Part 19

Follow out their two histories. See the Chesterfieldian favorite sent to college; contracting long livery-stable, hotel, and tailors' bills, with a perfect reliance upon his diplomatic abilities to "set it all right with the old gentleman;" thanking him deceitfully for his unparalleled generosity to a son so unworthy; alluding delicately to his pride in him as a father, and trusting some day to make a proper return for all his goodness, etc., etc. See the "stupid boy" who is summarily set down to be wanting in cleverness, accepting in silence this verdict, and the consequent disposal of his time in some uncongenial, distasteful employment, till at last, wearied out by the silent drop that descends mercilessly and unremittingly, hour by hour, on his tortured soul, he rushes from the home which has been a home only in name, and wanders forth, with the gnawing pain in his heart for silent company. Merciful God! what is to keep him? His blood is young and warm, his heart throbbing wildly in his breast for what every human thing yearns for--sympathy--love!

Years pass on. The college boy returns with more knowledge of horses, wine and women, than of Greek, Latin and mathematics--returns to receive the congratulations of partial friends that he has passed off for pure gold the glittering brass of his showy superficiality. The truant's name is never mentioned, or if so, with the hope, not that he may be kept from evil, but "that he may not disgrace us." Meanwhile the wanderer lies languishing on a bed of sickness in a foreign country. Woman's heart is the same in all lands, when pity knocks at it, else had he closed his eyes in exile. Pity he had not--pity he returned to be asked, with cold tones and averted eyes, why he did not stay there. Pity that he could not smother that unconquerable longing which approaching death brings, to look our last upon our native land. Pity that the errors born of neglected childhood, and forsaken youth, should have been held up to him by the pharisaical hands which goaded him into them, even at the tomb's portal. Pity that sinful man may not be merciful as a holy, pitying God.

I ask you, and you, and you, who have woven the "coat of many colors" for some one of your household--you who, by your partiality and short-sightedness, are fostering the rank weeds, and trampling under foot the humble flowers--you who are bringing up children whose hearts shall one day be colder to each other than the dead in their graves--you upon whom shall be visited--alas! too late--every scalding tear of agony and disappointment from out young eyes, which should have beamed only with hope and gladness;--I ask every parent who is doing this, if he or she is willing that his or her child shall grow up by these means to lose his faith in man, and sadder still, in God?

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I wonder is it foreordained that there shall be one child in every family whom "nobody can do anything with?" Who tears around the paternal pasture with its heels in the air, looking at rules, as a colt does at fences, as good things to jump over. We all know that the poor thing must be "broken in," and all its graceful curvetings sobered down to a monotonous jog-trot; that it must be taught to bear heavy burdens, and to toil up many a steep ascent at the touch of the spur; but who that has climbed the weary height does not pass the halter round the neck of the pretty creature with a half-sigh, that its happy day of careless freedom should be soon ended?

How it bounds away from you, making you almost glad that your attempt was a failure; how lovingly your eye follows it, as it makes the swift breathless circle, and stops at a safe distance to nod you defiance. Something of all this every loving parent has felt, while trying to reduce to order the child whom "nobody can do anything with."

Geography, grammar and history seem to be put into one ear, only to go out at the other. The multiplication table might as well be written in Arabic, for any idea it conveys, or lodges, if conveyed, in the poor thing's head. Temperate, torrid, and frigid zones may all be of a temperature, for all she can remember, and her mother might have been present at the creation of the world, or at the birth of the Author of it, for aught she can chronologically be brought to see.

But look! she is tired of play, and has taken up her pencil to draw; she has had no instruction; but peep over her shoulder and follow her pencil; there is the true artist touch in that little sketch, though she does not know it--a freedom, a boldness which teaching may regulate, never impart. Now she is tired of drawing, and takes up a volume of poems, far beyond the comprehension, one would think, of a child of her years, and though she often miscalls a word, and knows little and cares less about commas and semi-colons, yet not the finest touch of humor or pathos escapes her, and the poet would be lucky, were he always sure of so appreciative a reader. She might tell you that France was bounded south by the Gulf of Mexico, but you yourself could not criticise Dickens or Thackeray with more discrimination.

Down goes the book, and she is on the tips of her toes pirouetting. She has never seen a dancing-school, nor need she; perfectly modeled machinery cannot but move harmoniously; she does not know, as she floats about, that she is an animated poem. Now she is tired of dancing, and she throws herself into an old arm-chair, in an attitude an artist might copy, and commences to sing; she is ignorant of quavers, crotchets and semi-breves, of tenors, baritones and sopranos, and yet you, who have heard them with rapturous encores, stop to listen to her simple melody.

Now she is down in the kitchen playing cook; she turns a beef-steak as if she had been brought up in a restaurant, and washes dishes for fun, as if it had been always sober earnest; singing, dancing and drawing the cook's portrait at intervals, and all equally well done.

Now send that child to any school in the land, where "Moral Science" is hammered remorselessly and uselessly into curly heads, and she would be pronounced an incorrigible dunce. Idiotically stupid parrot-girls would ride over her shrinking, sensitive shame-facedness, rough-shod. She would be kept after school, kept in during recess, and have a discouraging list of bad recitation marks as long as Long Island; get a crooked spine, grow ashamed of throwing snow-balls, have a chronic headache, and an incurable disgust of teachers and schools, as well she might.

She is like a wild rose, creeping here, climbing there, blossoming where you least expect it, on some rough stone wall or gnarled trunk, at its own free, graceful will. You may dig it up and transplant it into your formal garden if you like, but you would never know it more for the luxuriant wild-rose, this "child whom nobody can do anything with."

Some who read this may ask, and properly, is such a child never to know the restraint of rule? I would be the last to answer in the negative, nor (and here it seems to me the great agony of outraged childhood comes in) would I have parents or teachers stretch or dwarf children of all sorts, sizes and capacities, on the same narrow Procrustean bed of scholastic or parental rule. No farmer plants his celery and potatoes in the same spot, and expects it to bear good fruit. Some vegetables he shields from the rude touch, the rough wind, the blazing sun; he knows that each requires different and appropriate nurture, according to its capacities. Should they who have the care of the immortal be less wise?

"You have too much imagination, you should try to crush it out," was said many years ago to the writer, in her school-days, by one who should have known that "He who seeth the end from the beginning," bestows _no_ faculty to be "crushed out;" that this very faculty it is which has placed the writer, at this moment, beyond the necessity of singing, like so many of her sex, the weary "Song of the Shirt."

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One request I would make of every mother. Make your "nursery" pleasant. Never mind about your "parlor," _but is your nursery a cheerful place_? Is there anything there upon the wall for little eyes to look at, and little minds to think about when they wake so early in the morning; or as they lounge about when a stormy day keeps them close prisoners? If not, see to it without delay. Don't say I "can't afford it;" one shilling--two shillings will do it; if you can spare a few shillings more, so much the better. You know the effect a bright, cheerful apartment has upon yourself, even with all your mature resources for thought and pleasure. Think then of the little children, reaching out their young thoughts, like vine tendrils, for something to twine about, something to lean on, something to grow to,--in fine, something to think and talk about. A blank, white wall is not suggestive or inspiriting. Give the little nursery prisoner something bright to look at. Can that be called "a trifle" which makes home attractive? We think not. Therefore we like flowering plants in windows. There are some houses which make us feel as though we were on friendly terms with the inmates, through these cheerful, mute tokens. Mute! did I say? Have our past lives been so barren of incident that the perfume of a flower never brought before us some bright face, or loved form, which has made life for us blessed? You must have felt it--and _you_ and _you_; I am sure of it. Just such a rose as that you have "seen in her hair;" and you sit dreamily looking at it, as it sways gracefully on the stem; and you wonder what the dear child, so many hundred miles away, is thinking of now; and whether her full-blossomed life has fulfilled its budding promise. And that reminds you how the whirlpool of life's cares and duties has almost engulfed these sweet memories; and resolutely turning your back upon them all, you sit down and write a warm _heart-letter_, which comes to her in her distant home, like a white-winged dove at the window of a dreary winter day. And all this came of the little rose in your window; the old love wakened in _your_ heart, and the gladness to _hers_!

Eloquent? If flowers are not eloquent, who or what is? Then, why are so many withered leaves put away with bright tresses and pressed passionately to lonely lips, whose quivering no eye sees save His "who wounds but to heal?" Eloquent? Could mines of gold buy them? _This_ was twined in her bridal veil; _that_ was laid upon her coffin-lid. No fingers but yours may touch the shrivelled treasures. For _her_ sake you have placed their blossoming counterparts in your window. You shut your eyes when you go near them, that their perfume may seem her very breath.

Eloquent? Why does the old man stoop, and with trembling fingers pick the daisy or violet, and place them in his button-hole? Don't question him about it when strangers are by. It is the key to his whole life--that little flower.

"My mother liked primroses," the matron says to her little child; and so they blossom in _her_ home as they did, many years ago, in the sunny nursery-window of her childhood. Ah, these "mothers!" whose "rights," guaranteed by the Great Law-giver, nor statute makers, nor statute breakers can weaken or set aside. Long years after they are dust, shall some little blossom they loved be placed in a bosom which yearns unceasingly, over and above every other human love, for her who gave it these warm pulsations. Blessed be these memorials of "the long ago!"

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There is a class of mothers, _easy_ mothers, who lose much time by not _finding time_ for imperative duties. We wish it were possible to persuade some of them, who are otherwise most excellent mothers--how much trouble they would save themselves, by exercising a little firmness toward their young children. Of course it takes more time to contest a point with a child, than to yield it; and a busy mother not reflecting that this is not for once, but for thousands of future times, and to rid herself of importunity, says wearily--"yes--yes--you may do it;" when all the while she knows it to be wrong and most injurious to the child. Then there comes a time when she _must_ say No! and the difficulty of enforcing it, at so late a period of indulgence, none can tell but "easy" mothers of self-willed children. For _your own sakes_, then, mothers, if you have not the future good of your children at heart; for your own sakes--and to save yourselves great trouble in the future, _learn to say No--and take time to enforce it_. Let everything else go, if necessary, because this contest must be fought out, successfully, with every separate child; and remember once fought it is done with forever. When we see mothers, day by day, worried--harassed, worn out by ceaseless teasings and importunities, all for want of a little firmness at the outset, we know not whether to be more sorry or angry.

Again: some mothers are so busy about the temporal wants of their children that they are wholly unacquainted with them spiritually. You are very careful of your daughter's dress; you attend personally to its purchase and fit. You go with her to see that her foot is nicely gaitered; and you give your milliner special instructions as to the make and becomingness of her bonnets; but do you ever ask yourself, _what she is thinking about_? In other words, do you know anything at all of her inner life? Many who are esteemed most excellent mothers, are as ignorant on this all-important point as if they had never looked upon their daughters' faces. They exact respectful obedience, and if the young creature yields it, and has no need of a physician's immediate services, they consider their duty done. Alas, what a fatal mistake! These are the mothers, who, never having invited the confidence of those young hearts, live to see it bestowed anywhere and everywhere but in accordance with their wishes. _Is_ it, _can_ it be enough to a mother worthy the name, to be satisfied that her daughter's physical wants are cared for? What of that yearning, hungry soul, that is casting about, here and there, for something to satisfy its questionings? Oh, give a thought _sometimes_ to this. When she sits there by the fire, or by the window, musing, sit down by her, and _love_ her thoughts out of her. Cast that fatal "dignity" or indifference to the winds, which has come between so many young creatures and the heart to which they should lie nearest in these important forming years. "Respect" is good in its place; but when it freezes up your daughter's soul-utterances; when it sends her for sympathy and companionship to chance guides, _what then_? A word, a loving, kind word, at the right moment! No mind can over-estimate its importance. Remember this, when you see the sad wrecks of womanhood about you; and amid the sweeping waves of life's cares and life's pleasures, what else soever you neglect, do not fail to know _what that young daughter of yours is thinking about_.

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How strong sometimes is weakness! When a very young child loses its mother, before it has yet learned to syllable her name, we are generally struck with pity at what we call its "helpless condition;" and yet, after all, its apparent helplessness is at once its strength and shield; for is not every kind heart about it immediately drawn toward it in love and sympathy? Do not the touch of its soft hand, its pretty flitting smile, the "cuddlesome" leaning of the little head, the trustful innocence of its eyes, do more for it, than could all the eloquence of Demosthenes? I was struck with the truth of this not long since, upon going into a shop to make a purchase, where I found the young girl who usually waited there, with a little babe in charge, whose mother had just died. Looking about the shop, and remarking the many calls upon her time and attention, as she moved quickly around with this pretty little burden upon her arm, I said, this child must be a great care for you. Yes, said she; but oh, _such a comfort, too_. And so playing with the baby and talking the while, I learned that before its mother died, it was taken in every night for her to kiss it, before it was put to sleep. After the mother's funeral, as the young girl was passing through that room with it, the little creature _stretched out its hands toward the empty bed for the accustomed kiss_? Tears stood in her eyes, as she again kissed the baby. I knew _now_ how it was that the "_comfort_" outweighed the "_care_." No voice from the spirit-land could so effectually and solemnly have bound up her future with that orphan baby as that mute reaching out of its loving arms to that empty bed. _Now_ had that young girl a _soul_ for labor; a motive for living. _Now_ there was something to repay toil. Something for her to love--something to love her. Every customer who came in, was so much toward a subsistence for little Annie. Ah, the difference between plodding on for cold duty's sake, and working with one's heart in it! The little shop looked bright as heaven, that cold November afternoon, and I went out of it, wondering what people could mean when they spoke of "_infant helplessness_;" since all New York might have failed to do for that little one, what it had accomplished for itself by that one unconscious, touching little action.

_THOUGHTS ON SOME EVERY DAY TOPICS._

Women boarders are often called troublesome; but it must be remembered that all a man wants of his room is to sleep and dress in, but it is a woman's _home_; and alas! often all she has. She would not _be_ a woman did she not desire to make it tidy and habitable. This--her landlady contracts to do. The fruitless ringings for fresh-water, towels, coal, lights and a clean carpet--and she is not allowed to go down stairs after them herself--are not unknown to any woman who has worn life out in boarding-houses. It is not, as I remarked, in the nature of a woman to be comfortable in Babel; nor does its owner fancy a cloud of dust, raised in the middle of the day, upon her nicely smoothed hair, or clean collar, because the chambermaid has an appointment with John, the waiter, in the entry, or because she enjoys lolling out the front window on her elbows an hour in every room she is "righting," instead of attending promptly to her business, and getting through with it.

Now, man is by nature an unclean animal. I doubt if he would ever wash his face, were there no women about who would refuse to kiss him if he didn't. Well--_he_ clears a hole in the middle of his room, and gets ready for breakfast; which he swallows, and then bolts through the front-door, (dining down town,) not to return again till evening. What possible difference, then, does it make to him, whether his bed be made, and his room swept at ten o'clock in the morning, or four in the afternoon? _His_ home is in the restaurant, in the store, in the street, anywhere and everywhere, that temptation and inclination may lead him; four walls don't bound _his_ vision. He can afford to be philosophical about brooms and dust-pans.

But let Biddy take them into his _counting-room_. Let him stand round on one leg while she--having moved his desk and displaced his ledgers and papers, preparatory to a sweep--runs out into the street half an hour, under pretence of getting a broom, to gossip with an acquaintance. Let him, getting impatient, sit down in the midst of the hub-bub, and drawing up his inkstand, commence writing. Let Biddie re-enter, just as he gets under way, with a frisk of that wretched, long-handled duster, which tosses on more dust than she ever takes off. Let him rise again and make way for her, and then--let her bob off again--after a little water, and stay another half hour,--and all the while the merciless clock ticking on, and the perspiration standing on his forehead at this unnecessary waste of his time and temper, and the work he _hasn't_ done, and let Biddy repeat this in that counting-room, to that man, every morning in the year, (365 mornings). How long do you suppose he would stand that?

Well, that's just what women in boarding-houses have to put up with. That's why they are troublesome. That's why they can't help it. That's why landladies like men who live everywhere but in their rooms, and who, provided their mattress is not put in their washbowl, and the ends of their cigars are not broken by the landlady's little boy, give her carte blanche as to dirt and other luxuries.

On the other hand I acknowledge that a man-boarder eats four times as much as a woman, and often keeps his landlady waiting weeks to have her bill paid, if indeed he ever pays it. Then he tumbles up stairs at midnight in an oblivious condition, thumping against all the doors as he goes, frightening the single women into fits, and waking up hapless babies, to drain the last drop of the milk of motherly kindness? Then he brings his comrades home to dinner or to tea, and expects his poor struggling landlady to omit all mention of the same when she makes out her bill? Then, notwithstanding this, he sniffs at the eggs, cracks stale jokes on the chickens; rails at the beef, looks daggers into the coffee-cup, and holds his supercilious nose when the butter is too near; and by many other gentlemanly tokens shows the poor widow, whose husband once would not let the wind blow roughly on her, that he will grind her and her children down to the last fraction, that he may spend it on cigars and drinks, while the gray hairs gather thickly on her temples, and she goes to sleep every night with a "God help me," on her lips.

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