Jonathan and His Continent Part 11

The following I extract from a Pittsburg paper:

George Burton, a well-to-do man of Ohio, one day turned his wife out of the house and left for Pittsburg. Next day he returned, bringing with him a dashing widow, named Fenton, whom he installed in his wife's place. When Mrs. Burton applied for admittance, she was sent away, her husband saying that he had someone else to care for him now. The news spread, and the female neighbours decided to avenge the wife's wrongs.

After ten o'clock at night, three hundred women went to the house and beat the doors open. Burton and the dashing widow were dragged out, the man being chased several blocks, and pelted the while with rotten eggs.

The widow was pounded and pummelled until the police rescued her. She and the man were locked up in safe keeping. The neighbours then ransacked the house, and when they left it the place looked as if a cyclone had struck it. It was with great difficulty that the objectionable widow was conveyed to the train in safety by the police next day, and despatched to Trenton, New Jersey, where she came from.

Sometimes the chastis.e.m.e.nt takes a comic form. There are few distractions in the little western towns, and native humour finds an outlet in strange fashions. A man who illtreats his wife, or forsakes her for another woman, is often tarred and feathered. The operation is curious, and satisfies the vengeance of the populace, while procuring them an hour's amus.e.m.e.nt.

The delinquent is led, sometimes to the sound of music, to a retired spot. There he is stripped to the skin, and coated over with tar from head to foot. This done, he is rolled in feathers, which, of course, stick to him, and give him the appearance of a huge ugly duckling. To put a finishing touch to the operations, his clothes are carried off, and the mob wish him good luck.

This chastis.e.m.e.nt is sometimes applied to a woman whose conduct is known to be immoral. In such cases it is the women who operate on the culprit.

They want their husbands and sons to be able to get about without danger, and they take upon themselves the task of keeping the moral atmosphere of the neighbourhood healthy. The idea appears primitive, but morality thrives by it.

If men may not tar and feather a woman, women occasionally give themselves the pleasure of tarring and feathering a man, which shows once more how privileged woman is in America. On the 12th of August, 1887, the editor of a paper in a little town in Illinois had to submit to this ignominious operation at the hands of about five hundred of his townswomen. His crime was that of having spoken cavalierly of the feminine morals of the township.

The following is from the _New York World_:

"A few days ago, an editor living in Hammond, Indiana, was horsewhipped by three schoolgirls, because he published articles about them which they called falsehoods. They also threw red pepper in his eyes, and this is a crime punishable by long sentence in this State; so that it is expected they will be indicted."

Youth is often indiscreet. Those girls ought to have stopped at the horsewhipping, and been happy.

The susceptibilities of American women are sometimes very easily wounded:

A paper having announced a man's death under the heading, "John K. gone to a better home," the widow brought an action for libel against the editor.

The women are not content with beating the men in the market-place, they beat them at elections as well. During my stay in the States, the town of Oskaloosa, in the State of Kansas, returned all the women who put up as candidates for election to the Town Council. At the head of the poll was a Mrs. Lowman, who was proclaimed Mayor. It was said that for a year all the taverns and billiard-rooms of the town would be closed. When the result of the polling was known, the men pulled very long faces; but they finished by getting used to the idea of petticoat government, and in the evening they serenaded their Town Councilwomen.

The further west one goes, the more apparent becomes the power of the women; the further west one goes, the rarer does woman get. Is this the reason?

To every American hotel there is a ladies' entrance. This is to prevent contamination from the possible contact of man. When it rains or snows, an awning is thrown out over the pavement; but I daresay a permanent triumphal arch will ultimately be demanded by the ladies.

In the States of Kansas and Colorado, a woman on entering a railway train will touch a man on the shoulder, and say _almost_ politely, "I like that seat; you take another."

I was riding one day in a Chicago tramcar. The seats were all occupied; but in America that does not mean that the car is full, and presently the conductor let in a woman, who came and stood near my seat. At the moment of her entry I had my head turned, and it might have been twenty or thirty seconds before I perceived that she was standing in front of me. Then I rose and offered her my place. Do not imagine that she thanked me. She shot me a glance which clearly said, "Oh! you have made up your mind at last; you take your time over it." I need not say that she was not a lady; but, at any rate, she was well, even stylishly, dressed, and looked highly respectable. The American _lady_ accepts graciously and gracefully the homage men render her; but the vulgar woman exacts it as her due, and does not feel bound to give any such small change of politeness as thanks or smiles. Women are everywhere more p.r.o.ne than men to act as _parvenues_.

The arrival of a woman in any little town of the Far West puts the male part of the population in revolution. "Whose wife will she become?" is the great question of the day, and all the eligible men of the neighbourhood enroll themselves in the list of her suitors.

Here is a little story, the authenticity of which is guaranteed by the _Dublin Mail_:

Idaho territory lies very far west indeed, and there is an alarming scarcity of women there. This has been curiously ill.u.s.trated of late in the town of Waggon Wheel.

Recently two young ladies travelled to that remote region to attend to their dying brother. The poor fellow did not long require their services, and immediately after his death the sisters prepared to return home. Before, however, they could get away, nearly the whole population of the town--headed by the Mayor and other high officials--were making matrimonial overtures to them. Feeling ran very high during five or six anxious days; and the Mayor's chances, despite his mature years, ruled the betting at six to one. At the end of the week both young ladies had capitulated, and were duly engaged. The Mayor was, however, cut out by a handsome young miner. The wedding-day was fixed, and the mother of the young ladies was summoned upon the scene. Here troubles began. She duly arrived, and was hotly indignant with her daughters for the scant respect which they had manifested towards their brother's memory by such indecent haste to wed. The girls explained that they had literally been besieged, and had yielded to the overwhelming force of circ.u.mstances. As usual, explanations increased the offence; and the mother vowed that neither of them should be married out there at all--that, in fact, the engagements were "off," and that they must be off too. The cup of felicity was thus rudely dashed from the lips of the two accepted men, and they made haste to tell their sorrows to the town. An indignation meeting was held, and the Mayor appointed a committee to wait upon the irate matron in order to ask her to reconsider her resolution. The Mayor, with rare magnanimity, considering the cruel blow his own hopes had just received, placed himself at the head of the deputation, and, in the name of patriotism, humbly implored the good lady to grant the pet.i.tion, which he ardently urged. She, however, stood firmly on her parental rights, and declared she would not leave the town without her daughters. Then the genius of the Mayor shone forth like the sun. He blandly proposed a compromise. Why need she leave at all? He drew her attention, of course in most delicate terms, to the fact that she was fair, plump, and fifty odd, and that similar language might be taken as descriptive of himself. There and then he offered her his hand and heart, and the young ladies a kind father and protector.

That settled the matter, and three marriages took place with a great flourish of trumpets at Waggon Wheel.

CHAPTER XV.

_Dress.--My Light-Grey Trousers create a Sensation in a Pennsylvanian Town.--Women's Dress.--Style and Distinction.--Bonnets fit to Frighten a Choctaw.--Dress at the Theatre.--Ball Toilettes.--Draw a Veil over the Past, Ladies.--The Frogs and the Oxen.--Interest and Capital.--Dogs with Gold-filled Teeth.--Vulgarity._

In America, gentlemen's dress is plain, even severe: a high hat, black coat, dark trousers. Fancy cloth is little used, even in travelling.

I remember well the sensation I created with a pair of light-grey trousers in a small Pennsylvanian town. Everyone seemed to look at me as if I had been a strange animal; in the hotel the waitresses nudged one another, and scarcely repressed a giggle; and the street-urchins followed me as if I had been a member of the Sioux tribe in national costume. The day after my arrival, one of the local papers announced that "a Frenchman had landed in the town the day before in white trousers, and that his popularity had been as prompt as decisive."

With evening dress, the American gentleman wears no jewellery of any sort; even the watch-chain is generally invisible. Simplicity, rather severity, in dress is a mark of distinction in a man, and the American gentleman is no exception to the rule. This simplicity in the dress of the men serves to throw up the brilliant attire of the women.

American ladies dress very well, as a rule; but there are a great number who cover themselves with furbelows and jewels, and, so long as each item is costly, trouble themselves little about the general effect. The tailor-made gown is worn in New York, as in Paris; but there is a proportion of women, even among the cultivated cla.s.ses, who have the most sovereign contempt for all that is not silk, satin, or velvet. On board the _Germanic_ we had two American ladies making the journey from Liverpool to New York in silk dresses, one a _moire_! They were known to belong to good society.

Yes, in the large cities they dress well; but they lack the simplicity of style which the Princess of Wales has so happily inculcated in the Englishwomen who surround her. American women have plenty of style of their own, and have certainly also a great deal of distinction and grace; but they always look dressed for conquest. It is well to be it, but not well to show it. They are apt to laugh at the toilette of Englishwomen, and model their own dress more on French lines. For my part, I think that nothing can surpa.s.s a fresh young English girl in a cotton dress and simple straw hat.

The fashionable headgear, during my sojourn in the States, was a high, narrow construction, perched on the top of the head, and surmounted with feathers. At a certain distance it gave its wearer the look of an irate c.o.c.katoo. These monuments looked very heavy and difficult to maintain in equilibrium, and the ladies wearing them walked like grenadiers in busbies. There are French milliners in New York, I believe. Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes pretends that they deteriorate on American soil. I remember we got upon this subject during a pleasant chat about his early days in Paris, and he said, "By the time a French milliner has been six months in New York, she will make a bonnet to frighten a Choctaw Indian."

At the theatre, women wear silk, which prevents one from hearing, and hats a foot high, which prevent one from seeing.

An American was once asked what a play--which he might have _seen_--was like. "Very much like the back of ladies' bonnets," he answered.

Boston ladies are an exception to the general rule. They are a great deal more English in style, eschew show and glitter, and wear diamonds very sparingly, even in the evening.

But the most striking contrast may be seen by going straight from New York or Chicago to Canada. "Here we are in England once more," I thought, as I looked at a bevy of Canadian girls disporting themselves at an afternoon dance in Montreal. Half-a-dozen New York women would have had on the worth of all the fifty or sixty toilettes in the room.

I fell to talking with a Canadian of the New York belles, their extravagant elegance, and their feverish love of society turmoil.

"Yes," said he, "they are very smart; with them it is paint and feathers, and _hooray!_ all the time."

I was told that the Marchioness of Lorne, during her residence in Canada, had set the example of the greatest simplicity in dress.

American ball-toilettes are ravishing. Here the diamonds are in place. I do not know any gayer, more intoxicating sight than an American ballroom. The display of luxury is on a gigantic scale. The walls are covered with flowers, the rooms artistically lighted, the dancing animated, and the true spirit of gaiety everywhere visible. The young women are ideal in beauty and brilliancy; and if it were not for the atmosphere, which is hot enough to hatch silkworms, you would pa.s.s the evening in an ecstacy of enjoyment.

Low-necked dresses are much worn by American women, not only at b.a.l.l.s and dinners, but at their afternoon receptions. It seems very odd to us Europeans to see a lady in a low-necked ball-dress, at four in the afternoon, receiving her friends, who are habited in ordinary visiting toilettes or tailor-made gowns. I should not have said "ordinary," as there is nothing ordinary in America, especially in the way of women's dress. In France, a hostess seeks to make show of simplicity in her reception toilettes, so as to be likely to eclipse no one in her own house.

Low dresses are universal in America; old ladies vieing with young in the display of neck and shoulders. It is true, the Americans are not peculiar in this. Many times, in a European ballroom, have I longed to exclaim:

"Ladies, throw a veil over the past, I pray you."

You may see some wonderful costumes in the streets of the large towns, disguises rather than dresses. The well-bred woman wears quiet colours on the street, but the other wears loud ones. I have seen dresses of an orange terra-cotta shade trimmed with huge bands of bright green velvet; costumes of violet plush worn with sky-blue hats, and other atrocities enough to make one's eyes cry for mercy. Violet and blue! Oh, Oscar Wilde! I thought you had been in America.