Part 16 (1/2)
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 fas.h.i.+onable 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 s.h.i.+rt, 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 s.h.i.+ning 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._