singers, and _the lower orders generally_." I think "the Sunday-school girls, church-singers, school-mistresses, _and lower orders," in America, generally_, would have to undergo a most wonderful _peeling_, according to this programme! I think an American "servant" would scarcely be content to be deprived of her "parasol," of a hot Sunday, when she went to church.

No, no, ladies; that's not the way to do it; not even in England, where flunkeys abound. The "lower orders" are waking up there, thank G.o.d! and I hope, to their best interests. True, it is mournful to see all a servant's wages on her head, in the shape of a gay dress-bonnet.

I hate it; but I hate it for her own sake, because she needs so many comfortable things that the sum so expended would buy. And I hate, just as much, to see her mistress in a velvet cloak, which represents all her husband's earnings for one month, while there is a shabby carpet on her front entry or chamber, and "nicked" cups and saucers on her table. In fact, I think, that while the _parlor_ sets so bad an example, the _kitchen_ will never be swept with a clean broom.

_THE MOTHER-TOUCH._

How soon the house shows its absence! How little the lack of her executive watchfulness is realized till, like her plants that droop for want of water, everything about the house has somehow a wilted look! For was it not "mother" who moved about, instinctively placing a bright-colored vase just where the light would most effectually fall on it, and raised a curtain, or drew it aside, from the same artistic impulse?--who opened a window here or closed it there, just at the right moment, to make the temperature of the house agreeable?--who, pa.s.sing into one room, straightened a cloth that was ever so little awry upon the table, or put out of the way some carelessly placed footstool, over which some stranger foot might have stumbled; or put sofas and chairs in such neighborly and comfortable proximity, that it was really quite wonderful how they could help carrying on a conversation with each other?

Was it not "mother," who, seating herself at the table, saw on the instant if the proper geographical positions of the dishes were respected? And did she not, how weary soever with her frittering life of detail, see to it that the unities were harmoniously preserved, in spite of Erin's unteachable proclivities to the contrary, and all with a glance of her eye, or a whispered word, or a touch of her magic finger-tips?

And the children! The b.u.t.ton is never missing at the throat of the little garment, where insidious croup essays to creep in. The tiny mittens are nicely mended, and no shoulder-strap is so tight as to impede motion or cut the tender skin, till the justly irritated child gets a boxed ear at school, which should by right have been administered to the person who planned and put on its abominable clothes--ruffled, mayhap, and embroidered, but ill-fitting, and rasping as the hair-cloth shirt of the devotee. And who but "mother"

remembers whether "that poor child ate any breakfast this morning," or needs the intervening and comforting bit of bread and b.u.t.ter, for lack of which, again, its ears are unjustly boxed at school? And does she not plan her "shopping" and "calling," so that when the little ones come back from school or play, the house may not seem empty, who else soever may be there, because "_mother_" is out? No little nose in _her_ house is flattened on the window-pane, hour after hour, watching for the presence, which alone fills the house with sunshine--settles all grievances, or else kisses them away; and always for the tired little feet subst.i.tutes soft slippers in lieu of the heavy boots. And who, at night, bathes the heated forehead and flushed face, and cools off the little hands before they are folded to say, "Now I lay me,"

and leaves a kiss on lips that falter with sleep at the last unsaid syllable, for it may be that in this world it will never be finished.

"Mother" thinks of that.

And now, "_mother_" is "gone"! Oh, how much is in that little word?

There is a "body" down-stairs, but that soon will go too. For the grown people it leaves behind, there may be solace, but, alas for the little child, who cannot comprehend why, when mother is "down-stairs,"

she can at the same time be "gone"!--who knows not how, from that narrow grave, she can "get up" to the far heaven, where they say she had flown. Alas for the little child who now is overloaded with clothing when it is warm, and has on far too little when it is needed; who goes hungry when food is imperative, and is overfed when digestion clamors for a respite; who breathes all night an already exhausted atmosphere, and sits perhaps in a deadly draught next morning! The little child who touches "mother's" work-box, and "mother's" desk, and "mother's" dresses, but never can find _her!_ who goes to sleep with a sigh in place of a smile, and wakes up to a lonely house though filled with voices! In all the wide world there is never so empty a spot as that little heart.

And what a void is left when it is the little one who goes! "Say something to comfort you for the loss of your little one." This is what you asked of me. Nothing I could say _now_, my friend, would comfort you, because you are stunned, and must have time to lift your head and look about you. _Then_ you will see myriads of little graves beside your own darling's, and myriads of mothers who have pa.s.sed through the same Gethsemane, where you are now weeping tears of blood.

Each of those mothers has cried out like yourself, "What sorrow was ever equal to my sorrow?" What is that to me? you ask. Listen. Many of these mothers are now thanking G.o.d, every day of their lives, that their little ones are safe from the fearful earthly storms that have since come with desolating sweep over their hearthstones. Humbly they say, "Ah! I little knew, though my Maker did, when he folded my baby safely to His protecting breast, what was in the future." Well, some day _you_ too will cease to weep--growing unselfish--and reaching forth further each day your supplicating hands towards that heavenly home where there shall be "no more death." Having your treasure there, there will be your heart also. Said a sweet young mother to me, "Once I used to cry always, at twilight, that I must some day die. Now that my baby is gone, death has no terrors for me, for there I shall be happy with her again--and _forever_."

Let those who can, rob her of this her beautiful faith. When the sun shines only on the graves wept over by _others_, they can stand erect and say, "This world is good enough for me. I don't want any better."

But see, if with the first falling clod on some dear, cold, still breast, "_My_ G.o.d!" will not come as involuntarily to their lips as "Mother!" to the little child's, when pain overtakes it away from her protecting side.

The shining lock, the little shoe--my friend, it is long years since I shed a tear over mine--I can take them out of their wrappings in my hand, and smile to think that I am so far on my journey that I shall soon see my little one face to face. _Whether she or I will be the child_ when we meet again, G.o.d only knows; or, what heavenly mysteries I shall learn, kneeling at my baby's feet, I cannot tell; but this I know, by the kisses I have given many a little face since she died, for _her_ dear sake, that a mother's love was meant to reach far beyond the grave.

The bits of conversation one hears in the street, are often very suggestive. Said a gentleman the other day: "It appears to me, that the women of to-day are excellent in every department, but that of _wives_." It occurred to us, that if this were true, what a comment it was on the stupidity and bad management of the general husband. If in every other relation of life, woman does excellently well, why should she not do well in _this_?

_SOME GOSSIP ABOUT MYSELF._