Part 2

By this time your hair stands on end, and beads of perspiration form upon your nose. You fly for refuge to the back of the house. Alas! there is a young thing of "sixteen summers" and no winters running up and down the gamut on a tin-kettle piano. In the next house is a little dog barking as if his last hour was coming; while upon the shed are two cats, in the most inflamed state of bristle, glaring like fiends, and "_maow_"-ing in the most hellish manner at each other's whiskers. You go down into the parlor, and seat yourself there. Your neighbor, Tom Snooks, is smoking at his window, and puffing it right through yours over your lovely roses, the perfume of which he quite extinguishes with his nasty odor.

Heavens! And this is "Spring!" "Budding Spring!" The poets make no mention of these little things in their "Odes!"

Well--at least, you say to yourself, there will be peace and heavenly quiet with the stars at midnight, by the open window. I will be patient till then.

Is there?

What is that? A policeman's loud rap-rap on the pavement for assistance to capture a burglar. Next a woman's scream; the brute who just accosted the poor wretch has struck her a heavy blow upon the temple. And now reels past a drunken man, zigzagging down the street, with a little whimpering boy by one hand, old enough to know what a "Station-house" means, and trembling lest "father" should be taken there.

You throw yourself upon your bed, weary and sick at heart. Even the stars seem to glow with a red, unnatural light, as if they too were worn with watching the wrongs and frets they nightly look down upon.

"Balmy night." What liars poets can be!

_A PEEP AT BOSTON._

Boston is a lovely place to be baptized in, and to go back to. My old love, "_Boston Common_"--that good, old-fashioned, unspoiled, unmodernized name--looks more lovely this summer than I ever remember to have seen it. New York may well take a lesson from its order and neatness, with regard to our ill-kept _city_ parks. I sat there, under those lovely trees which used to wave over my school-girl head; and had it not been for the little bright-eyed grandchild beside me picking buttercups, I might have fancied it was Saturday afternoon, and no school, and that I was to be back to my mother's apronstrings "by sundown, without fail." I know I could not have enjoyed even then the birds' song, or the sparkling pond, or the big trees more than at that moment. Out of my dream-land, whither they had led me, I was awakened by a jump into my lap, and the question, "And did you _really_ play with buttercups here, when you were a little girl?" It was a long bridge that question led me over, so long that I forgot to answer till the question was repeated. I had to stop, and outgrow buttercups, and hold again by my matronly hand a little creature, the counterpart of my questioner, who long since closed her eyes forever, in this world, upon us both! It took time, you see, before I could say, "Yes, dear; it was just in this very lovely spot that both your mother and I picked buttercups when children, on the bright Saturday afternoons of long ago; and six years and a half of your little life I have waited, to see _you_ run down those sloping paths, and to show you the 'Frog-Pond,' and to tell you to look up into the branches that nearly touch the sky; and now here we are! But there were no 'deer' feeding on this Common when I was a little girl, but instead _cows_ to whom I gave plenty of room to pass as I went along; and instead of that gay little hat, with mimic grasses and daisies, such as I have put upon your head, my mother tied under my chin a little sun-bonnet. And she didn't run to me if I sneezed, as I do to you, for I had a heap of brothers and sisters, and we had to take care of our own sneezing; but I know I had twenty-five cents to spend on Fourth of July; and I know that, if any little girl's belt in Boston was ever tightened by roast turkey and pie more than mine was on 'Thanksgiving day,' I pity her! I wonder what has become of all the little children I used to play with here? We used to go up to the tip-top of that State House, I know; but I don't care to try it now. Not that it would tire me--of course not; but I've seen all that can be seen from that dome, and a little farther too."

Oh, the peace and loveliness of sweet "Mount Auburn!" The new graves since I was there, and the old graves now moss-grown that I remember so well! I, too, shall sleep sweetly there some day; but the hardest pang I shall know, between now and then, will be letting go the little hand that clasped mine to-day, as I walked about there. And yet there were _little_ graves all around us. _He_ knows best!

In Boston I saw the remains of "The Jubilee." I was asked, "Did I hear and see the Jubilee?" I was supposed, as coming from New York, to grieve at the success of "The Jubilee;" and being an adopted New Yorker, to feel like skulking round the back streets in Boston, covered with confusion that Manhattan had no "Jubilee." Lord bless you! I love every _bean_ that was ever baked in Boston; every cod-fish-ball ever fried; and every brown-bread loaf ever baked there. I know too, as well as any Bostonian, that--

"Zaccheus he Did climb the tree, His Lord and Master For to see;"

and I made a courtesy to the ground, when I came in sight of "Park-street" steeple, and "Faneuil Hall!" so don't be pitching into me. Hit some other fellow who isn't "up" in the Assembly's catechism, and "total depravity," and brown bread. "Jubilee" as much as you want to; the world is a big place. "Holler" away!

New England, all hail to thy peerless thrift! Thou art cranky and crotchety; thou art "sot," uncommon "sot," in thy ways, owing doubtless to the amiable sediment of English blood in thy veins. Thou wilt not be cheated in a bargain, even by thy best friend; but, in the meantime, that enableth thy large heart to give handsomely when charity knocks at thy door. Thy pronunciation may be peculiar, but, in the meantime, what thou dost not know, and cannot do, is rarely worth knowing or doing. Thou never hast marble, and silver, and plate glass, and statuary, in thy show-parlors, and shabby belongings where the world does not penetrate. Thou hast not stuccoed walls, with big cracks in them, or anything in thy domiciles, hanging as it were by the eyelids. Every nail is driven so that it will stay; every hinge hung so that it will work thoroughly. Every bolt and key and lock perform their duty like a martinet, so long as a piece of them endures. If thou hast a garden, be it only a square foot, it is made the most of with its "long _saace_" and "short _saace_" and "wimmin's notions," in the shape of flowers and caraway seed, to chew on Sunday, when the minister gets as far as "seventeenthly," and carnal nature will fondly recur to the waiting pot of baked beans in the kitchen oven. O! New England, here could I shed salt tears at the thought of thy baked beans, for Gotham knows them not. Alluding to that edible, I am met with a pitying sneer, accompanied with that dread word to snobs--"_provincial!_" It is ever thus, my peerless, with the envy which cannot attain to the perfection it derides. For you should see, my thrifty New England, the watery, white-livered, tasteless, swimmy, sticky poultice which Gotham christens "baked beans." My soul revolts at it. It is an unfeeling, wretched mockery of the rich, brown, crispy, succulent contents of that "platter"--yes, _platter_--I will say it!--which erst delighted my eyes in the days when I swallowed the Catechism without a question as to its infallibility. The flavor of the beans "haunts memory still;" but as to the Catechism, the world is progressing, and I am not one to put a drag on its wheels, believing that

Truth is sure And will endure,

and it is best to let "natur" caper, especially as you can't help it; and after the dust it has kicked up has cleared away, we shall see what we shall see, be it wheat or chaff. Beside, the most conservative must admit, that though Noah's Ark was excellent for the flood, the "Great Eastern" is an improvement on it; and _'tisn't_ pretty, _so they say who oftenest practise it!_ to stand with the Bible in your hand in 1862, and clamor for a private latch-key to heaven.

But I have wandered from my baked beans. I want some. Some New England baked beans. Some of "mother's beans." But, alas, mother's oven is fast disappearing. Mother's oven, where the beans stayed in all night, with the brown bread. Alas! it has given way to new-fangled "ranges," which "don't know beans." Excuse the vulgarity of the expression, but in such a cause I shan't stand for trifles. If you want rose-leaf sentimental-refinement, together with creamy patriotism, you may look in the columns of the Whip-Syllabub-Family-Visitor. This is a digression.

When I started for a New England tour, it was my intention to get some of those beans; but the hotels there are getting so "genteel" with their paper-pantalettes on the roast-chicken's legs, and their paper frills on the roast-pigs'-tails, that I was convinced, that only at a genuine unsophisticated farm-house, where I could light down unannounced on Sarah-Jane--could this edible in its native and luscious beauty be found.

Next summer, if "strategy" and the rebels don't chew us up, I start on a tour for those beans; nor am I to be imposed upon by any "genteel" substitutes or abortions under that name!

* * * * *

A HINT TO PARENTS.--When parents are considering the question of the hours of study for growing children in our schools, let them do it without any reference to the side question, how they can "bear those noisy children, during the subtracted hours, at home." Perhaps they can better bear this than to pay the doctor's bills. This is the way to look at it, whether it be regarded in a selfish or a humanitarian point of view.

_BLACKWELL'S ISLAND._

Prior to visiting Blackwell's Island, my ideas of that place were very forlorn and small-pox-y. It makes very little difference, to be sure, to a man, or a woman, shut up in a cell eight feet by four, how lovely are the out-door surroundings; how blue the river that plashes against the garden wall below, flecked with white sails, and alive with gay pleasure-seekers, whose merry laugh has no monotone of sadness, that the convict wears the badge of degradation; and yet, after all, one involuntarily says to one's self, so instinctively do we turn to the cheerful side, I am glad they are located on this lovely island. Do you shrug your shoulders, Sir Cynic, and number over the crimes they have committed? Are _your_ crimes against society less, that they are written down only in God's book of remembrance? Are _you_ less guilty that you have been politic enough to commit only those that a short-sighted, unequal human law sanctions? Shall I pity these poor wrecks of humanity less, because they are so recklessly self-wrecked? because they turn away from my pity? Before I come to this, I must know, as their Maker knows, what evil influences have encircled their cradles. How many times, when their stomachs have been empty, some full-fed, whining disciple, has presented them with a Bible or a Tract, saying, "Be ye warmed and filled." I must know how often, when their feet have tried to climb the narrow, up-hill path of right, the eyes that have watched, have watched only for their halting; never noting, as God notes, the steps that did _not_ slip--never holding out the strong right hand of help when the devil with a full larder was tugging furiously at their skirts to pull them backward; but only saying "I told you so," when he, laughing at your pharisaical stupidity, succeeded.

I must go a great way back of those hard, defiant faces, where hate of their kind seems indelibly burnt in; back--back--to the soft blue sky of infancy, overclouded before the little one had strength to contend with the flashing lightning and pealing thunder of misfortune and poverty which stunned and blinded his moral perceptions. I cannot see that mournful procession of men, filing off into those dark cells, none too dark, none too narrow, alas! to admit troops of devils, without wishing that some white-winged angel might enter too; and when their shining eyeballs peer at my retreating figure through the gratings, my heart shrieks out in its pain--oh! believe that there is pity here--only pity; and I hate the bolts and bars, and I say this is _not_ the way to make bad men good; or, at least if it be, these convicts should not, when discharged, be thrust out loose into the world with empty pockets, and a bad name, to earn a speedy "through-ticket" back again. I say, if this _be_ the way, let humanity not stop here, but take one noble step forward, and when she knocks off the convict's fetters, and lands him on the opposite shore, let her not turn her back and leave him there as if her duty were done; but let her _there_ erect a noble institution where he can find a _kind_ welcome and _instant_ employment; before temptation, joining hands with his necessities, plunge him again headlong into the gulf of sin.

And here seems to me to be the loose screw in these institutions; admirably managed as many of them are, according to the prevalent ideas on the subject. You may tell me that I am a woman, and know nothing about it; and I tell you that I _want_ to know. I tell you, that I don't believe the way to restore a man's lost self-respect is to degrade him before his fellow-creatures; to brand him, and chain him, and poke him up to show his points, like a hyena in a menagerie. No wonder that he growls at you, and grows vicious; no wonder that he eats the food you thrust between the bars of his cage with gnashing teeth, and a vow to take it out of the world somehow, when he gets out; no wonder that he thinks the Bible you place in his cell a humbug, and God a myth. I would have you startle up his self-respect by placing him in a position to show that you trusted him; I would have you give him something to hold in charge, for which he is in honor responsible; appeal to his _better_ feelings, or if they smoulder almost to extinction, fan them into a flame for him out of that remnant of God's image which the vilest can never wholly destroy. _Anything but shutting a man up with hell in his heart to make him good._ The devils may well chuckle at it. And above all, tear down that taunting inscription over the prison-hall door at Blackwell's Island--"The way of transgressors is hard"--and place instead of it, "Neither do I condemn thee; go and sin no more."

Now, you can step aside, Mrs. Grundy; what I am about to write is not for your over-fastidious ear. _You_, who take by the hand the polished _roué_, and welcome him with a sweet smile to the parlor where sit your young, trusting daughters; you, who "have no business with his private life, so long as his manners are gentlemanly;" you who, while saying this, turn away with bitter, unwomanly words from his penitent, writhing victim. I ask no leave of _you_ to speak of the wretched girls picked out of the gutters of New York streets, to inhabit those cells at Blackwell's Island. I speak not to _you_ of what was tugging at my heart-strings as I saw them, that beautiful summer afternoon, file in, two by two, to their meals, followed by a man carrying a cowhide in his hand, by way of reminder; all this would not interest you; but when you tell me that these women are not to be named to ears polite, that our sons and our daughters should grow up ignorant of their existence, I stop my ears. As if they could, or did! As if they can take a step in the public streets without being jostled or addressed by them, or pained by their passing ribaldry; as if they could return from a party or concert at night, without meeting droves of them; as if they could, even in broad daylight, sit down to an ice-cream without having one for a _vis-à-vis_. As if they could ride in a car or omnibus, or cross in a ferry-boat, or go to a watering-place, without being unmistakably confronted by them. No, Mrs. Grundy; you know all this as well as I do. You would push them "anywhere out of the world," as unfit to live, as unfit to die; _they_, the weaker party, while their partners in sin, for whom you claim greater mental superiority, and who, by your own finding, should be much better able to learn and _to teach_ the lesson of self-control--to them you extend perfect absolution. Most consistent Mrs. Grundy, get out of my way while I say what I was going to, without fear or favor of yours.

If I believed, as legislators, and others with whom I have talked on this subject, pretend to believe, they best know why, that God ever made one of those girls for the life they lead, for this in plain Saxon is what their talk amounts to, I should curse Him. If I could temporize as they do about it, as a "necessary evil," and "always has been, and always will be," and (then add this beautiful tribute to manhood) "that pure women would not be safe were it not so"--and all the other budget of excuses which this sin makes to cover its deformity--I would forswear my manhood.

You say their intellects are small, they are mere animals, naturally coarse and grovelling, Answer me this--are they, or are they not _immortal_? Decide the question whether _this_ life is to be _all_ to them. Decide before you shoulder the responsibility of such a girl's future. Granted she has only _this_ life. God knows how much misery may be crowded into that. But you say, "Bless your soul, why do you talk to _me_? I have nothing to do with it; I am as virtuous as St. Paul." St. Paul was a bachelor, and of course is not my favorite apostle; but waiving that, I answer, you _have_ something to do with it when you talk thus, and throw your influence on the wrong side. No matter how outwardly correct your past life may have been, if you _really believe_ what you say, I would not give a fig for your virtue if temptation and opportunity favored; and if you talk so for talk's sake, and do not believe it, you had better "tarry at Jericho till your beard be grown."

But you say to me, "Oh, you don't know anything about it; men are differently constituted from women; woman's sphere is home." That don't suspend the laws of her being. That don't make it that she don't need sympathy and appreciation. That don't make it that she is never weary and needs amusement to restore her. Fudge. I believe in no difference that makes this distinction. Women lead, most of them, lives of unbroken monotony; and have much more need of exhilarating influences than men, whose life is out of doors in the breathing, active world. Don't tell me of shoemakers at their lasts, and tailors at their needles. Do either ever have to lay down their customers' coats and shoes fifty times a day, and wonder when the day is over why their work is _not_ done, though they have struggled through fire and water to finish it? Do not both tailor and shoemaker have at least the variation of a walk to or from the shop to their meals? Do not their customers talk their beloved politics to them while they stitch, and do not their "confrères" run for a bottle of ale and crack merry jokes with them as their work progresses? Sirs! if monotony is to be avoided in man's life as injurious, if "variety" and exhilaration must always be the spice to his pursuits, how much more must it be necessary to a sensitively organized woman? If home is not sufficient (and I will persist that any _industrious, virtuous, unambitious_ man, may have a home if he chooses); if home is not sufficient for him, why should it suffice for her? whose work is never done--who can have literally _no_ such thing as system (and here's where a mother's discouragement comes in), while her babes are in their infancy; who often says to herself at night, though she would not for worlds part with one of them, "I can't tell what I have accomplished to-day, and yet I have not been idle a minute;" and day after day passes on in this way, and perhaps for weeks she does not pass the threshold for a breath of air, and yet men talk of "monotony!" and being "differently constituted," and needing amusement and exhilaration; and "business" is the broad mantle which it is not always safe for a wife to lift. I have no faith in putting women in a pound, that men may trample down the clover in a forty-acre lot. But enough for that transparent excuse.

The great Law-giver made no distinction of sex, as far as I can find out, when he promulgated the seventh commandment, nor should we. You tell me "society makes a difference;" more shame to it--more shame to the women who help to perpetuate it. You tell me that infidelity on the wife's part involves an unjust claim upon the husband and provider; and I ask you, on the other hand, if a good and virtuous wife has not a right to expect _healthy_ children?

Let both be equally pure; let every man look upon every woman, whatsoever her rank or condition, as a sister whom his manhood is bound to protect, even, if need be, against herself, and let every woman turn the cold shoulder to any man of her acquaintance, how polished soever he may be, who would degrade her sex. Then this vexed question would be settled; there would be no such libels upon womanhood as I saw at Blackwell's Island, driven in droves to their cells. No more human traffic in those gilded palaces, which our children must not hear mentioned, forsooth! though their very fathers may help to support them, and which our tender-hearted legislators "can't see their way clear about." Then our beautiful rivers would no longer toss upon our island shores the "dead bodies of unfortunate young females."

_SHALL WE HAVE MALE OR FEMALE CLERKS?_

The question whether male or female clerks in stores are preferred by shopping ladies, has lately been agitated. I do not hesitate to say that the majority of ladies would much prefer the former.

There are reasons for this, apart from the natural and obvious preference which women entertain for a coat and vest, before a chignon and panier. Male clerks, as a general thing, confine their attention to business; in other words, "mind what they are about." Female clerks are too often taking an inventory of the way you dress your hair; of the cut and trimming, and probable cost of your sacque and dress. No lady who shops much can be unaware of the coroner's inquest, favorable or otherwise, thus held over the dry-goods on her back. When you add to this the momentous computations, whether her jewelry is bogus or real, and where she got that love of a bonnet, there is grave room for fear lest by mistake she should roll you up two yards of ribbon instead of three, involving a journey back, to the disgust of yourself and your dress-maker; or, worse still, if the day be stormy, oblige you to coax your _dear_ Charles to let you pin a sample on the lappel of his coat, and beg him just to stop a minute--there's a dear fellow--as he comes up town, and bring it to you. Of course, he gets talking with Tom Jones on politics, and forgets all about it, and only ejaculates, "pshaw!" when your horror-stricken dress-maker asks you for it.

That's how it is, although I get my ears boxed for saying it.

Mind you, I don't say that it is _always_ so, no more than it is true that all male clerks attend strictly to the business in hand. Still it is true: that is really the fly in the ointment. In the words of the little hymn,

"It is their nature to."

Women _always_ dissect each other the moment they meet, and never leave so much as a hair-pin unmeasured. So, as you can't change their nature, and as the instances are rare in which man, or woman either, can do two things correctly at the same moment, what are you going to do about it?