Ginger Snaps Part 6

_HELP FOR THE HELPFUL._

I have never, in any temperance discussion, written or spoken, heard or seen any mention of this cla.s.s of inebriates; and yet the drunkards on tea are just as surely sapping the foundations of life, as the devourers of whiskey or gin. That women only, or mostly, are the victims, does not lessen the importance of my statement. I say mostly, for I have in my recollection at least two literary men of note, who primed themselves on strong green tea, without sugar or milk, for any literary effort, when overtasked nature flagged. One of them became in consequence subject to distressing fits, and has since deceased.

But it is the women who practise this form of inebriation of whom I would now speak. The working-girls, the sempstresses, the tenders in shops, who, being able to pay but slender price for board, get badly-cooked, poor food, and, in consequence, often three times a day, call for the fatal "cup of tea," which, for the moment, "sets them up," as they call it, and enables them to shoulder again the load they have dropped, till another fit of exhaustion overtakes them, worse than the preceding, to be followed by a repet.i.tion of the same _pro-tem._ remedy. Then follow indigestion, headaches, sleepless nights, and the usual long train of miseries, which any physician who has ever been called upon to prescribe for these overworked, underfed unfortunates, will immediately endorse. Tea to the working-girl, taken in this way, is like the "corner-grocery-drink" to the working-man, and just as deadly in its results as if it sent her reeling through the streets, as rum does him; although she neither sees, knows, nor would admit it, any more than he would. Sometimes, when you speak to them about it, they reply, "But I must have something to keep me up; I have no appet.i.te for food; I am so tired all the time, and tea makes me feel so good."

The old plea of the drunkard the world over. Look at these weary women, with dark circles about their eyes, nervous almost to insanity, ready to "cry" at the slightest notice, the blue veins on their temples looking as if they were painted _outside_ the skin. Look at their long, thin, _sick_-looking fingers, and their slow, weary steps, from which all the spring and elasticity of youth has long since departed. See them swallowing "pills" by the dozen, and trying every quack medicine afloat, instead of resisting the enemy which has done all or two-thirds the mischief.

Of course, the world over, _bad food_ is the sworn ally of drunkenness in every shape, and these poor girls have much to contend against in that shape.

Then, again, I think few women can long preserve their self-respect amid dirty surroundings. One often sees with a pained pleasure--if this expression is not paradoxical--their faint attempts to make light out of darkness, and beauty out of deformity, in the solitary plant, struggling for life, and its one slant ray of suns.h.i.+ne, outside some tenement-house window. Or, if you enter, a rude print upon the soiled wall, of some saint, or child, or some scene in nature; upon which latter the weary eyes often turn with a vain longing at realization.

These sights, to the humanitarian, who is trying to solve life's great problem for the benefit of those on whom it bears so heavily, are suggestive. It is clear, at least, that woman, from choice, would not be amid dirt or noisome odors. What _man_ would become, without her refining influence, and the touch of her reformatory fingers, and her unpolluted sense of smell, of which tobacco has deprived him, it is not my purpose now to consider, although I have very firmly rooted ideas on this subject. But there is a cla.s.s of women among those whom adverse circ.u.mstances have thrown into such places, upon whom it bears the more hardly, because they have been accustomed all their life to the reverse of this.

Hundreds so situated, sunk out of sight of former acquaintances by cruel want, bear it bravely, heroically, while struggling hopefully and one-handed, against discouraging odds, for better days. Some, alas! go _down_, soul-sick, body-weary, under the unequal contest, as we who live in this great, swarming city know. Benevolent ladies in New York are awake to this; and the question arising, What can we do for such? has been answered, by energetic and Christian ladies, by the establishment of boarding-houses, in respectable and pleasant neighborhoods; with board at prices but little higher than those which they were obliged to pay in the disagreeable localities above mentioned. Indeed, in some urgent and genuine cases, upon application, the applicant has been received upon merely nominal board, in recognition of the Bible fact that "bricks cannot be made without straw." In one such inst.i.tution, I lately spent a most profitable and delightful morning. It is located on Was.h.i.+ngton square--one of the most delightful as well as central spots in New York City--by ladies of wealth and position in society, and, better still, ladies of intelligence and piety,--executive ladies, who do something beside _talk_, and know how, and when, and where to act for this great and humane object.

With such a good and solid foundation, they have moved on, as their strength and means have permitted. I pa.s.sed from one to another of the pleasant rooms of the young ladies, who occupied apartments here, and who were, at that hour in the forenoon, scattered far and wide over the city; some as teachers in schools and in families, some as pupils in the School of Design, or the ward schools, while many were occupied as dress-makers, sempstresses, copyists, &c. I looked around me at the clean white little beds, at the books, at the prints upon the walls, at the climbing ivy and flowering plants, upon which the sun was s.h.i.+ning as if in blessing, at the innumerable little tokens of personality, which are so suggestive to the stranger on entering an unoccupied apartment; those _little_ things which say to you as you read the t.i.tle of a genuine and well-thumbed book, "Ah! here lives one who _thinks_;" or you see by the thousand little refined touches, and orderly and wise arrangement of clothing and furniture, the neat thrift of woman expressed, and you feel thankful that they will not come home, when the day's toil is over, to unholy sounds, and unclean sights, and bad air, and loathsome food. You thank G.o.d that such women can keep up heart for their exhaustive and unaccustomed toil, by the _certainty_ of a safe and respectable shelter over their heads, when night draws its curtain over the temptations and the wickedness of this great city. You are thankful that their self-respect is not only preserved in this most important way, but by intercourse and contact with the ladies of worth and refinement who have the inst.i.tution in charge and at heart.

If this is not a n.o.ble inst.i.tution, what is? I do not call it a charity. It were wrong so to designate it. From out that threshold pa.s.s n.o.ble, _self-supporting_ girls, putting to shame the useless lives of the idle, paniered ladies who remorselessly wear out the souls of husbands, fathers, and brothers, in the vain struggle for fas.h.i.+onable supremacy. No: this Inst.i.tution is a _help_, not a _charity_. Its object is to help those who wish to help themselves.

Upon one of the walls of a little room there I saw a representation of the "Grecian Bend." I looked on this picture, and on that, and my eyes were moist with grat.i.tude for one, and with womanly shame for the other.

Do you ever think how much work a little child does in a day? How, from sunrise to sunset, the dear little feet patter round--to us--so aimlessly. Climbing up here, kneeling down there, running to another place, but never still. Twisting and turning, rolling and reaching and doubling, as if testing every bone and muscle for their future uses.

It is very curious to watch it. One who does so may well understand the deep breathing of the rosy little sleeper, as, with one arm tossed over its curly head, it prepares for the next day's gymnastics. A busy creature is a little child.

_WOMEN ON THE PLATFORM._

"Miss Marianna Thompson, now a student at the Theological school, received, during her summer vacation two invitations to settle with good societies, each of which offered her twelve hundred dollars per year. Pretty good for a school-girl, I think."

Yes, that is very good; and we trust Miss Thompson will accept one of these (or a better) and do great good to her hearers.

And, should some excellent young man ask her to "settle" with him as wife, _at no salary at all_, we advise her to heed that "call" as well.--_N. Y. Tribune._

Well, now, Mr. _Tribune_, I don't. I have seen too many women, quite as capable as Miss Thompson of being self-supporting individuals, exhausting the last remnant of their strength in the family, and carefully saving every penny for a husband, who never doled out twenty-five cents, without asking the purpose for which it was needed, and reiterating the stale advice to spend it judiciously. I have seen such women, too proud to complain or remonstrate, turn away with a crimson cheek, and a moist eye, to d.i.c.ker, and haggle, and contrive for this end, when the husband who gave this advice, had effectually blotted out the word self-denial from his own dictionary.

No, Mr. _Tribune_, I differ from you entirely. I advise no woman to refuse twelve hundred independent dollars a year for good, honest labor, to become such a serf as this.

And while we are on this subject, I would like to air the disgust with which I am nauseated, at the idea of any decent, intelligent, self-respecting, capable wife, ever being obliged _to ask_ for that which she so laboriously earns, and which is just as much hers by right, as the money that her husband receives from his customers is _his_, instead of his next-door--dry-goods--neighbor's.

No man should thus humiliate a woman; no woman should permit herself to be thus humiliated. I am not now speaking of those foolish women, to whom a ribbon, or a necklace, is dearer than their husband's strength, life, or mercantile honor. I put such women entirely out of the question; only remarking, that if a man marries a fool in the hope of her being pliant, and easily ruled by him, he will find too late that he is mistaken. But that's his affair. Men always have, and always will keep on admiring their own perspicacity in reading female character, when not one in ten knows any more what his wife is spiritually made of, than what sheep furnished the coat for his own back.

Sary Gamp advised her comrade--nurse--to put the mutual bottle on the shelf, and "_look the other way_!"

That's just what I would advise the husbands of intelligent wives to do with regard to the money which they "allow" them, and which one would imagine was rightly theirs, by virtue of risking their lives every Friday to become the mother of twins; by virtue of, when lying faint and weak beside them, giving out orders for the comfort and well-being of the family down-stairs before they are able to get about; by virtue of _never_ being able for one moment, day or night, sick or well, to drop, or to shake, off the responsibility which a _good_ wife and mother must always feel, whether present or absent from her family.

Oh! treat such a woman generously. Make up your mind what in justice she should receive in the money way, and don't above all things, wait for her to _ask_ you for it, and never, never be mean enough to charge a woman of this kind "to spend it carefully."

I daresay you have done it, and _you_, and _you_; I daresay you are real good fellows too, and _mean_ to do what is right. And I know you "love" your wives--_i.e._, as _men_ love--thus--wounding a sensitive spirit, without the least notion you are doing it; thus--charging the tear that follows to a coming toothache or stomach-ache! Great blundering creatures! I sometimes don't know whether to box your ears or hug you. Because the very next minute you will say, or do, some such perfectly lovely thing, that, woman fas.h.i.+on, I exclaim, "Well--well;" but I wont tell you what I do say, because you'll hop right off the stool of repentance, and go to your normal occupation of crowing and bragging.

But, seriously, I do wish you would consider a little this same money question, and when the time comes for payment, don't, as I tell you, open your pocket-book, heave a deep sigh, as you spread a bill on your knee, and give it a despairing glance of love, as you dump it in your wife's outstretched hand. No, sir! follow Sary Gamp's advice: "Put it on the shelf, and look the other way, and don't trouble yourself to tell her to '_make it go as far as she can_,'" because she will naturally do that, and there's where you are a fool again. I should think you'd know by this time, that it will go so far _you_ wont see it again your natural lifetime. And why shouldn't it? Does she require to know whether you pay fifteen cents apiece for your cigars; whether you couldn't buy a cheaper kind, and how many a day you smoke? Come now, be honest--would _you_ like that?

As I have always declined all requests to lecture, or to speak in public, I may be allowed to make a few remarks on the treatment of those who do.

Can anybody tell me why reporters, in making mention of lady speakers, always consider it to be necessary to report, fully and _firstly_, the dresses worn by them? When John Jones or Senator Rouser frees his mind in public, we are left in painful ignorance of the color and fit of his pants, coat, necktie and vest--and worse still, the shape of his boots. This seems to me a great omission. How can we possibly judge of his oratorical powers, of the strength or weakness of his logic, or of his fitness in any way to mount the platform, when these important points are left unsolved to our feeble feminine imaginations? For one, I respectfully request reporters to ease my mind on these subjects--to tell me decidedly whether a dress, or a frock-coat, or a bob-tailed jacket was worn by these masculine orators; whether their pants had a stripe down the side, and whether the dress lapels of their coats were faced with silk, or disappointed the anxious and inquiring eye of the public by presenting only a broadcloth surface. I have looked in vain for any satisfaction on these points.

I propose that the present staff of male reporters should be remodelled, and that some enterprising journal should send to Paris for the man-milliner Worth, in order that this necessary branch of reportorial business be more minutely and correctly attended to.

Speaking of reporters, I was present the other night at a female-suffrage meeting, where many distinguished men made eloquent speeches in favor thereof. At the reporters' table sat two young lady reporters side by side with the brethren of the same craft. Truly, remarked I to my companion, it is very well to plead for women's rights, but more delicious to me is the sight of those two girls _taking them_! But, rejoined my cautious male friend, you see, f.a.n.n.y, a woman couldn't go to report a rat-fight, or a prize-fight, or a dog-fight. _But_, replied I, just let the women go "marching on" as they have begun, and there will soon _be_ no rat-fights, dog-fights, or prize-fights to report. It will appear from this, that I believe in the woman _that is to be_. I do--although she has as yet had to struggle with both hands tied, and then had her ears boxed for not doing more execution. Cut the string, gentlemen, and see what you shall see! "Pooh! you are afraid" to knock that chip off our shoulder.

How strange it all seems to me, the more I ponder it, that men can't, or don't, or wont see that woman's enlightenment is man's millennium.

"My wife don't understand so and so, and it's no use talking to her."--"My wife will have just so many dresses, and don't care for anything else."--"My wife wont look after my children, but leaves them to nurses, she is so fond of pleasure." So it would seem that these Adams and the "wife thou gavest to be with me," even now find their respective and flowery Edens full of thorns, even _without_ that serpent, female suffrage, whose slimy trail is so deprecated.

Put _this_ in the crown of your hats, gentlemen! _A fool of either s.e.x is the hardest animal to drive that ever required a bit. Better one who jumps a fence now and then, than your sulky, stupid donkey, whose rhinoceros back feels neither pat or goad._

_POVERTY AND INDEPENDENCE._

"I don't like those sewing-girls," remarked a friend to me. "Why don't they go into some respectable family as chamber-maids, or nurses, or cooks? If they are too proud to to do this, I have no pity for them."

Now there is just where the speaker and myself differ. _I_ pity them, _because_ they are too proud to do this. Besides, I do not think it is altogether because the name or position of "servant" is so obnoxious to them. It is the confinement of their position. It is the duration of their hours of labor--extending into the evening, and often till late in the evening, week after week, to which they object; whereas the working-girl in most other departments of service is released at nightfall, and is her own mistress till another day of toil begins.

Now, answer me: Were you, and you, similarly placed, would you not desire, even in the face of the drawbacks attending it, your _evenings_ to yourself? I think so. It is true, from "these evenings to themselves," have dated the perdition of many of this cla.s.s. Still, _young_ eyes will never see with old spectacles. Young blood will never course so sluggishly that all work, and no respite, will be accepted without nature's strong protest. "_One_ evening out in a week," that is the general holiday for a house servant: would not _your_ youth have rebelled, madam, at this? even though your remainder evenings were pa.s.sed in the bright parlor, with loving eyes resting upon you, instead of the underground kitchen, rebelliously watching the bell-wire? You must look at this subject with their eyes, instead of your own; through their privations, instead of through your privileges, if you would be just.

Said a merry matron, apologetically, to me, who had pa.s.sed life's meridian, "I never had any youth, and I am taking it now." That is just it! _The heart demands its youth, and, some time or other, it must and will have it._ G.o.d grant that to these poor girls, it may come harmlessly,--innocently! But I, for one, can never wonder or condemn, though I often deplore, that, driven at bay, like hunted animals, and many of them with limited knowledge and intelligence, they should s.n.a.t.c.h at the pa.s.sing sunbeam, lest another should never gild their lonesome path.

We need a wider charity for these girls; for all those on whom life bears so hardly. We who are well-fed, well-clothed, well-educated, how illy do we, with all these helps to virtue and goodness, perform our part. Let us remember this in our hasty judgment of them, in our disgust that they do not choose for themselves more wisely. Let us not in church, or elsewhere, ask to be forgiven _our_ shortcomings, with all these helps, when, if one less enlightened stumbles and falls by the way, we "do not pity them,"--nay, more, because they have done so, we refuse to help them again to their feet.

I have alluded, in a former article, to the cheap and comfortable boarding-houses, as a refuge to the working-girl from the horrors of their tenement-house home. I was descanting upon their advantages not long since to one who has herself been through many of the most distressing phases of the sewing-girl's life. She heard me silently, and to my surprise, without enthusiasm, when I spoke of the wholesome food, pure air, refres.h.i.+ng baths, free reading-room, and laundry.

"What?" asked I--"do you not consider this a blessed asylum for these girls?"

With an emphasis which I cannot convey on paper, she said, as her eye kindled, "Give me rather my poor room, even in the tenement-house, where, if I had a grief, I could cry it out, with no eye but that of my Maker to witness it. I could never be happy to go to my bed at night in company with a dozen others, in ever so clean or s.p.a.cious an apartment, where there was no privacy. I had rather work ever so hard, and _earn_ all I had, than to feel that I was in any measure a recipient of charity,--that I _was in an Inst.i.tution_, and labelled as an inmate when I pa.s.sed in and out."

Now there are those who, reading this, will only express disgust. I confess, although it surprised me, that I have a strong sympathy with the self-respect which prompted this frank avowal; and, excellent as is the embryo Inst.i.tution above alluded to, I yet hope that as its means increase each inmate may have an apartment to herself, be it ever so small, that the poor heart which "knoweth its own bitterness"

may not be "intermeddled with" by any stranger.

Never apply the word "tomboy" to a girl who is taking healthy and innocent exercise. Are there not mincing misses enough about us, who pervert girlhood by adult nonsense, till the whole head is sick, and the whole heart is faint? Better, a thousandfold, be "tomboys" than such _things_ as these. "Tomboys" have lungs and chests and rosy cheeks, and grow up to be healthy mothers of healthy children.

_Doctors_ may not like them, but common-sense and husbands do; though, truth to say, these terms are not always synonymous.