Part 1

FOLLY AS IT FLIES;

_HIT AT_

BY FANNY FERN.

NEW YORK: G. W. CARLETON & CO. PUBLISHERS. LONDON: S. LOW, SON & CO. MDCCCLXVIII.

Entered according to the Act of Congress, in the year 1868, by

G. W. CARLETON & CO.,

in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States, for the Southern District of New York

LOVEJOY, SON & CO., ELECTROTYPERS & STEREOTYPERS, 15 Vandewater Street, N. Y.

To

MY FRIEND

Robert Bonner,

EDITOR OF THE NEW YORK LEDGER.

_For fourteen years, the team of Bonner and Fern, has trotted over the road at 2.40 pace, without a snap of the harness, or a hitch of the wheels.--Plenty of oats, and a skilful rein, the secret._

PREFACE.

_Yours Truly_,

FANNY FERN.

CONTENTS.

PAGE

DISCOURSE UPON HUSBANDS 11

GRANDMOTHER'S CHAT ABOUT CHILDREN 33

WOMEN AND THEIR DISCONTENTS 50

WOMEN AND SOME OF THEIR MISTAKES 68

NOTES UPON PREACHERS AND PREACHING 88

BRIDGET AS SHE WAS, AND BRIDGET AS SHE IS 103

A CHAPTER ON TOBACCO 118

GIVE THE CONVICTS A CHANCE 127

A GLANCE AT WASHINGTON 133

GLIMPSES OF CAMP LIFE 142

UNWRITTEN HISTORY OF THE WAR 151

MY SUMMERS IN NEW ENGLAND 163

BOSTON AND NEW YORK 182

SOME THINGS IN NEW YORK 188

WORKING GIRLS OF NEW YORK 219

WASHING THE BABY 230

CHILDREN HAVE THEIR RIGHTS 232

MOURNING 240

TO YOUNG GIRLS 244

A LITTLE TALK WITH THE OTHER SEX 253

A CHAPTER ON MEN 269

LITERARY PEOPLE 274

SOME VARIETIES OF WOMEN 280

MISTAKES ABOUT OUR CHILDREN 295

THOUGHTS OF SOME EVERY DAY TOPICS 312

A TRIP TO THE NORTHERN LAKES 328

FOLLY AS IT FLIES.

_A DISCOURSE UPON HUSBANDS._

I wish every husband would copy into his memorandum book this sentence, from a recently published work: "_Women must be constituted very differently from men. A word said, a line written, and we are happy; omitted, our hearts ache as if for a great misfortune. Men cannot feel it, or guess at it; if they did, the most careless of them would be slow to wound us so._"

The grave hides many a heart which has been stung to death, because one who might, after all, have loved it after a certain careless fashion, was deaf, dumb, and blind to the truth in the sentence we have just quoted, or if not, was at least restive and impatient with regard to it. Many men, marrying late in life, being accustomed only to take care of _themselves_, and that in the most erratic, rambling, exciting fashion, eating and drinking, sleeping and walking whenever and wherever their fancy, or good cheer and amusement, questionable or unquestionable, prompted; come at last, when they get tired of this, with their selfish habits fixed as fate, to--matrimony. For a while it is a novelty. Shortly, it is strange as irksome, this always being obliged to consider the comfort and happiness of another. To have something always hanging on the arm, which _used_ to swing free, or at most, but twirl a cane. Then, they think their duty done if they provide food and clothing, and refrain (possibly) from harsh words. Ah--_is it_? Listen to that sigh as you close the door. Watch the gradual fading of the eye, and paling of the cheek, not from age--she should be yet young--but that gnawing pain at the heart, born of the settled conviction that the great hungry craving of her soul, as far as you are concerned, must go forever unsatisfied. God help such wives, and keep them from attempting to slake their souls' thirst at poisoned fountains.

_Think_, you, her husband, how little a kind word, a smile, a caress to _you_, how much to _her_. If you call these things "childish" and "beneath your notice," then you should never have married. There are men who should remain forever single. You are one. You have no right to require of a woman her health, strength, time and devotion, to mock her with this shadowy, unsatisfying return. A new bonnet, a dress, a shawl, a watch, anything, everything but what a _true_ woman's heart most craves--sympathy, appreciation, love. She may be rich in everything else; but if she be poor in these, and is a _good_ woman, she had better die.

There are hard, unloving, cold monstrosities of women, (rare exceptions,) who neither require love, nor know how to give it. We are not speaking of these. That big-hearted, loving, noble men have occasionally been thrown away upon such, does not disprove what we have been saying. But even a man thus situated has greatly the advantage of a woman in a similar position, because, over the needle a woman may think herself into an Insane Asylum, while the active, out-door turmoil of business life is at least a _sometime_ reprieve to _him_.

Do you ask me, "Are there no happy wives?" God be praised, yes, and glorious, lovable husbands, too, who know how to treat a woman, and would have her neither fool nor drudge. Almost every wife would be a good and happy wife, _were she only loved enough_. Let husbands, present and prospective, think of this.

* * * * *

"Now, I am a clerk, with eight hundred dollars salary, and yet my wife expects me to dress her in first-class style. What would you advise me to do--leave her?"

These words I unintentionally overheard in a public conveyance. I went home, pondering them over. "Leave her!" Were _you_ not to blame, sir, in selecting a foolish, frivolous wife, and expecting her to confine her desires, as a sensible woman ought, and would, within the limits of your small salary? Have _you, yourself_, no "first-class" expenses, in the way of rides, drinks and cigars, which it might be well for you to consider while talking to her of retrenchment? Did it ever occur to you, that under all that frivolity, which you admired in the maid, but deplore and condemn in the wife, there may be, after all, enough of the true woman, to appreciate and sympathize with a _kind, loving_ statement of the case, in its parental as well as marital relations? Did it ever occur to you, that if you require no more from _her_, in the way of self-denial, than you are willing to endure _yourself_--in short, if you were _just_ in this matter, as all husbands are _not_--it might bring a pair of loving arms about your neck, that would be a talisman amid future toil, and a pledge of co-operation in it, that would give wings to effort? And should it not be so immediately--should you encounter tears and frowns--would you not do well to remember the hundreds of wives of drunken husbands, who, through the length and breadth of the land, are thinking--_not_ of "_leaving_" them, but how, day by day, they shall more patiently bear their burden, toiling with their own feeble hands, in a woman's restricted sphere of effort, to make up their deficiencies, closing their ears resolutely to any recital of a husband's failings, nor asking advice of aught save their own faithful, wifely hearts, "_what course they shall pursue_?"

And to all young men, whether "clerks" or otherwise, we would say, if you marry a humming-bird, don't expect that marriage will instantly convert it into an owl; and if you have caught it, and caged it, without thought of consequences, don't, like a coward, shrink from your self-assumed responsibility, and turn it loose in a dark wood, to be devoured by the first vulture.

* * * * *

The other day I read in a paper, "Wanted--board for a young couple." What a pity, I thought, that they should begin life in so unnatural and artificial a manner! What a pity that in the sacredness of a home of their own, they should not consecrate their life-long promise to walk hand in hand, for joy or for sorrow! What a pity that the sweet home-cares which sit so gracefully on the young wife and housekeeper, should be waved aside for the stiff etiquette of a public table or drawing-room! What a pity that the husband should not have a "_home_" to return to when his day's toil is over, instead of a "room," as in his lonely bachelor days!

* * * * *

"Oh, you little rascal" said a young father doubling up his fist at his first baby, as it lay kicking its pink toes upon the bed; "oh, you little rascal, precious little attention have I had from your mamma since _you_ came to town. I don't know but I am very sorry you are here."

Now, this is a subject upon which I have thought a great deal, and often wished I had wisdom to write about. It is a very nice point for a young wife to settle rightly--the respective claims of the helpless little baby, and those of the young husband, who has hitherto been the sole recipient of her caresses and care. The cry of that little baby is painful to him. He has not yet adjusted himself to the position of a father. It is a nice little creature, of course; but why need _she_ be so much in the nursery and so little in the parlor? Why can't she delegate the washing, and dressing, and getting-to-sleep, to a nurse, and go about with _him_, as she used before it came. It is very dull to sit alone, waiting until all these processes have been gone through; and, beside, it is plain to see that, when he does wait till then, her vitality is so nearly exhausted that she has very little left to entertain him, or to go abroad for entertainment; and if she does the latter, she is so fearful that something may go wrong with that experimental first baby in her absence, that her anxiety becomes contagious, and _his_ pleasure is spoiled.

Now, to begin with: it takes two years for a young married couple to adjust themselves to their new position. "_His_ mother never fussed that way over _her_ babies, and is not _he_ a living example of the virtue of neglect?" Now "_her_ mother preferred to do just as _she_ is doing, and thought any other course heartless and unnatural, at least while the baby is so very little." Now stop a bit, my dears, or you never will get beyond that milestone on your journey. You have got, both of you, to drop your respective mothers, as far as quoting their practice is concerned. Never mention them to one another, if you can possibly keep your mouths shut on their superior virtues, when you wish to settle any such question; because it will always remain true, to the end of time, that a husband's relations, like the king, can do no wrong, though they may be in the constant practice of doing that in their own families, which they consider highly improper in yours.

Now, do you and John--I suppose his name is John--two-thirds of the men are named John, and the Johns are always great strapping fellows--do you and John just paddle your own canoe, as they do. It is yours, isn't it? Well, steer it, day by day, by the light you have, as well as you know how. Mind that _you_ both pull together; shut down outside interference, which is the cause of two-thirds of the unhappiness of the newly married, and you will be certain to do well enough, _at last_.

When a clergyman comes to a new congregation, or a school-teacher to an untried school--when a new business partner enters a firm--nobody expects things to go right immediately, without a hitch or two, till matters adjust themselves. It is only in the cases of newly converted persons, or the newly married, that people insist upon human nature becoming immediately, and instantaneously, sublimated and fit for heaven. Now in both cases, as I take it, time must be given, as in the other relations, for assimilation.

This point being conceded,--and I am supposing, my dear reader, that you are not quite a natural fool,--why should you or the young couple consider the whole thing a failure, merely because this process cannot be accomplished in a day and without a few mistakes, any more than in the cases above cited?

But we have left that little experimental first baby kicking too long on the bed--it is time we return to him. Now, I am very sorry that John said what he did to that young mother, even "in joke." _She_ knew well enough that he meant two-thirds of it. She is not quite strong yet either, for the baby is but three months old; and it is very true that it does cry a great deal; and though _she_ don't mind it, John does; and really, she can't leave it much with a nurse, while it is so very little. And yet, it _is_ dull for John to sit alone in the parlor while she is soothing it; and what _shall_ she do? That's just it,--what _shall_ she do? She really gets in quite a nervous tremble, when it is time for him to come home--what with hoping baby will be on its good behavior, and fearing that it may not. Not that, for one instant, she has ever been sorry that she was a mother--oh no, no! You may burn her flesh with a red-hot iron, and you can never make her say that. God forbid!

Now, John, if your little wife loves her baby like that, is not it a proof that you have chosen a wife wisely and well? and are you not willing to face like a man--I _should_ say, like a woman,--the petty disagreeables which are consequent upon the initiatory life of the little creature in whose veins flows your own blood? Surely, you cannot answer me no. When you married, you did not expect to live a bachelor's life. If you did, then I have nothing more to say. I shall pay that compliment to your manhood to suppose, that you did not so deceive the young girl, who trusted her future in your hands, and that you did not expect that _she alone_ was to practice the virtue of self-abnegation.

Well, then, be patient with the wife who is so well worthy of your sympathy and co-operation, in this, her conscientious attempt to bring up rightly the first baby. When the next comes, and I know you will have a next, or your name isn't John, she will not be so anxious. She will not think it will die, every time it has the stomach-ache. But at present it is cruel in you to say those things which distress her, even "in joke," because, as I tell you, she is trying faithfully to settle these important questions, which take time for each of you to decide, so that you may not wrong the other. _Help_ her do it. Soothe her when she is nervous and weary. _Love_ that little baby, though at present it does not even smile at you. If you can't love it, _make believe love it_, till the little thing knows enough to know you. Do it for _her_ sake, who has earned your tenderest cherishing as the mother of your child. _Begin_ right. Know that whatsoever people may say, _that Love and Duty are all there is of life_. Out of these two grow all the pleasure and happiness mortals can find this side of the grave. So, John, don't wear out your boots trudging round elsewhere to find them, for it will be a miserable failure.

* * * * *

I think every woman will agree with me, that it is perfectly astonishing the "muss" (to use a New Yorkism) which a male pair of hands can make in your room in the short space of five minutes. You have put everything in that dainty order, without which you could not, for the life of you, accomplish any work. There is not a particle of dust on anything, in sight, or out of sight--which last is quite as important. All your little pet things are in the right location; pictures plumb on the wall, work-box and ink-stand tidy and within hail. Mr. Smith comes in. He wants "a bit of string." Mr. Smith is always wanting a bit of string. Mr. Smith says kindly (good fellow) "don't get up, dear, I'll find it." That's just what you are afraid of, but it won't do to say so; so you sit still and perspire, while Mr. Smith looks for his "bit of string." First, he throws open the door of the wrong closet, and knocks down all your dresses, which he catches up with irreverent haste, and hangs in a heap on the first peg. Then he says (innocently,) "Oh--h--I went to the wrong closet, didn't I?" Then he proceeds to the right closet, and finds the "bit of string." In taking it down he catches it on the neck of a phial. Down it comes smash--with the contents on the floor. Mr. Smith says "D--estruction!" in which remark you fully coincide. Then Mr. Smith wants a pair of scissors to cut his "bit of string;" so he goes to your work-box, which he upsets, scattering needles, literally at "sixes and sevens," all over the floor, mixed with bodkins, spools, tape, and torment only knows what. He gathers them up at one fell swoop, and ladles them back into the box, in a manner peculiarly and eminently masculine; and asks if--the--hinge--of--the--lid--of--that--box--was--broken--before, or if "_he_ did it." As if the rascal didn't know! But of course you tell the old fib, that it had been loose for some time, and that it was no manner of consequence; all the while devoutly hoping that this might be the last mischance. Not a bit of it. "He thinks he will take a little brandy to set him right." So he uncorks the bottle on the spotless white toilet-cover of your bureau, spills the brandy all over it, powders the sugar on the covers of a nice book, and lays the sticky spoon on a nice lace collar that has just been "done up." Then he uncorks your cologne-bottle to anoint his smoky whiskers, and sets down the bottle, leaving the cork out. Then he takes up your gold bracelet and tries it on his wrist, "to see if it will fit." The "_fit_" need I say, is _not_ in the bracelet--the fastening of which he breaks. Then he throws up the window, "to see what sort of a day it is;" and over goes a vase of flowers, which you have been arranging with all the skill you were mistress of, to display the perfection of each blossom. He looks at the vase, and says, "Miserable thing! it was always ricketty; I must buy you a better one, dear," which you devoutly hope he will do, though a long acquaintance with that gentleman's habits does not authorize you in it. Then Mr. Smith goes to the glass and takes a solemn survey of his beard. Did you ever notice the difference between a man's and a woman's way of looking in the glass? It is wonderfully characteristic! Woman perks her head on one side saucily and well pleased like a bird; man strides in a lordly, dignified way up to it as if it were a very _petty_ thing for him to do, but meantime he'd like to catch that glass saying that he is not a fine-looking fellow! Well--Mr. Smith takes a solemn survey of his beard, which he fancies "needs clipping," and takes your sharpest and best pair of scissors, for the wiry operation; the stray under-brush meanwhile falling wheresoever it best pleases the laws of gravitation to send it. Then Mr. Smith, says, "Really, dear, this is such a pleasant room, one hates to leave it, but--alas! business--business."

"_Business!_" I should think so--business enough, to put that room to rights, for the next three hours!

* * * * *

Did you ever hear an old maid talk about matrimony, or a girl who was trembling on the brink of old-maidism, and feared to launch away? If there is anything that effectually disgusts a married woman, it is that. What can an old maid know about such things? As well might I write an agricultural and horticultural description of a country by looking on a map. What pitying compassion she has for married men, every one of whom is victimized because he did not select _her_ to make him "the happiest of men"--I believe that is the expression of a lover when on his suppliant knees; if not, I stand ready to be corrected--by anybody but an old maid. With what a languishing sigh she marvels that Mrs. Jones could ever be so criminal, as to neglect to sew on an ecstatic shirt-button for such a man as Jones; for whom it would be glory enough to hold a shaving-box while he piled on the soap-suds, which is her particular element. What a shame that Jones cannot stifle his own baby, if he feels like it, by smoking in its face, and leave his boots, and coat, and vest on the parlor floor, if he takes a fancy to do it.

Ah--had Jones but a different wife! (And here imagine a sigh which, for depth and pro-_fun_-dity, none but a sentimental old maid on the anxious-seat can heave.) What pleasure to black his boots for him of a morning; to get up in the middle of the night, and cook a tenderloin beefsteak; to prove her devotion by standing on the front doorstep, with chattering teeth, in a cold northeaster, waiting for the dear coat to come home; to hang up his dear hat for him, to put away his dear cane, to take him up gently with the sugar-tongs, and lay him on the sofa till tea was ready, and then feed him like a sweet little bird, bless his shirt-buttons!

How hot his toast should always be; how strong his tea and coffee; how sweet his puddings; how mealy his potatoes; how punctually his clean shirt should be taken out of his drawer for him to put on; how sweetly his handkerchief should be cologn-ed with her own cologne, and his cigar-case magnanimously placed by her own hands in his dear little side-pocket, and how it should be the study of her life to find out when he wanted to sneeze, and arrest a sunbeam for the purpose.

Do you know what I wish?

That all the die-away old maids, who go sighing through creation with a rose-leaf to their noses, lecturing married women, and sniveling for their little privileges, had but one neck, and that some muscular coat-sleeve, equal to the occasion, would give them one satisfying hug, and stop their nonsense.

* * * * *

I never witnessed an execution; but I saw a man the other day, married he surely was, trying to select a lace collar from out a dainty cobweb heap, sufficiently perplexing even to a practised female eye. The clumsy way he poised the gauzy things on his forefinger, with his head askew, trying to comprehend their respective merits! The long, weary sigh he drew, as the shopman handed him new specimens. The look of relief with which he heard _me_ inquire for lace collars, saying, as plain as looks could say, "Ah! now, thank Heaven, I shall have a woman's view of the subject!" The _disinterested_ manner in which, with this view, he pushed a stool forward for me to sit down, to watch upon which collar my eye fell complacently, all the while turning over _his_ heap in the same idiotic way. Oh, it was funny! Of course, I kept him on the anxious seat a little while, persistently holding my tongue, the better to enjoy his dilemma. Didn't he fidget?

At length, fearful he might rush out for strychnine, I spake. I descanted upon shape, and texture, and pattern, and upon the probability of their "doing up" well, to all of which my rueful knight listened like a criminal who scents a reprieve. Then I made my selection; then he chose two exactly like mine, before you could wink, and with a sublime gratitude, refused to let the shopman consider the bill that was fluttering in his gloved fingers, "till he had made change for the lady." We understood each other, for there are cases in which words are superfluous. No doubt his wife thought his taste in collars was excellent.

* * * * *