The Orpheus C. Kerr Papers Volume Ii Part 18

"Ha!" says Villiam, with dignity; "do you discover a flaw in the great chain woven by the United States of America around the doomed Confederacy?"

Captain Bob Shorty again scratched his head, and says he:

"I don't wish to make unpleasant insinuations; but it seems to me that this here body of infantry has left itself on the wrong side of the stream!"

And so it had, my boy. By one of those little mistakes which will sometimes occur in the most victorious armies, the Conic Section had thoughtlessly _crossed the bridge_ before destroying it, thus leaving themselves on one side of the river, while the riotous Confederacies were on the other.

How they got across again, at a fordable place higher up, just in time to see the Confederacies cross again, at a fordable place lower down, I will not pause to tell you, as such information might r.e.t.a.r.d enlistments.

Once more stationing myself near the General of the Mackerel Brigade, who sat astride his funereal charger like the equestrian statue of the Duke of Wellington, I was watching his motions attentively, when a body of hors.e.m.e.n suddenly dashed by him, and I saw, as they disappeared, that he was left bareheaded.

"Thunder!" says the general, winking very violently in the sunlight, and rattling his sword in a fearless manner, "where's my cap gone to?"

There was a respectful Mackerel chap at hand, and says he:

"I think it was took by the equestrian Confederacy, which has jest made another raid."

"Hum!" says the general, thoughtfully, "that's very true. Thunder!"

says the general to himself, as it were: "this is all Greeley's work."

Pondering deeply over this last remark, I sauntered to another part of the field, where the Orange County Howitzers were being prepared to repel the charge of a regiment of Confederacies, who had just come within our lines for the purpose. The artillery was well handled, my boy, and not a piece would have been captured but for the splendid discipline of the gunners. They were too well disciplined to dispute orders, my boy; and as Captain Samyule Sa-mith had accidentally forgotten to give the order to "load" before he told them to fire, the effect of our metal upon the hostile force was not as inflammatory as it might have been.

The next I saw of Samyule, he was making his report to the general, who received him with much enthusiasm.

"Where are your guns, my child?" says the general, with paternal affability.

Samyule blew his nose in a business-like manner, and says he;

"Several of them have just gone South."

I am unable to state what response the general intended to make, my boy; for at this instant a body of hors.e.m.e.n swept between the speakers, one of the riders jerking the veteran's horse violently from under him, and galloping the steed away with him. Up sprang the general, in a violent perspiration, and says he:

"Where's my horse gone to?"

"I guess," says a Mackerel chap, stepping up--"I guess that it was took by the equestrian Confederacy, which has just made another raid."

"Thunder!" says the general, "they'll take my coat and vest next." And he retired to a spot nearer Washington.

I would gladly continue my narrative of the advance movement, my boy, showing how our forces continued their march in excellent order, safely reaching a spot within ten miles of the place they gained on the following day; but such revelations would simply tend to confuse your weak mind with those great doubts concerning military affairs which tend to render civilization impertinently critical.

It is the simple duty of civilians, my boy, to implicitly trust our bra.s.s-b.u.t.toned generals; of whom there are enough to furnish the whole world with war--and never finish it at that.

Yours, weekly, ORPHEUS C. KERR.

LETTER LXVI.

IN WHICH OUR CORRESPONDENT ASTONISHES US BY ENGAGING IN SINGLE COMBAT WITH M. MICHELET, AND DEMOLISHING "L'AMOUR" AND "LA FEMME."

WASHINGTON, D. C., Sept. 4th, 1862.

While I was lounging in a banker's drawing-room this morning, my boy, waiting for the filthy lucre chap to come down and say that he was glad to see me, I chanced to see the eternal "L'Amour" and "La Femme" lying upon a table in the apartment. The sight threw me into a bad humor, for I detest those books, my boy, and wish the United States of America had never seen them.

Monsieur Michelet, a French individual of questionable morals, first writes a book about "Love," and then clinches it with one about "Woman." It is hardly necessary to add, that he treats both subjects in a thoroughly French manner, and makes one a continuation of the other.

Love is a charming little story in every man's life, "complete in one number"--Number one. Woman is a love-story, "to be continued" until, like all other continued stories, it ends with marriage!

Such is the logic implied by Monsieur Michelet's two books, and whether it is calculated to elevate or degrade the weaker s.e.x, a majority of educated American women have eagerly read the books and accepted the sentiments as so many compliments. And the men? They leisurely rove through the leaves of monsieur's mental Valambrosa, and say: "How Frenchy!" And in that natural exclamation we find the most complete and just criticism of "L'Amour" and "La Femme" possible to American lips or pen.

This Michelet, my boy, is a man of talent and remarkably clear poetical perception. He is as much like Hallam as a Frenchman can be like an Englishman, and France honors him for his development of the poetry of her history; but is that any reason why he should be accepted as the modern High-priest of Love and the Censor of Woman? By no means. Madame de Stael was thinking of a Frenchman when she wrote: "Love is only an episode in man's life"--and may have referred to herself when she added: "but it is woman's whole existence." Had an American woman spoken this, we should suspect the sentiment to be nothing more than the reproach of a disappointed pa.s.sion; but of the Frenchman it is indisputably true, as well as of woman wherever we find her.

The French do not know what Fidelity means, my boy; they have chameleon souls, and remain true to one object only until another comes within their reach. Like mad bulls, they are attracted by the quiescent warmth of fiery-red; and, having attained it, tear it to pieces in their pa.s.sion.

What can such people know about Love? Nothing. They call Love "L'Amour," and when we speak of a man's "amours," we mean that he "loves" like a Frenchman. Monsieur Michelet is a Frenchman; and supposing him to be an ordinary one, we must accept his sentiments regarding Woman as we would those of an Apicius regarding a delicacy he apostrophizes before devouring. But Michelet's temperament is poetical, and while he looks upon Woman as a foretaste of the sensualist's paradise, and upon Love as the means of gaining it, he covers up the grossness of his ideas with robes borrowed from the angels. Adopting Kepler's canon, that "harmony is the perfection of relations," he makes Woman, the creature, a continuation of Love, the sentiment; and the tenor of his "L'Amour" and "La Femme" is, that both must be possessed by man, in order to perfect the union which makes them a perfect One.

Wherever I go I find these books: cheek to cheek they repose on the carved table of the lady's boudoir; shoulder to shoulder they stand on the library shelf; _tete-a-tete_ they give the rich centre-table an equivocal aspect. Young men and maidens, old men and matrons, children and chambermaids read them; yet they have no social effect. Woman understands love and herself; Man thinks he understands both; and the fict.i.tious fervor of Monsieur Michelet has no more effect upon either than so much prismatic froth. It addresses itself piquantly to the eye, and murmurs like a sh.e.l.l in the ear; but once out of sight and hearing, and it is only an excuse for light talk and laxity of thought.

I am glad to record this; it shows that our national morality is in no danger of being wrecked on the French coast by any such tropical gales as Michelet, Feydeau, or Dumas can blow. Let our publishers bring over a few more cargoes from the Augaean stables of French literature in English bottoms, and I will guarantee them large profits. We will read them, and immediately forget all about it.

But to return to Michelet again. Our women read his "Woman," and imagine that it compliments their s.e.x--flatters them. Fortunate is it, that flattery very seldom changes a woman's character, though it may sway her judgment. She accepts it as her right, but seldom believes it.

Queen Elizabeth graciously extended her hand to be kissed when her n.o.ble lover compared her to "the sun, whose faintest ray extinguishes the brightest planet;" yet that same hand had signed the flatterer's death-warrant. At the moment she was pleased, and her good sense dazed; but her heart was not reached. Flattery, skillfully administered, may add fuel to a woman's love; but the fire must first be kindled with something more sympathetic. An American woman may read "La Femme," and complacently receive its subtle _equivoques_ as so much fuel added to her vanity; but that vanity was kindled into existence in the first place by the genuine homage of some honest man.

It was Michelet's "Woman," my boy, that suggested this letter; yet I did not intend, at the outset, to devote so much s.p.a.ce to his unwholesome sophistry. If I have shown, however, that Michelet's "Woman" is only such a being as he would have created under that name, could he have changed places with the Deity, I have not wasted time and ink. Thank fortune, there is but one French deity, and his proper name commences with a D.

Now, let me give my own idea of Woman--not "La Femme."

As she stands before me in the light of Nature, she is no "enigma," as voluntarily-puzzled poets have called her; but a being easily defined, and not more nearly related to the angels than man. To the best of her s.e.x we attribute one natural weakness and one virtue--Curiosity and Modesty. Everybody must allow this much. But why should we make such a distinction between these two qualities? Let us trace them back to their exemplar:

Eve's curiosity was the first effect of her serpentine temptation. Was it not? Well, that curiosity caused her to eat the forbidden fruit.

Having eaten it, and caused Adam to eat, she suddenly became possessed of modesty, and made herself an ap.r.o.n of fig-leaves. It is but natural to infer that her first blush was worn at the same time, though Milton attributes blushes to the angels. As angels are immaterial beings, I think Milton was mistaken. Now, if modesty, as well as curiosity, was the result of Satanic temptation, why should one be called a weakness and the other a virtue? Are not both the fruits of original sin?

Woman's love is said to be stronger and more lasting than man's. Is it so? Let us trace it back to its beginning:

Eve's love for Adam did not prevent her fall. She met the Prince of Darkness and listened to his blandishments, as too many ladies of the present time prefer the society of bogus courtiers to that of their Adams of husbands. She forever disgraced Adam, herself, and her future family, just to please the tempter. Was this a proof the depth and vitality of Woman's love? And Adam? Why, rather than refuse any request of the woman he loved, however extravagant, he voluntarily shared in her ruin, and courted the curse of her fall. Did this prove that Man's love is weaker and shorter-lived than Woman's?

Now, I should like to see some one impudent enough to a.s.sert that Eve was more curious, or less modest, or more fickle than are the best of her female descendants. Such impudence is not compatible with the present position of civilization. Then, as Eve was the great exemplar of her s.e.x in Modesty and Fidelity as well as Curiosity, it follows that Woman's Modesty is the result of inherited sin, and her Fidelity in Love no greater than Man's.

Alas! for the "angels" of the poets, my boy. Prove that her Modesty and Love are anything but heavenly, and what remains to make Woman angelic?

I could honor, love, and might obey the Best of Her s.e.x; but I shall never worship her. She is not a Deity--only a Woman. I believe that G.o.d intends each woman for a wife; yet six marriages out of every dozen are unhappy ones. And what is the reason? Simply this:

Before marriage, man generally accepts one of the two poetical theories respecting Woman. He either supposes her to be an angel, purer and more elevated in her nature than he in his; or gloats over her as a delicate morsel prepared for his special delectation by the G.o.ds. In either case, he finds out his mistake when it is too late to rectify it, and his disappointment is but the refinement of disgust. He either discovers that woman is only a human being, and very much like himself by nature; or that constant familiarity with her brings her down to the level of a man in his estimation. There is but one possibility of escape from disappointment in either case; the death of husband or wife within a year of the wedding day!

Husbands and wives, have I spoken truly?

But there are exceptions to every rule. Some men marry women for the sake of having homes of their own; others, for money; still others, because it is the fashion. The man who marries for a comfortable home often gets what he desired, and is contented; the mercenary husband is likely to do and feel the same; the fashionable husband generally cuts his throat. These exceptions do not break the rule.