Ginger Snaps Part 3

Now I am not apologizing for this--not a bit! I am only sorry for those of you who trudge along whether from choice or necessity--through life's dusty highway, without stopping to notice, or to cull, the flowers hidden in its hedge-rows, and place them as you go, in your hair, or in your bosom.

Pretty things are humanizing. I wish every work-room could have its flowers and its pictures. _My_ G.o.d don't turn His back on either. Even in the dull old yard of a tenement house, He sends up through the c.h.i.n.ks tiny blades of gra.s.s and dandelion, and chickweed blossoms. And does not the pure white snow come sifting down over the garbage-heaps and ash-barrels before the door of poverty which man, less merciful, would doom to have all the year round before their disgusted vision?

Meantime, let us hope that "the minister's" holiday present may be a pair of boxing-gloves instead of a hymn-book, of which latter he has a surfeit. As to his wife--for goodness' sake, send her the same thing you would, were she the wife of a layman. And if you order her a cake, don't surmount it with a cross, of which ministers' wives have already too many in their paris.h.i.+oners. Give an editor a new subscriber and you can't miss it. Send a lawyer no bones to pick, unless--well covered with meat! And don't make a _pup_ of your husband by giving him a velvet dressing-gown. And as to you, sir, don't pick out for _your_ wife just what your friend Jenkins does for _his_; because, though men are all alike, and cigars are always acceptable to them, yet a man can never be certain whether his wife, on the receipt of a present from her husband, will box his ears, or fall to kissing him; and since Variety is the G.o.d of most men, I suppose this is all right.

It must be owned, that of all perplexing things on earth, the greatest is the perplexity of choosing a present. After you have considered, first your purse; then the multifarious demands upon it; then the age, desires, and taste of the recipient--comes the weary tramp in hot, crowded stores for the desired article; comes the known incivility of _most_ women bent on shopping errands, to their fellow-women; of addressing the clerk, upon whom you, as first-comer, have a prior claim, or even drawing from your and his fingers the very article you have under distracted consideration. Of course I don't mean _you_, my dear; didn't I say _most_ women? You will always find that I leave a door of escape open, before I insinuate that my s.e.x are not all seraphs. Well--you make your purchase, and perspire in your furs, while "cash" performs his gymnastics through feminine feet and hoops, to get it _parcelled_ and return your change. But, alas! this is only one present, and it has taken an entire morning to get it, and when you get home Aunt Jemima whispers confidentially "that she overheard John say that _he_ had bought that very article for the same person for whom yours was intended;" and, what is worse, you can't transfer it, because there is no other member of the family for whom it would be suitable. You wonder if it wouldn't do to enclose so many dollars to each member of the family, and let them make their own selection.

Sentiment would have to "go under," of course; but don't it when a recipient wonders "how much you paid for your gift"? Time was, when a present was acceptable, or on the contrary, according to the love which prompted it, and not according to the value of the gift. Now, young ladies expect diamonds, and pearls, and rubies, and quite turn up their pretty noses at a book, or a work-box, or a writing-desk.

What with "golden weddings" and "silver weddings," and other bids for gold and silver in various shapes, what with the bugbear word "mean"

in such connection, bankruptcy, or an inglorious exit, is the only alternative to many. I have been some time coming to my moral, which is this: that the "present" system is, to use a slang expression, "run into the ground." I except the present a husband gives his wife, for whom nothing of course is too good, or too tasteful, or too costly; and who can, while receiving it, ask him to give her a hundred dollars or so, to go out and _buy him one_! Also, in all heartiness, and without joking, I except the little children, whose lovely dream of Santa Claus vanishes with the flossy, golden-tipped curls of babyhood.

Pile up for them the dolls, and tops, and whistles, and wagons, and kaleidoscopes, and velocipedes, that they may always when old age seats them in the chimney-corner have this bright spot to look back upon, over the graves of buried hopes and hearts, which could not else bear thinking of.

_A BID FOR AN EDITORs.h.i.+P._

I think I should like to be an editor, if somebody would do all the disagreeable, hard work for me, and leave me only the fancy touches. I don't know how profound my political articles would be, but they would be _mine_. I think my book reviews would be pleasant reading, at least to everybody but some of the authors. I should have a high railing round my editorial desk, and "through the lattice" microscopically and leisurely regard the row of expectant men waiting outside for a hearing. I should not need a spittoon in my office. n.o.body should contribute to my paper who smoked, or chewed, or snuffed tobacco; that would diminish my contributors' list about right. I should discard Webster and Walker, and inaugurate a dictionary of my own. I should allow anybody who felt inclined to send me samples of big strawberries and peaches, and bunches of flowers; and I should get a fine library, free gratis, out of the books sent me to review. As to grinding the axes of the givers in return, why that, of course, should always be left to the option of the editor. Before I commenced an editor's life, I should secure money enough in some way to be able to snap my fingers in the face of that grim ogre, "Stop my Paper!" I tell you I _wouldn't_ stop it. It is a free country. I'd keep on sending it to him. I'd always have something in every number about him, so that he couldn't do without having it, how much soever he might want to.

Then you should see my desk. It should be dusted once a year, to show editors what a desk _might_ be. My editorial chair shouldn't pivot; there should be no shadow of turning about that. Gibraltar should be a circ.u.mstance to it. The windows of my editorial den should be sc.r.a.ped with a sharp knife occasionally, to take off sufficient dirt to enable me to write legibly. I should keep my best bonnet in a bandbox under my desk, for any sudden dress emergency, as do editors their go-to-meetin' hat. Like them, too, I should have a small looking-gla.s.s for--visitors! also a bottle of--"medicine" for--visitors! I don't think I should need a safe, as the principles upon which my paper would be conducted would render it unnecessary. My object would be to amuse _myself_, and say just what came uppermost, not by any means to please or edify my species. Now, I have examined all the papers that cross my threshold, and I am very sure that I have hit on quite an original idea.

If it stormed badly on publication day, I wouldn't send the poor devils in my employ out with my paper, just because my subscribers fancied they wanted it. Let 'em wait. The first fair day they'd have it, of course. In the meantime, the printer's devil, and the compositors, and the rest of 'em, could play chequers till the sky cleared up.

If anybody sued me for libel, I'd--I'd whine out, "Aint you ashamed to annoy a female? Why don't you strike one of your own size?" I should insist on being treated with the deference due to a woman, though in all respects I should demand the untrammeled-seven-leagued-boots-freedom of a man. My object would be to hit everybody smack between the eyes, when I felt like it; and when I saw brutal retribution coming, to throw my silk ap.r.o.n over my head and whimper.

I have not yet decided upon the t.i.tle of my paper. Children are not generally baptized until after they are born. Nor do I know who will stand sponsor. All that is in the misty future. As to the price, I should nail up a cash-box at the foot of the stairs, and people could drop in whatever they liked. I should, by that means, not only show my unshaken confidence in human nature, but also learn in what estimation the general public held my services. There's nothing so dear to my heart as spontaneity.

_A SERMON TO PLYMOUTH PULPIT._

O Mr. Beecher! that you should recommend "candy," or "sugar plums," it is all the same, for the youngsters. That _you_ should be quoted through the length and breadth of the land as having done so, to the delight of these youngsters, and the candy-merchants, and the dentists, and the doctors generally! To be _candid_, I am ashamed of you.

Do you suppose that you are the only grandparent in the land? The only loving, the only proud grandparent? I am a grandparent. I can love as hard as you can. I can show just as bewildering a grandchild as you can. It is just as hard for me to say No to that grandchild as it is for you to say No to yours; but--excuse me--_I_ can do it. She is five years old, but never touches candy. When she was three, a lady in an omnibus gave her a red and white peppermint stick, and she turned to me and asked "if it were not a pretty _toy_?" She knows now that candy is to eat; but when it is given her, whether in my presence or not, she says, "I am not allowed to eat candy." Meantime, she loves beefsteak, she loves potatoes, she drinks milk and eats bread, with a relish that candy-fed children never know. Either you are very right, or I am very wrong. You see I am touchy on this subject, having worn out several pens and distributed much ink in the crusade against it; and here _you_, in the _Ledger_, right under my very nose, with one frisk of your magic pen, cover me with indelible ignominy!

"Mr. _Beecher_ says children should have candy;" and, what is more, he thinks they should be _bought_ to be good by it! Oh, fie!

Well, now, I reply: Mr. Beecher is a _man_. If his grandchild has the stomach-ache, it is the _women_ of the family who will soothe it, and bear its cries and its wakeful nights. If the little teeth prematurely decay and ache, it is _the women_ who will accompany it to the dentist's for the heart-rending wrench of cold iron. Mr. Beecher, in short, decided this candy question from a _man's_ standpoint. He took the popular side of the question with the children, who will always shout hosanna to him for the same. But, my dear sir, the mothers who, going home after shopping through Broadway, stop each day for the poisonous parcel of sweets for Johnny and Susy, need restraint, not encouragement, from you. They "can't imagine what ails Susy or Johnny, to be so fretful" after eating it. Of course they never for a moment suppose it to be candy. Didn't _they_ eat candy? And are they buried yet? _I_ ask another question: What is the state of their teeth and digestion to-day? What their powers of endurance as mothers? What, in short, do they annually contribute to enable the fat family doctor to ride in his carriage and live in Fifth Avenue? _That's_ what _I_ want to know.

O Mr. Beecher! well as I like you, I don't know what to say to you; and what makes the case more aggravating, I know I shall keep on liking you, whatever you say. That's the worst of it, and you know it.

And I am going to send this right off to the _Ledger_ office without a second reading, lest I should qualify it, or trim it up, or make it more respectful because you are "a minister."

No, sir; I won't do it; I'll take example by a rampant female at a public meeting the other night, who was scolding her husband for not getting her a better seat. The distressed man laid his hand on her arm, saying, "Hus.h.!.+ here's f.a.n.n.y Fern; she will hear you." With distended nostrils, that admirable woman replied, "I don't care for six hundred f.a.n.n.y Ferns!"

My dear sir, your hand is too well accustomed to drawing a moral, for me to presume to do it for you in this case! Adieu.

_FEMALE CLERKS._

I have heard the objection made, by women, to female clerks in stores, that they are less civil and attentive to their own s.e.x than are male clerks. I can only answer for myself, that I have never found any reason to complain of them in this regard. In fact, I often wonder at their patience and civility under very trying circ.u.mstances. I suppose gallantry supplies the place of patience in male clerks. With so many fresh, pretty, dimpled young faces to look at, a young man need not be so very churlish, though he be not christened Job.

Female clerks, it always seemed to me, must necessarily give out first _in their feet_. That incessant standing, from morning to night, must be more trying to them than to men. Many women, I know, can _walk_ miles more easily than they could stand for half an hour.

After making a purchase at a store quite late in the afternoon, I said to the young girl who waited upon me,--

"How very tired you must get of us women, day after day!"

"There is a great difference in them," she civilly replied.

"But don't your feet ache sadly?" I asked. "That always seemed to me the most trying part of it."

She smiled as she pulled from under the seat, behind the counter, a stool.

"I thought that mitigation of weariness was against all regulations in stores," I replied.

"Not in _this_," was her answer. "Mr. ---- has always allowed his female clerks to sit down when they were tired."

Now, I was so pleased at this that I should like to give that employer's name in full on this page. Here was a man who was wise enough, and, above all, humane enough, to look on _their_ side of the question. In doing so, of course, he did not overlook his own. In doing so, he may also have known that there is a point when even a woman's india-rubber patience, may be stretched too far. He may have known that, when soul and body gave out, and a customer came in at that trying moment, and the "last ounce" having been "laid on the camel's back," the article inquired for _they_ "_did not keep_!" I say he _might_ have been keen enough to have known this. _I_ prefer to believe, that being a good, kind-hearted man, he tried to make service for these young girls as light as he would wish it made for his own young daughters, were they in that position. It is very certain that, which way soever we look at it, it is an example which other employers would do well to follow.

It wont do the male clerks any harm to stand still; but I would be very glad to have inaugurated this humane consideration for the young women. I heard one of them tell a friend, the other day, that she had to go directly to bed each evening on her return home, because her feet and back ached so intolerably.

Another suggestion: When employers have any occasion to reprove these young women, if they would not mortify them by doing it in the presence and in the hearing of customers, it would not only be more pleasant for the latter, but would be more likely to have its proper effect on the offender. I have sometimes heard such brutal things said by employers to a blus.h.i.+ng young girl, whose eyes filled with tears at her helplessness to avert it, or to reply to it, that I never could enter the store again, for fear of a repet.i.tion of the distressing scene, although, so far as I personally was concerned, I had nothing to complain of.

The moral of all this is, that men in the family, and in the store too, must look upon women in a different light from that to which they are accustomed; before, to use a detestable phrase, but one which will appeal most strongly to the majority, they "can get the most work out of them." Physicians understand this. Every man is not a physician, but he ought at least to know that backaches and headaches, and heartaches too, are not confined to his own s.e.x.

_BLUE MONDAY._

"Blue Monday." By this name clergymen designate the day. Preaching as they do, two sermons on the Sabbath, sometimes three--not to mention Sunday-school exhortations, and possible funerals and marriages; of course, I take no account of what may have happened, on Sunday, in _their own_ families, no more than does the outside world. "The minister" must, like a conductor of a railroad train, be "up to time,"--hence "Blue Monday." Flesh and blood is flesh and blood, although covered by a surplice or a ca.s.sock, and will get _tired_, even in a good cause. Therefore the worn-out clergyman takes Monday for a day of rest, for truly the Sabbath is none. He wanders about and tries to give his brains a holiday--I say _tries_, because he often misses it by wandering into the book-stores, or going to see a publisher, instead of taking a drive, or a ramble in the fields, or wooing nature, who never fails to lay a healing hand on her children.

But Blue Monday does not belong exclusively to clergymen--oh, mother of many children! as you can testify. True, you call it by another name--"Was.h.i.+ng-day,"--but it is all one, as far as exhaustion is its characteristic. May the G.o.ds grant that on that day, when your a.s.sistant in nursery-labor must often make up the deficiencies involved in the terrible "family-wash," that no "plumber" or "gas-fitter" send in his bill, to "rile" the good man of the house, to exclaim against the "expenses of housekeeping," and send you into your Babel of a nursery, with moist eyes and a heavy heart? It is poor comfort, after you have cried it out, to try to pacify yourself by saying, Well, he didn't _mean_ to say I'm sorry I ever was married, yet it hurts me all the same; men are so thoughtless about such things, and they go out after hurling such a poisoned arrow, and forget, even if they ever knew it, that they have left it there to rankle all day; and are quite astonished, and, perhaps, disgusted when they come back that the good lady is not in excellent spirits, as they are, and wonder what _she_, with a comfortable home, and nothing but house matters to attend to, can find to worry her. Now, Mrs. Jones, and Mrs. Jenkins, and Mrs. Smith, I'll lay a wager with each of you, that your husbands have done that very thing, more times than you can count, and on "Blue Monday" too.

Ah! these "chance words," and the _thick_-skinned utterers of them.

Ah! the pity that the needle is no hindrance to the bitter thoughts they bring; but that over the little torn ap.r.o.n or frock, the tears of discouragement fall; the bitterest of all--that _he_ hasn't the least idea "he has said anything," but is, very likely, inviting some fellow that very minute to "take a drink" with him, or to smoke a dozen cigars more or less, spite the "expense." My dears, wipe your eyes. If you look for consistency in the male creature, you'll need a microscope to find it. _Your_ expenses hurt him dreadfully; when I say yours, I mean not only your _personal_ expenses, but the _house_ expenses; for don't you see, had he staid a bachelor, he wouldn't have had a plumber's bill to pay--and that's all your fault, because you said "yes," when he got on his knees to implore you that he _might_ have the felicity of paying your mutual plumber's bill.

But _that_ was _then_, and _this_ is _now_!

But isn't it perfectly delicious when those men come home, after making some such blundering speech, the innocent way, after hanging up their hats, that they'll walk into your presence, rubbing their hands, and fetch up standing in the middle of the room with, "Why! _what's_ the matter?" as they catch sight of their wives' lugubrious faces. I tell you, Mr. Smith, and Mr. Jones, and Mr. Jenkins, whatsoever else you do, _don't_ hold your _wives_ responsible for that which they are no more to blame for than yourselves. Or if you will insist upon going over their hearts with a cart-wheel, in this manner, have the manliness when you come home, not to pooh-pooh the resentful tears you have caused.

The fact is, you are but blunderers as far as women are concerned. You are elephants trying with your huge paws to pat humming-birds. Nine out of every ten you demolish. Only physicians understand a woman; and they don't always act up to the light they have.