Part 106 (2/2)
Then the old lady broke away and returned to her rural home. ”They took away my Shakespeare, and they took away my G.o.d,” said she; ”but when they took away my chemise I couldn't stand it.”
We have seen the home robbed and depleted as years have pa.s.sed; with struggle and objection, no doubt, but inevitably shrinking. Out went the shears and the carders, out went the dye tub and the spinning-wheels; big wool wheel, little flax wheel, all gone. Out went the clattering loom; out went the quilting-frame, the candle-mould, the little mallet to break up the tall blue-papered ”sugar loaves.”
Some of us have seen all these. In long remote places they are still to be found. In the neighborhood of Chicago's Hull House was found a woman to whom the spinning-wheel was a wonderful modern invention! She spun with a spindle--like Clotho.
Now why do reasoning people, seeing all this behind them, so dread and resist the next step before them--the eliminating of the kitchen? Shall we never learn, that as a means of feeding the world it is not a success? It does not bring health and happiness. Every competent woman is not a competent cook and never will be; any more than every man is a competent carpenter. The preparation of food is too important a task to be left to a private servant--whether hired or married.
There are reasons, many, and good, why the kitchen must go; reasons of health, of economy, of happiness; but this last reason is a good accelerator--the Horror of the Fly.
Here he is by millions and millions: Here She is, by trillions. Their hairy feet, their whiskered probosces, slop and paddle in every foul and nauseous thing. They sit twiddling their paws on the pauper's sickbed; and then twiddle those same paws on our warm chocolate-cake.
And every home that keeps a kitchen, with its attendant stables, helps to maintain and disseminate this scourge of humanity, this universal purveyor of infectious disease--The Kitchen Fly.
ALAS!
Have those in monstrous hats no glimmering dream Of the high beauty of the human head, House of the brain: seat of the sentient soul; Haloed for sainthood; crowned for royalty; Bright-ringed with roses, wreathed with n.o.ble bays, Most beautifully bound with s.h.i.+ning hair.
Alas for the soft glory they have lost!
Alas for the Ashantee wigs they wear!
Nor plait nor coil nor ringlet, but a ma.s.s Of shorn dead hair from poorer women's heads.
Of bulging wire and hard, stiff, glittering bands.
A heap no loving hand would long to touch.
This body is the glory of the world; The head the body's crown; but we on this Plant like a fool's-cap these preposterous forms.
Alas for women's folly; and alas For man, who likes his women to be fools, And carefully has bred them to this end.
HER PETS
She saw the pleasant living creatures; bright birds, scattering music in the air, fish like darting lights in the dark water; beasts with soft eyes and softer fur. Therefore to her house she brought them, in chains and cages and glaring jails of gla.s.s she kept them, prisoners and exiles all.
Out of the plenteous, pure water, freshened by free air, darkened by shadowing leaves and hidden ledges; away from pleasant chase of food desired; come the gold-red fish she loves; come to foul airless water, scant and warm, where they gasp faintly to and fro, in dim distress; come to the stale monotonous food that falls to them inert; come with their lidless eyes to the round high-placed globe of gla.s.s, set in a window in the sun, reflecting and refracting the fierce light from every side;--even as the Carthaginians tortured their prisoners she tortures the gold-red fish she loves.
Out of the billowing green boughs of the forest, the endless oceans of bright air, the refres.h.i.+ng rain, the winds that lift and rush and fill with wild rejoicing; out of the whispering darkness of deep leaves, the wide sweet light of sunlit hill and valley; away from pleasant chase of food desired; come the yellow song birds which she loves; come over land and sea in small tight wicker cells; come to prisons of gilded wires scarce larger; come to the smothering house air, the dull constant dreary walls, the sick heat, the smell of coal gas and the smoke of oil; to such stale monotonous food as falls to them inert; to hop and hop and hop, to sing madly to no end, and dream of flight,--to this come the birds she loves.
Out of his long wild past; lifted to be a.s.sistant in the chase, house guardian, brother shepherd; comes the friend of man to be the pet of woman. Down, down, he sinks; no shepherd, no hunter, no guardian now; far from the pleasant chase of food desired; only a pet, her pet.
Dwarfed, distorted, feeble; a snub-nosed monsterling; ears cropped, tail cut, hair shaved in ludicrous patches; collared and chained; basketed, blanketed, braceleted, _dressed,_--O last and utter ignominy!--stuffed on unnatural food till he waddles grossly, panting and diseased; so comes the dog she loves.
Of bird and beast and fish, her pets, what sacrifice is asked? They must first lose freedom, the essential joy of every life; fresh air, fresh water, the daily need of every life. They must lose the search and chase of natural food, the major occupation of every animal, deprived of which they are deprived of function; nerve, muscle, brain,--all must deteriorate, disused. They must lose the joy of long adaptation to environment; no few generations in houses can overcome the longings bred in countless ages for sky and river, forest and plain and hill.
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