Fern Leaves from Fanny's Portfolio, series two (Auburn & Buffalo: Miller, Orton & Mulligan, 1854)
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A MOTHER'S INFLUENCE.
"And so you sail to-morrow, Will? I shall miss you."
"Yes; I'm bound to see the world. I've been beating my wings in desperation against the wires of my cage these three years. I know every stick, and stone, and stump in this odious village by heart, as well as I do those stereotyped sermons of Parson Grey's. They say he calls me 'a scapegrace'--pity I should have the name without the game," said he, bitterly. "I have n't room here to run the length of my chain. I'll show him what I can do in a wider field of action."
"But how did you bring your father over?"
"Oh, he's very glad to be rid of me; quite disgusted because I've no fancy for seeing corn and oats grow. The truth is, every father knows at once too much and too little about his own son; the old gentleman never understood me; he soured my temper, which is originally none of the best, roused all the worst feelings in my nature, and is constantly driving me from instead of to the point he would have me reach."
"And your mother?"
"Well, there you have me; that's the only humanized portion of my heart--the only soft spot in it. She came to my bed-side last night, after she thought I was asleep, gently kissed
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my forehead, and then knelt by my bed-side. Harry, I've been wandering round the fields all the morning, to try to get rid of that prayer. Old Parson Grey might preach at me till the millennium, and he would n't move me any more than that stone. It makes all the difference in the world when you know a person feels what they are praying about. I'm wild and reckless and wicked, I suppose; but I shall never be an infidel while I can remember my mother. You should see the way she bears my father's impetuous temper; that's grace, not nature, Harry; but don't let us talk about it--I only wish my parting with her was well over. Good-bye; God bless you, Harry; you'll hear from me, if the fishes don't make a supper of me;" and Will left his friend and entered the cottage.
Will's mother was moving nervously and restlessly about, tying up all sorts of mysterious little parcels that only mothers think of, "in case he should be sick," or in case he should be this, that, or the other, interrupted occasionally by exclamations like this from the old farmer: "Fudge--stuff--great overgrown baby--making a fool of him--never be out of leading strings;" and then turning short about and facing Will as he entered, he said,
"Well, sir, look in your sea-chest, and you'll find ginger-bread and physic, darning-needles and tracts, 'bitters' and Bibles, peppermint and old linen rags, and opodeldoc. Pshaw! I was more of a man than you are when I was nine years old. Your mother always made a fool of you, and that was entirely unnecessary, too, for you were always short of what is called common sense. You need n't tell the captain you went to sea
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because you did n't know enough to be a landsman; or that you never did any thing right in your life, except by accident. You are as like that ne'er do well Jack Halpine, as two peas. If there is anything in you, I hope the salt water will fetch it out. Come, your mother has your supper ready, I see."
Mrs. Low's hand trembled as she passed her boy's cup. It was his last meal under that roof for many a long day. She did not trust herself to speak--her heart was too full. She heard all his father so injudiciously said to him, and she knew too well from former experience the effect it would have upon his impetuous, fiery spirit. She had only to oppose to it a mother's prayers, and tears, and all-enduring love. She never condemned in Will's hearing, any of his father's philippics; always excusing him with the general remark that he did n't understand him. Alone, she mourned over it; and when with her husband, tried to place matters on a better footing for both parties.
Will noted his mother's swollen eyelids; he saw his favorite little tea-cakes that she busied herself in preparing for him, and he ate and drank what she gave him, without tasting a morsel he swallowed, listening for the hundredth time to his father's account of "what he did when he was a young man."
"Just half an hour, Will," said his father, "before you start; run up and see if you have forgotten any of your duds."
It was the little room he had always called his own. How many nights he had lain there listening to the rain pattering on the low roof; how many mornings awakened by the chirp of the robin in the apple-tree under the window. There was the
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little bed with the snowy covering, and the thousand and one little comforts prepared by his mother's hand. He turned his head--she was at his side, her arms about his neck. "God keep my boy!" was all she could utter. He knelt at her feet as in the days of childhood, and from those wayward lips came this tearful prayer, "Oh God, spare my mother, that I may look upon her face again in this world!"
Oh, in after days, when that voice had died out from under the parental roof, how sacred was that spot to her who gave him birth! There was hope for the boy! he had recognized his mother's God. By that invisible silken cord she still held the wanderer, though broad seas roll between.
Letters came to Moss Glen--at stated intervals, then more irregularly, picturing only the bright spots in his sailor life (for Will was proud, and they were to be scanned by his father's eye.) The usual temptations of a sailor's life when in port were not unknown to him. Of every cup the syren Pleasure held to his lips, he drank to the dregs; but there were moments in his maddest revels, when that angel whisper, "God keep my boy," palsied his daring hand, and arrested the half-uttered oath. Disgusted with himself, he would turn aside for an instant, but only to drown again more recklessly "that still small torturing voice."
"You're a stranger in these parts," said a rough farmer to a sun-burnt traveller. "Look as though you'd been in foreign parts."
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"Do I?" said Will, slouching his hat over his eyes. "Who lives in that little cottage under the hill?"
"Old Farmer low--and a tough customer he is, too; it's a word and a blow with him. The old lady has had a hard time of it, good as she is, to put up with all his kinds and quirks. She bore it very well till the lad went away; and then she began to droop like a willow in a storm, and lose all heart, like. Doctor's stuff did n't do any good, as long as she got no news of the boy. She's to be buried this afternoon, sir."
Poor Will staid to hear no more, but tottered in the direction of the cottage. He asked no leave to enter, but passed over the threshold into the little "best parlor," and found himself alone with the dead. It was too true! Dumb were the lips that should have welcomed him; and the arms that should have enfolded him were crossed peacefully over the heart that beat true to him till the last.
Conscience did its office. Long years of mad folly passed in swift review before him; and over that insensible form a vow was made, and registered in Heaven.
"Your mother should have lived to see this day, Will," said a gray-haired old man, as he leaned on the arm of the clergyman, and passed into the village church.
"Bless God, my dear father, there is 'joy in Heaven over one sinner that repenteth;' and of all the angel band, there is one seraph hand that sweeps more rapturously its harp to-day for 'the lost that is found.'"
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MR. PUNCH MISTAKEN.
"A man will own that he is in the wrong--a woman, never; she is only mistaken."--Punch.
Mr. Punch, did you ever see an enraged American female? She is the expressed essence of wild-cats. Perhaps you did n't know it, when you penned that incendiary paragraph; or, perhaps you thought that in crossing the "big pond," salt water might neutralize it; or, perhaps you flattered yourself we should not see it, over here; but here it is, in my clutches, in good strong English: I am not even "mistaken."
"Now, if you will bring me a live specimen of the genus homo, who was ever known "to own that he was in the wrong," I will draw in my horns and claws, and sneak ingloriously back into my American shell. But you can't do it, Mr. Punch! You never saw that curiosity, either in John Bull's skin or Brother Jonathan's. 'Tis an animal which has never yet been discovered, much less captured.
A man own he was in the wrong! I guess so! You might tear him in pieces with red-hot pincers, and he would keep on singing out "I did n't do it; I did n't do it." No, Mr. Punch, a man never "owns up" when he is in the wrong; especially if the matter in question be one which he considers of no im-
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portance; for instance, the non-delivery of a letter, which may have been entombed in his pocket for six weeks.
No sir; he just settles himself down behind his dickey, folds his belligerent hands across his stubborn diaphragm, plants his antagonistic feet down on terra-firma as if there were a stratum of loadstone beneath him, and thunders out,
"Come one, come all; this rock shall fly
From its firm base, as soon as I."
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FERN MUSINGS.
I never was on an August school committee, but, if I was, I'd make a sine-qua-non that no school-marm should be inaugurated who had not been a married mother; I do n't believe in old maids; they all know very well that they have n't fulfilled their female destiny, and I would n't have then wreaking their bilious vengeance on my urchins, (if I had any.) No woman gets the acid effectually out of her temper, till she has taken matrimony "the natural way."
No; I do n't believe in spinster educational teaching any more than I do in putting dried up old bachelors on the school committee. What bowels of mercies have either, I'd like to know, for the poor little restless victims of narrow benches and short recesses? The children are to "hold up their hands" (are they?) if they have a request to make? What good does that do, if the teacher won't take any notice of the Free Mason sign? "They are not to enter complaints." So some poor timid little girl must be pinched black and blue by a little Napoleon in jacket and trowsers, till she is forced to shriek out with pain, when she is punished by being kept half an hour after school for "making a disturbance!" They are "not to eat in school," are they? Perhaps they have made an indifferent breakfast; (perhaps they are poor, and have had none at all,
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and, A, B, C, D, does n't digest well on an empty stomach;) but the spinster teacher can hear them recite with a tempting bunch of grapes in her hand, which she leisurely devours before their longing eyes.
They "must not smile in school," must they? Not when "Tom Hood" in a pinafore, cuts up some sly prank that brings "down the house;" yes--and the ferule too, on everybody's hand but his own; (for he has a way of drawing on his "deacon face," to order.)
They may go out in recess, but they must speak in a whisper out doors, as if they all had the bronchitis! No matter if Queen Victoria should ride by, no little brimless hat must go up in the air till "the committee had set on it!"
Oh fudge! I should like to keep school myself. I'd make "rag babies" for the little girls, and "soldier caps" for the boys; and I do n't think I would make a rule that they should not sneeze till school was dismissed; and when their little cheeks began to flush, and their little heads droop wearily on their plump shoulders, I'd hop up and play, "hunt the slipper;" or, if we were in the country, we'd race over the meadow, and catch butterflies, or frogs, or toads, or snakes, or anything on earth except a "school committee."
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THE TIME TO CHOOSE.
"The best time to choose a wife is early in the morning. If a young lady is at all inclined to sulks and slatternness, it is just before breakfast. As a general thing, a woman don't get on her temper, till after 10 A. M."--Young Man's Guide.
Men never look slovenly before breakfast; no, indeed. They never run round in their stocking feet, vestless, with dressing-gown inside out; soiled handkerchief hanging out of the pocket by one corner. Minus dicky--minus neck-tie; pantaloon straps flying; suspenders streaming from their waist[b]and; chin shaved on one side, and lathered on the other; hair like porcupine quills; face all in a snarl of wrinkles because the fire wont kindle, and because it snows, and because the office boy do n't come for the keys, and because the newspaper has n't arrived, and because they lost a bet the night before, and because there's an omelet instead of a broiled chicken, for breakfast, and because they are out of sorts and shaving soap, out of cigars and credit, and because they can't "get their temper on" till they get some money and a mint julep.
Any time "before ten o'clock," is the time to choose a husband--perhaps!
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SPRING IS COMING.
Tiny blades of grass are struggling between the city's pavements. Fathers, and husbands, sighing, look at the tempting shop windows, dolefully counting the cost of a "spring outfit." Muffs, and boas, and tippets, are among the things that were; and shawls, and "Talmas," and mantles, and "little loves of bonnets," reign supreme, though maiden aunts, and sage mammas, still mutter--"East winds, east winds," and choose the sunnier sidewalk.
Housekeepers are making a horrible but necessary Babel, stripping up carpets, and disembowelling old closets, chests, and cupboards. Advertisements already appear in the newspapers, setting forth the superior advantages of this or that dog-day retreat. Mrs. Jones drives Mr. Jones distracted, at a regular hour every evening, hammering about "change of scene, and air," and the "health of the dear children;" which, translated, means a quantity of new bonnets and dresses, and a trip to Saratoga, for herself and intimate friend, Miss Hob-Nob; while Jones takes his meals at a restaurant--sleeps in the deserted house, sews on his missing buttons and dickey strings, and spends his leisure time where Mrs. Jones don't visit.
Spring is coming!
Handsome carriages roll past, freighted with lovely women,
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(residents of other cities, for an afternoon ride.) Dash on, ladies! You will scarcely find the environs of Boston surpassed, where-ever you may drive. A thousand pleasant surprises await you; lovely winding paths and pretty cottages, and more ambitious houses with groups of statuary hidden amid the foliage. But forget not to visit our sweet Mount Auburn. Hush the light laugh and merry jest as the gray-haired porter throws wide the gate for your prancing horses to tread the hallowed ground. The dark old pines throw out their protecting arms above you, and in their dense shade sleep eyes as bright, forms as lovely, as your own--while "the mourners go about the streets." Rifle not, with sacrilegious hand, the flowers which bloom at the headstone--tread lightly over the beloved dust! Each tenanted grave entombs bleeding, living hearts; each has its history, which eternity alone shall reveal.
Spring is coming!
The city belle looks fresh as a new-blown rose--tossing her bright curls in triumph, at her faultless costume and beautiful face. Her lover's name is Legion--for she hath also golden charms! Poor little butterfly! bright, but ephemeral! You were made for something better. Shake the dust from your earth-stained wings and--soar!
Spring is coming!
From the noisome lanes and alleys of the teeming city, swarm little children, creeping forth like insects to bask in God's sunshine--so free to all. Squalid, forsaken, neglected; they are yet of those to whom the Sinless said, "Suffer little children to come unto me." The disputed crust, the savage curse, the
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brutal blow, their only patrimony! One's heart aches to call THIS childhood! No "spring!" no summer, to them! Noisome sights, noisome sounds, noisome odors! and the leprosy of sin following them like a curse! One longs to fold to the warm heart those little forsaken ones; to smooth those matted ringlets; to throw between them and sin the shield of virtue--to teach their little lisping lips to say "Our Father!"
Spring is coming!
Yes, its blue skies are over us--its soft breezes shall fan us--the fragrance of its myriad flowers be wafted to us. Its mossy carpet shall be spread for our careless feet--our languid limbs shall be laved at its cool fountains. Its luscious fruits shall send health through our leaping veins--while from mountain top, and wooded hill, and flower-wreathed valley, shall float one glad anthem of praise from tiniest feathered throats!
Dear reader! From that human heart of thine shall no burst of grateful thanks arise to Him who giveth all? While nature adores--shall man be dumb? God forbid!
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STEAMBOAT SIGHTS AND REFLECTIONS.
I am looking, from the steamer's deck, upon as fair a sunrise as ever poet sang or painter sketched, or the earth ever saw. Oh, this broad, blue, rushing river! sentineled by these grand old hills, amid which the silvery mist wreaths playfully; half shrouding the little eyrie homes, where love wings the uncounted hours; while looming up in the hazy distance, is the Babel city, with glittering spires and burnished panes--one vast illumination. My greedy eye with miserly eagerness devours it all, and hangs it up in Memory's cabinet, a fadeless picture; upon which dame Fortune (the jilt) shall never have a mortgage.
Do you see yonder figure leaning over the railing of the boat, gazing on all this outspread wealth of beauty? One longs to hear his lips give utterance to the burning thoughts which cause his eye to kindle and his face to glow. A wiry sister, (whose name should be "Martha," so careful, so troubled looks her spinstership,) breaks the charmed spell by asking him, in a cracked treble, "if them porters on the pier can be safely trusted with her bandbox and umberil." My stranger eyes meet his, and we both laugh involuntarily--(pardon us, oh ye prim ones)--without an introduction!
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Close at my elbow sits a rough countryman, with so much "free soil" adhering to his brogans they might have been used for beet-beds, and a beard rivaled only by Nebuchadnezzar's when he experimented on a grass diet. He has only one word to express his overpowering emotions at the glowing panorama before us, and that is "pooty,"--houses, trees, sky, rafts, railroad cars and river, all are "pooty;" and when, in the fulness of a soul craving sympathy, he turned to his dairy-fed Eve to endorse it, that matter-of-fact feminine shower-bath-ed his enthusiasm, by snarling out "pooty enough, I 'spose, but where's my breakfast?"
Ah! here we are at the pier, at last. And now they emerge, our night-travelers, from state-room and cabin into the fresh cool air of the morning. Venus and Apollo! what a crew. Solemn as a hearse, surly as an Englishman, blue as an indigo-bag! There's a poor shivering babe, twitched from a warm bed by an ignorant young mother, to encounter the chill air of morning, with only a flimsy covering of lace and embroidery;--there's a languid southern belle, creeping out, a´ la tortoise, and turning up her little aristocratic nose as if she sniffed a pestilence;--there's an Irish bride (green as Erin) in a pearl-colored silk dress surmounted by a coarse blanket shall;--there's a locomotive hour-glass, (alias a dandy,) a blue-eyed, cravat-choked, pantaloon be-striped, vest-garnished, disgusting "institution!" (give him and his quizzing glass plenty of sea-room);--and there's a clergyman, God bless his care-worn face, with a valise full of salted-down sermons and the long-coveted "leave of absence;"--there's an editor, kicking a
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newsboy for bringing "coals to Newcastle" in the shape of "extras;"--and there's a good-natured, sunshiny "family man," carrying the baby, and the carpet-bag, and the traveling shawl, lest his pretty little wife should get weary;--and there's a poor bonnetless emigrant, stunned by the Babel sounds, inquiring, despairingly, the name of some person whom nobody knows or cares for;--and last, but not least, there's the wiry old maid "Martha," asking "thim porters on the pier," with tears in her faded green eyes, to be "keerful of her bandbox and umberil."
On they go. Oh, how much of joy--how much of sorrow, in each heart's unwritten history.
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GOTHAM REVERIE.
Babel, what a place!--what a dust--what a racket--what a whiz-buzz! What a throng of human beings. "Jew and Gentile, bond and free;" every nation the sun ever shone upon, here represented. What pampered luxury--what squalid misery, on the same paveé. What unwritten histories these myriad hearts might unfold. How much of joy, how much of sorrow, how much of crime. Now, queenly beauty sweeps past, in sin's gay livery. Cursed he who first sent her forth, to walk the earth, with her woman's brow shame-branded. Fair mother--pure wife--frown scornfully at her if you can; my heart aches for her. I see one who once slept, sweet and fair, on a mother's loving breast. I see one whose bitterest tear may never wash her stain away. I see one on whom mercy's gate is forever shut, by her own unrelenting, unforgiving sex. I see one who was young, beautiful, poor and friendless. They who make long prayers, and wrap themselves up in self-righteousness, as with a garment, turned a deaf ear, as she plead for the bread of honest toil. Earth looks cold, and dark, and dreary; feeble feet stumbled wearily on life's rugged, thorny road. Oh, judge her not harshly, pure but frigid censor; who shall say that with her desolation--her temptation--your name too might not have been written "Magdalen."
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SICKNESS COMES TO YOU IN THE CITY.
How unmercifully the heavy cart wheels rattle over the stony pavements; how unceasing the tramp of busy, restless feet; how loud and shrill the cries of mirth and traffic. You turn heavily to your heated pillow, murmuring, "Would God it were night!" The pulse of the great city is stilled at last; and balmy sleep, so coveted, seems about to bless you--when hark! a watchman's rattle is sprung beneath your window, evoking a score of stentorian voices, followed by a clanging bell, and a rushing engine, announcing a conflagration. Again you turn to your sleepless pillow; your quivering nerves and throbbing temples sending to your pale lips this prayer, "Would to God it were morning!"
Death comes, and releases you. You are scarcely missed. Your next-door neighbor, who has lived within three feet of you for three years, may possibly recollect having seen the doctor's chaise before your door, for some weeks past; then, that the front blinds were closed; then, that a coffin was carried in; and he remarks to his wife, as he takes up the evening paper, over a comfortable dish of tea, that "he should n't wonder if neighbor Grey were dead," and then they read your
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name and age in the bill of mortality, and wonder "what disease you died of;" and then the servant removes the tea-tray, and they play a game of whist, and never think of you again, till they see the auctioneer's flag floating before your door.
The house is sold; and your neighbor sees your widow and little ones pass out over the threshold in tears and sables (grim poverty keeping them silent company); but what of that? The world is full of widows and orphans; one can't always be thinking of a charnel-house; and so he returns to his stocks and dividends, and counting-room, and ledger, in a philosophical state of serenity.
Some time after, he is walking with a friend; and meets a lady in rusty mourning, carrying a huge bundle, from which "slop work" is seen protruding, (a little child accompanies her, with its feet out at the toes.) She has a look of hopeless misery on her fine but sad features. She is a lady still (spite of her dilapidated wardrobe and her bundle.) Your neighbor's companion touches his arm, and says, "Good God! is n't that Grey's widow?" He glances at her carelessly, and answers, "Should n't wonder;" and invites him home to dine on trout, cooked in claret, and hot-house peaches, at half a dollar a-piece.
SICKNESS COMES TO YOU IN THE COUNTRY.
On the fragrant breeze, through your latticed window, comes the twitter of the happy swallow, the chirp of the robin, and
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the drowsy hum of the bee. From your pillow you can watch the shadows come and go, over the clover meadow, as the clouds go drifting by. Rustic neighbors lean on their spades at sunset at your door, and with sympathising voices "hope you are better." The impatient hoof of the prancing horse is checked by the hand of pity; and the merry shout of the sunburnt child (musical though it be,) dies on the cherry lip, at the uplifted finger of compassion. A shower of rose-leaves drifts in over your pillow, on the soft sunset zephyr. Oh, earth is passing fair; but Heaven is fairer!
Its portals unclose to you! Kind, neighborly hands wipe the death-damp from your brow; speak words of comfort to your weeping wife, caress your unconscious children. Your fading eye takes it all in, but your tongue is powerless to speak its thanks. They close your drooping lids, they straighten your manly limbs, they lay your weary head on its grassy pillow, they bedew it with sympathetic tears; they pray God, that night, in their cottage homes, to send His kind angel down, to whisper words of peace to the broken hearts you have left behind.
They do something besides pray. From unknown hands, the widow's "cruse of oil," and "barrel of meal," are oft replenished. On your little orphans' heads, many a rough palm is laid, with tearful blessing. Many a dainty peach, or pear, or apple is tossed them, on their way to school. Many a ride they get "to mill," or "hay-field," or "village," while their mother shades her moistened eyes in the door-way, quite unable to speak. The old farmer sees it; and knowing better how to be-
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stow a kindness than to bear such expressive thanks, cuts Dobbin in the flanks, then starting tragically at the premeditated rear, asks her, with an hysterical laugh, "if she ever saw such an uneasy beast!"
Wide open fly their cottage doors and hearts, at "Christmas" and "Thanksgiving," for your stricken household. There may be little city etiquette at the feast, there may be ungrammatical words and unfelicitous expressions,--but, thank God, unchilled by selfishness, unshrivelled by avarice, human hearts throb warmly there--loving--pitiful--Christ-like!
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HUNGRY HUSBANDS.
"The hand that can make a pie is a continual feast to the husband that marries its owner."
Well, it is a humiliating reflection, that the straightest road to a man's heart is through his palate. He is never so amiable as when he has discussed a roast turkey. Then's your time, "Esther," for "half his kingdom," in the shape of a new bonnet, cap, shawl, or dress. He's too complacent to dispute the matter. Strike while the iron is hot; petition for a trip to Niagara, Saratoga, the Mammoth Cave, the White Mountains, or to London, Rome, or Paris. Should he demur about it, the next day cook him another turkey, and pack your trunk while he is eating it.
There's nothing on earth so savage--except a bear robbed of her cubs--as a hungry husband. It is as much as your life is worth to sneeze, till dinner is on the table, and his knife and fork are in vigorous play. Tommy will get his ears boxed, the ottoman will be kicked into the corner, your work-box be turned bottom upwards, and the poker and tongs will beat a tattoo on that grate that will be a caution to dilatory cooks.
After the first six mouthfuls you may venture to say your soul is your own; his eyes will lose their ferocity; his brow its
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furrows, and he will very likely recollect to help you to a cold potato! Never mind--eat it. You might have to swallow a worse pill--for instance, should he offer to kiss you!
Well, learn a lesson from it--keep him well fed and languid--live yourself on a low diet, and cultivate your thinking powers; and you'll be as spry as a cricket, and hop over all the objections and remonstrances that his dead-and-alive energies can muster. Yes, feed him well, and he will stay contentedly in his cage, like a gorged anaconda. If he were my husband, would n't I make him heaps of pison things! Bless me! I've made a mistake in the spelling; it should have been pies and things!
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OR, WHO IS RESPONSIBLE?
It was a simple dress of snowy muslin, innocent of the magic touch of a French modiste. There was not an inch of lace upon it, nor a rosette, nor a flower; it was pure, and simple, and unpretending as its destined wearer. A pair of white kid gloves, of fairy-like proportions, lay beside it, also a tiny pair of satin slippers. There was no bridal trousseau; no--Meta had no rich uncles, or aunts, or cousins,--no consistent god-parents who, promising at her baptism that she should "renounce the pomp and vanities of the world," redeemed their promise by showering at her bridal feet, diamonds enough to brighten many a starving fellow-creature's pathway to the tomb.
Did I say there was no bridal trousseau? There was one gift, a little clasp Bible, with "Meta Grey" written on the flyleaf, in the bridegroom's bold, handsome hand. Perchance some gay beauty, who reads this, may curl her rosy lip scornfully; but well Meta knew how to value such a gift. Through long dreary years of orphanage "God's Word" had been to her what the star in the East was to Bethlehem's watching shepherds. Her lonely days of toil were over now. There was a true heart, whose every pulsation was love for her--a brave arm to defend her helplessness, and a quiet, sunny home
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where Peace, like a brooding dove, should fold his wings, while the happy hours flew uncounted by.
Yes; Meta was looked for, every hour. She was to leave the group of laughing hoidens, (before whom she had forbidden her lover to claim her,) and thereafter confine her teachings to one pupil, whose "reward of merit" should be the love-light in her soft, dark eyes. Still, it was weary waiting for her; her last letter was taken, for the hundredth time, from its hiding-place, and read and refolded, and read again, although he could say it all, with his eyes shut, in the darkest corner in Christendom. But you know all about it, dear reader, if you own a heart, and if you don't, the sooner you drop my story the better.
Well; he paced the room up and down, looked out the window, and down the street: then he sat down in the little rocking-chair he had provided for her, and tried to imagine it was tenanted by two; then, delicious tears sprang to his eyes, that such a sweet fount of happiness was opened to him--that the golden morn, and busy noon, and hushed and starry night, should find them ever side by side. Care?--he did n't know it! Trouble?--what trouble could he have, when all his heart craved on earth was bounded by his clasping arms? And then, Meta was an orphan--he was scarcely sorry--there would be none for her heart to go out to now but himself; he must be brother, sister, father, mother--all to her; and his heart gave a full and joyful response to each and every claim.
--But what a little loiterer! He was half vexed; he paced the room in his impatience, handled the little slippers affection-
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ately, and caressed the little gloves as if they were filled by the plump hand of Meta, instead of his imagination. Why did n't she fly to him? Such an angel should have wings--he was sure of that.
--Wings? God help you, widowed bridegroom! Who shall have the heart to read you this sad paragraph?
"One of the Norwalk Victims.--The body of a young lady, endowed with extraordinary personal beauty, remains yet unrecognized. On her countenance reposes an expression of pleasure, in striking and painful contrast to the terrible scene amid which she breathed her last. She was evidently about twenty years old, doubtless the glory of some circle of admiring friends, who little dream where she is, and of her shocking condition."
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MATRIMONIAL REVERIE.
"The love of a spirited woman is better worth having than that of any other female individual you can start."
I wish I had known that before! I'd have plucked up a little spirit, and not gone trembling through creation, like a plucked chicken, afraid of every animal I ran a-fowl of. I have not dared to say my soul was my own since the day I was married, and every time Mr. Jones comes into the entry and sets down that great cane of his, with a thump, you might hear my teeth chatter, down cellar! I always keep one eye on him, in company, to see if I am saying the right thing; and the middle of a sentence is the place for me to stop, (I can tell you,) if his black eyes snap! It's so aggravated to find out my mistake at this time o'day. I ought to have carried a stiff upper lip, long ago. Wonder if little women can look dignified? Wonder how it would do to turn straight about now? I'll try it!
Harry will come home presently and thunder out, as usual, "Mary, why the deuce is n't dinner ready?" I'll just set my teeth together, put my arms akimbo, and look him right straight--oh, mercy! I can't! I should dissolve! Bless your soul, he's a six-footer; such whiskers--none of your sham settlements! Such eyes! and such a nice mouth. Come to think of it, I really believe I love him! Guess I'll go along the old way!