Ginger Snaps Part 15

I boldly a.s.sert that dyspepsia _in the country_ is a disgrace. The birds' song is not heard by a dyspeptic. The flowers by the road-side throw out no incense for him. There may be fish in _his_ ocean, but there is no beauty there. How can there be with _that_ fiend plucking at his suspenders?

And oh, the country washerwoman! Can anybody tell why she, having tried her fists only on red flannel, calico, and sheets, should announce herself as a professional laundress, and up to the mysteries of bluing, rinsing, clear-starching, and ironing? Trustingly you place your linen in her hands, and she departs to some spot where sun, fresh air, clover-blossoms, and plenty of water are all in her favor. In process of time she returns your clothes. The next morning your husband reproachfully requests you to examine _that_ s.h.i.+rt-bosom, with its streaks of bluing, its little globules of starch, and its scorched spots, presenting a zebra front rivalled only in a menagerie. Now, perhaps s.h.i.+rt-bosoms are the only part of your husband's apparel in which he takes any interest; your educatory efforts in behalf of his gloves, boots, &c., having failed utterly; for that reason you weep, that this single germ of neatness, thus untimely nipped in the bud, should cause him to backslide into that normal slovenliness from which woman alone delivers him.

Well--he struggles into that s.h.i.+rt-bosom, and, with a man's inability to face disagreeable things, goes off without consulting his looking-gla.s.s; and you sit on the side of the bed, with your hair in your eyes, contemplating a pair of "clean" stockings just taken from your drawer.

_That_ streak of dirt, carefully preserved, was got last week down on the rocks, from contact with seaweed; and that in the meadows, where you went for ferns and wild flowers; and that, when you slipped one leg down a deep and treacherous dirt-hole, trying to get a big blackberry. You can identify every one. You go to your closet for a gingham dress. When you put it in the wash it was gray, now it is a sickly green. You get a "clean" collar and cuffs--they are both saffron color. You are rather particular about the mixing of tints, and so have to give up the idea of a bow at your neck that will "go"

with this rainbow apparel, and fall back, instead, on a safe jet pin, as emblematic also of your feelings.

I don't mention in this connection a little habit the country washerwoman has of returning Mrs. Smith's husband's flannel drawers, instead of the conjugal pair which generally delight my eyes, well mended and with b.u.t.tons on the waistband, (hem!) while _Smith's_ are in a state of non-repair, disgusting even to "a literary woman." I don't speak of my cambric under-waist, irretrievably torn down the back, or Smith's night-gown, about half the length of mine, which last is probably at that moment quietly reposing beside _Mrs._ Smith; but I pause to ask you to survey--yes, _survey_, for that is the proper word--this great table-cloth of a pocket-handkerchief of Smith's instead of my own dear little hem-st.i.tched one, with a tiny fern-leaf in the corner. As to Smith's socks, they make it their home in my room, without any permit from the priest. I'm getting sick of Smith.

Again, my sisters, can you tell me why the country washerwoman invariably appears with her bundle of "clean" clothes just as you are starting for a ride, or going down to breakfast? Can one enjoy lovely scenery, or relish one's coffee and eggs, while this intermarriage of strange stockings and nightgowns is going on in one's room, and the fruitless hunt for ten cents to make "even change" is looming up in the horizon? I am constrained to say that in what light soever I view the country washerwoman, she is ----. Yes, ma'am!

P.S.--A Cape Ann editor gave me a box on the ear the other day for some remark I made on country was.h.i.+ng. Now be it known that I am so accustomed to a boxed ear in a good cause, that I have learned to stiffen up to it, and I can endure it now without even winking.

But to business. This Cape Ann editor inquires, "why, if I do not like the Cape Ann was.h.i.+ng, I do not get out the wash-tub, and wash my clothes myself." I smile serenely, while I answer, that while Mr.

Bonner pays me enough for my articles to buy out this editor's printing-office, I prefer to do precisely what _he_ would do, were he in my place--turn my back on the wash-tub and face the inkstand. Is he answered? I am sorry also to inform him that all womanhood seems to be "marching on" to the same or similar results, and that by and by men will have to choose their words in addressing "women folks;" not, I hope, for fear of being "knocked down," but because woman, be she married or single, being able to earn her own living independent of marriage,--that often hardest and most non-paying and most thankless road to it,--she will no longer have to face the alternative of serfdom or starvation, but will marry, when she does marry, for love and companions.h.i.+p, and for co-operation in all high and n.o.ble aims and purposes, _not_ for bread and meat and clothes; and the men who sneer at this picture are always sure to be men with souls narrow as a railroad track, who never look or desire to look beyond the curve and out into the wide world of progress.

_Then_, if a woman's husband dies, she will not stay to hear his or her relatives disputing over his dead body which shall contribute _least_ to her support. No: she will rub the tears out of her eyes, and taking her children by the hand, pocket the well-earned wages of a book-keeper; or she will be an architect; or she will write books, or open a store; or she may even rise to the dignity of editor of a "Cape Ann" paper--who knows?--or through any one of the open doors through which the light of woman's millennium is s.h.i.+ning, she will pa.s.s serenely to collect her dividends. No more hysterics, sirs! no more fainting! no more trudging miles to match a ribbon! no more eating her heart out, trying to bear rough usage! She wont _have_ rough usage!

She will be in a position to receive good treatment, from _motives of policy_, from those natures which are incapable of better and higher.

She will, in short, stand on her own blessed independent feet, so far as "getting a living" is concerned, as I do to-day, and able to make mouths even at Cape Ann, which--blessed be its rocks and "cunner"!--has not yet found the philosopher's stone, or made, even out of its vile bread, a "dyspeptic" of me, as its editor a.s.serts.

Me "a dyspeptic"?--me! who could eat a block of its granite for dinner, and ask for another for dessert?--me! who, at fifty-eight, can tramp ten miles, every day, over its horrid rocky roads, and come back red as a peony and fresh as a lark!--me a dyspeptic? I am sorry to inform "Cape Ann" that I am as "live" as one of its whales, and none of its harpoons will ever finish me. And that my mission, wheresoever I sojourn in summer, is to preach down bad country was.h.i.+ng, and bad bread, and country dyspepsia; and Cape Ann might as well, first as last, burn down its churches, for sal-eratus and sal-vation will never wed; for the victims of the former will walk this bright earth, so full of sparkle and suns.h.i.+ne and fragrance and bloom, with bowed heads, contracted chests, and pallid faces, nursing the dyspeptic's cherished vision of an "_angry G.o.d_"! That's where bad bread lands them!

As to "was.h.i.+ng," bless you! there was a time when I did all my own was.h.i.+ng, and did it well too. That's the way I came to know how to speak with authority on the starch and flat-iron question; and besides, as I said before, if Mr. Bonner will insist on paying my was.h.i.+ng bills, whose business is it, save his and mine? He is quite welcome.

There are people who get up in the morning for the express purpose of making somebody uncomfortable before the day is out. They generally pitch upon some sunny-faced, happy, singing human lark carolling high above the ditches and marshes of life, soaring in the blue ether of his happiness, nearer G.o.d and the angels than he himself knows anything about, and, taking practised aim at some vulnerable point, bring him plump down, with maimed wing, to flutter in the dust. Now what is good enough for such a miscreant? The more you flutter the better he likes it; every writhe of your agonized spirit is delicious music to this vulture; there is one other person in the world as uncomfortable as himself. What right had _you_ to be happy when _his_ liver was out of order? It was clearly a piece of impertinent presumption, and so there you lie moaning and turning, the suns.h.i.+ne all gone, the chill mist of despondence gathering thick about you, and your persecutor standing by, turning you over now and then with his foot, to see if there is life enough left for a fresh attack.

_COUNTRY DIET._

Foreign missions and missionaries. These have their place and their work. What _I_ want to see is a Home Mission and Home Missionaries, having for an object the extermination of the unhealthy and _immoral_ bread of New England. When matters have got to that pa.s.s that a perfectly sound, healthy person cannot decline eating this poison without being supposed to have an imperfect digestion, the climax of stupidity and ignorance is reached by its makers and defenders. "_The heathen?_" Great Cesar! who _are_ heathen, if the makers of this bread are not? I know of a factory where pie, whose princ.i.p.al ingredient is "lard," is the staple article of food placed before the operatives.

And so imperfectly is it baked, that the lard is not really melted in the process. This for _breakfast_! with muddy coffee and sour bread!

This for supper, with sour bread. This "pie" taken to the factory for lunch or dinner also. Imagine a hundred or so of young women feeding on such poison as that. Future wives, possibly, of hard-working mechanics, expected to do the family was.h.i.+ng, and bear and rear children, on the results of such an atrocious diet. It were enough to expect them even to bear themselves, robbed of the vitality and spring of their youth by these fiendish providers. The man who sets fire to a house at night, and smothers all the inmates, is a saviour in comparison. _They_ die at once. _These_ linger weary years, fighting disease, fighting gloomy thoughts, as truly needing compa.s.sion and sympathy as any victim of delirium-tremens. Now take a girl, fresh from the old country, her cheeks red with the rich, pure blood manufactured from sweet-milk, potatoes, and oatmeal, and place her in one of these factories on this fare. It needs no seer to tell how long, even with such a stock of health as she brings, that she can stand this exterminating process; how long before those sound white teeth will begin to ache and blacken, and the bright clear eyes dim, and the cheek wear yellow instead of red roses, and the flesh become flabby, and the whole creature become demoralized. Now, I ask, Is n.o.body guilty for all this waste and wreck? Is it any more trouble to make sweet, wholesome bread, than to manufacture and multiply bad pies? As a matter of policy, wouldn't these operatives work better on a piece of beefsteak and a slice of sweet bread, than on pie and pickles? As a matter of _morality_, ought not such caterers to be held to strict account? Can _virtue_ even flourish where the whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint; when morbidness takes the place of hope, and faith is merged in despair? What wonder that of dyspepsia should come the suicide's rope?

And as to the usual country boarding-house or hotel fare, for which the keepers of these places coolly pocket their fees, I propose some deduction be made by them for the doctor's bills consequent the ensuing winter; some reduction for the sour milk that the children have drunk, because the cans in which it was kept were not properly washed and aired, or the ice-house kept in good order; some reduction for the state of the stomach caused by taking refuge from bad bread in poor crackers; some reduction for generating such a disgust of meat, from the sight of it in its various stages of raw, burnt, and grease-soaked, that weeks or months even of wholesome food can scarcely tempt one trial of the article; some reduction for aching limbs produced by bunchy beds an entire "season;" some reduction for boarders performing the part of "waiters," through the season, in the total absence of bell-wires in the establishment; some reduction for inhaling the noxious gases of refuse kitchen matter, carelessly thrown around the house, or the nuisance of beating about the country in search of a washerwoman. Before the bill is finally settled, and the trunks packed, I would like to see these questions considered by the country landlord.

But you say, "It is all ignorance; _they don't know any better_." As if that was not just where the agony came in! As if an "_ignorant_"

person had any right to take such a position, or any right to expect anything like the same pay as a competent, intelligent one receives.

Now I have made up my mind to "speak in meetin'". I don't care how many country editors jump on the fence and say, "Silence!" I wont _be_ silent. I intend to fight a crusade against this crying sin of New England, so long as I can make a pen wag; and anybody whose rustic feathers get ruffled in the process may take his own time to oil them down. I persist that I have never yet "boarded" anywhere in the country that I found wholesome bread there, or meat cooked other than _fried_, unless it has been through line upon line and precept upon precept of my own; and that in these awful experiences of mine, Cape Ann bears off the palm. There! I am going to-morrow to the city to get some decent bread--the only place where it is to be found--and get some fish; for if you want fish, never go where they swim. Put that in your note-book too.

And now, in conclusion, I will add, that in a place where, through sour bread and sour theology, the element of cheerfulness is especially needed to keep the young folks from turning into premature vinegar cruets, it is a very great pity that at a picnic their only outlet for conviviality--dancing, by the youngsters--should be considered a sin. "It would break up the whole thing--it would never do!" was the reply to a philanthropic suggestion of the kind. Heavens!

I wonder they don't fetter the legs of their lambs and calves; and insist upon all their birds singing, "Hark! from the tombs a dreadful sound!" Do you know what young people so brought up will do?--that is, if they don't commit suicide first. They'll just go to the city, and break every one of the ten commandments smack through, the first day they get there. Alas! when will "good people" learn that the devil is never better pleased than when they try to make "religion" a gloomy thing.

Said a little child to her mother, "Shall you live as long as I do?"--"Perhaps not--but I cannot tell," was the reply; "I have lived a long while, you know."--"Well," said the little one, skipping about the room and singing, "I guess there'll be somebody to take care of me." Oh, ye who are "careful and troubled,"--groping like the mole in the earth, blind to the brightness overhead, look up! like this little trusting child, look up! When you have made provision for to-day, as intelligently as you know how, do not be anxiously forecasting the morrow.

_FROM MY SEAT ON THE ROCKS._

"Dog-fish, cat-fish, cod-fish, cunner." These are the animals that my friends paddle round for long hours--happy whether they are rewarded with the sight of five or fifty. Meantime I sit on the rocks, watching the pretty picture they make as they go sailing into the sunset, and am content. _My_ feet are _dry_; so are my skirts. We have only one thing in common: when they shout, "I have a bite!" I respond, Amen!--with this difference, that mine is from a mosquito instead of a fish. The ocean is nice to look at: freaky--therefore I think it must be a _she_; sometimes dark and lowering, sometimes brightly sparkling; now smooth as deceit, anon las.h.i.+ng itself like a caged creature to get out of bounds. Don't you believe I enjoy it more than those damp people that are always vexing it with rod and line? As I said, they look well as a part of the picture. Those deluded women, now, with broad hats tied down with bright bits of ribbon--and didn't they calculate the picturesqueness of the same when they bought yards of it a thousand miles away? Certainly. And why do they ruin their best boots treading on rocks covered with treacherous seaweed? And why is that scarlet shawl disposed just where it will be effective? Answer me that. Can it be that they are fishers of men instead of cod? Ah!

"worms" are not the only "bait" in that boat. I wonder do men know how much more attractive they look in slouched hats and easy jackets? Kid gloves, s.h.i.+ny hat, and tight boots are nothing to it. A man looks manly then; and that, I take it, is the first requisite in a man. See how they dress for _their_ work, my sisters. Sleeves up to the elbow, not for the purpose of showing a round white arm either; trousers turned up at the heel; while you--! Wont the laundress rub the skin off her knuckles when she tries to get the fish-bait off _your_ ruffled skirt, my dear? You can't be made to believe that those gentlemen would like you just as well in a dress suitable for "worms."

But, all things being equal, I really think they would; or, if they didn't, their opinion would be a matter of small consequence.

I wish I could understand the difference between a brig, a sloop, a dory, a schooner, and a yacht. I have had them explained so many times at the seaside, but it has never yet lodged in my head a minute. I think the reason is, that before my expounders get half through telling, my eyes are so enchained by the gliding beauty of a boat's motion, that I have no ears for technicalities. That's it--and I'm not such a fool after all! I wish my belt were a little more to be depended on, for I'd like to drift over to the Isle of Shoals, or to Newburyport, or some of those places at which the sea-fog plays hide and seek so temptingly from these rocks. Of course I "can go by land;"

but did _you_ never get possessed to do or to have what the Fates denied? Well, I'm human too. You may catch those wriggling fish if you fancy--I don't wonder they make such horrid mouths at you before they die--if only I could drift dreamily away into that golden sunset?

"Gates of amethyst and pearl!" I'm glad my Bible has "Revelations" in it. I don't know any poet who comes better to my a.s.sistance than Revelations. Keren Happuch, and Obed, and Jael--and "them" I am apt to skip; also who "begat Shem;" but the grand old "Psalms" and Revelations, I tell you, Tennyson, or any other "Son," may in vain crack their harp-strings trying to rival. Then imagine that watery dilution of a "Tupper" after reading a chapter in "Proverbs"! Put this in your note-book--that about all the good things you clap your hands at were stolen from the Bible. Brush the dust from off yours now, and see if it is not so; and have the grace to own up, when you do see it.

My heart is torn trying to decide whether my allegiance finally be given to the mountains or the ocean. I can see with my mind's eye lovely Brattleboro' and its enchanting mountains, the mist rolling slowly off their sides at sunrise, crowning their tops with many-hued wreaths; or I can see one gorgeous cloud at sunset resting lightly on their summit, and gradually fading away before the growing l.u.s.tre of the bright evening star. All these pictures are framed in my memory, and never a tint has faded out through the busy years. But this later love of mine--the ocean--whom I perforce must admire at a respectful distance, sinuous, cold, treacherous, glittering, repelling, yet fascinating me as does the serpent the bird, I know not how to resist.

Only last night this ocean drew a mist-veil softly over its face, and by help of a huge black cloud above it, jaggedly notched in and out at the upper edge, cunningly wooed me, in this mountain shape, to believe that whatsoever form I liked, that form _it_ could a.s.sume to win me.

Surely such devotion should have its reward.

_WIs.h.i.+NGS AND LONGINGS._

Did you never _wish_ you had it? Of course you have, a thousand times.

You never would be miserable any more if it could only be so. You are sure of that. It may be a fine house, a fine store, a fine carriage.

No matter what; the desire for it has taken the spice and flavor out of every blessing you possess. I used to play with a little girl once, who told me in confidence, and in pantalettes, "that she should never be happy till she had a real _true_ gold watch; and that she meant to be married, as soon as ever she could, to a rich man who would give her one." For myself, I had much rather at that time have had a bunch of flowers, and I didn't suppose she really meant what she said, as she stood there tying on her doll's bonnet. But she was in dead earnest, though I _didn't_ know it. Sure enough, she got her rich husband, and her gold watch; and was sick enough of both, as I have since found out, before the honeymoon was well over.

One day I heard a boy say to his younger brother, who was crying l.u.s.tily, "Now, Tom, I know you don't want anything, but what do you _think_ you want?" That boy was a philosopher, and went to the root of the matter. It is not what we really want, but what we _think_ we want, that frets most of us. Perhaps you tell me that you suffer just as much as if your longing were a reasonable or a sensible one. That's true too; but if you only could s.n.a.t.c.h _to-day's_ legitimate happiness, instead of wondering if you could not get a great deal more, for that to-morrow which may never come to you, wouldn't it be wiser? The other day I went off into the woods, with a dear little girl, who is much more of a poetess than a philosopher. Not a patch of soft green moss, not the tiniest bud of a wild flower, or flitting b.u.t.terfly, or bird, or tree-shadow on the smooth clear lake, escaped her bright, glad eyes. The _first_ flower she found enraptured her, and she climbed quite a steep rock with her mites of feet for the second, and so on till her tiny hands were full. Just then she found quite a bunch of bright pink blossoms; and I was so glad for her; when suddenly she burst into such a grieved, piteous cry, "Oh dear! oh dear! what _shall_ I do? _I can't hold them all._"

If we'd only think of that! That "we can't hold them all." That in order to grasp that which is the moment's wish, we must let something else drop that we prize. Something that we can never retrace our steps, in life's devious paths, to reclaim. It may be health, or character, or life itself, for that which is so perishable, so unsatisfying, so harmful, that we can never cease wondering how the "glamour" of it could have so dazzled our mental and moral vision. The little child I speak of, who clambered up the rock to secure that _one_ flower, was happier in its possession than with the myriads that she afterwards found lying at her very feet. She had _earned_ that one! She had encountered a fierce briar-bush; she had got her hands scratched in the conflict; she had tickled her little nose with a defiant twig; she had tangled her curls; she had sc.r.a.ped her little fat knee till it was red--and _got it_! All herself, too! I couldn't elaborate a better moral, if I preached an hour. We don't value happiness in heaps. It is the one little sweet blossom, that comes unexpectedly in our way, that we love best after all. Isn't it so?

How cheap is advice! Advice is like a doctor's pills; how easily he _gives_ them! how reluctantly he takes them when _his_ turn comes!

Meantime, it is well to keep one's eyes and ears open; but, after that, to decide for one's self. He who cannot do this is a human windmill, always beating the air--a weatherc.o.c.k, veering each minute to a new point. His life is a succession of experiments, all of which are predestined to be failures. He has no faith in himself, and people accept him at his own valuation.

_A TRANSITION STATE._

We seem to be in a transition state all round. Politics, religion, woman's rights, men's wrongs, all seething in the caldron together; and everybody's finger is being thrust into the boiling mess, and pulled scalded out of it--some howling with the experiment, others closing their pioneer teeth upon the pain, and bearing it for the good of the cause.

This seems to me to be the situation. For one, I am quite willing to do humble duty by bringing f.a.gots and kindling to keep the fire going, no matter who "hollers." Anything is better than letting it go out; at least so far as the woman question is one of the ingredients in the caldron. The men having the top round of the ladder at present, may sit there till we climb up and oust them, which wont be long; or rather, bless their jackets, till we climb up and oblige them to make room for us to sit down beside them, which, after all, is what we really want. I, for one, make no secret of liking the brethren, but I like them near--intellectually and socially. Not looking down at us from a dizzy height, careless how we stumble by the road-side, or cut our weary feet, or bruise our hearts, and stuffing their fingers in their ears, and then making believe they don't hear our cries; but helping us along generously after them, like good fellows, with a word of cheer, and a full hearty belief in our good intentions and desire to do _all_ our duty. Isn't that reasonable? To be sure it is; and the only reason they don't always say so is, because, with their natural impatience, they never can sit still long enough to hear us through, when we talk common-sense. I believe the last question "up" was woman's right to wait upon herself to concerts, lectures, theatres, and the like, when she had no male escort. Now that is a subject that has been pretty well ploughed over in my mind for years. I have known so many bright, intelligent women obliged to stay at home when they needed these relaxations from care and toil and bother, because custom did not permit their attendance, unless they could la.s.so a coat and hat to bear them company. It has seemed to me cruel in the extreme, that this law should not be changed. As I understand it, in Paris a respectable woman can do this, without discomfort or molestation, with a _female_ attendant; and though it may be the deathblow to my reputation to own that I never saw Paris, it is true, and I cannot therefore judge how much more safe a woman would be in waiting upon herself home in Paris, at the hour when public amus.e.m.e.nts are generally over, than in New York. This, I presume, is the hitch in the question. If so, women must wait till the majority of men are more chivalric and spiritual, and that wont be to-day, nor to-morrow. Now, a woman, by taking a big basket in her hand, and leaving her hoop at home, and pinning an old shawl over her head, and tying a calico ap.r.o.n round her waist, may walk unmolested. I know, because I have tried it when I felt like having a "prowl" all alone, and a good "think,"