Around The Tea-Table Part 14

For the last few days in the old house the accommodations approach the intolerable. Everything is packed up. The dinner comes to you on shattered crockery which is about to be thrown away, and the knives are only painful reminiscences of what they once were. The teapot that we used before we got our "new set" comes on time to remind us how common we once were. You can upset the coffee without soiling the table-cloth, for there is none. The salt and sugar come to you in cups looking so much alike that you find out for the first time how coffee tastes when salted, or fish when it is sweetened. There is no place to sit down, and you have no time to do so if you found one. The bedsteads are down, and you roll into the corner at night, a self-elected pauper, and all the night long have a quarrel with your pillow, which persists in getting out of bed, and your foot wanders out into the air, feeling for greater length of cover. If the children cry in the night, you will not find the matches nor the lamp nor anything else save a trunk just in time to fall over it, getting up with confused notions as to which is the way to bed, unless there be some friendly voice to hail you through the darkness.

The first of May dawns. The carts come. It threatens rain, but not a drop until you get your best rosewood chairs out of doors, and your bedding on the top of the wagon. Be out at twelve o'clock you must, for another family are on your heels, and Thermopylae was a very tame pa.s.s compared with the excitement which rises when two families meet in the same hall--these moving out and those moving in. They swear, unless they have positive principles to prohibit. A mere theory on the subject of swearing will be no hindrance. Long-established propriety of speech, b.u.t.tressed up by the most stalwart determination is the only safety. Men who talk right all the rest of the year sometimes let slip on the first of May. We know a member of the church who uses no violence of speech except on moving day, and then he frequently cries out: "By the great United States!"

All day long the house is full of racket: "Look out how you scratch that table!" "There! you have dropped the leg out of that piano!" "There goes the looking-gla.s.s!" "Ouch! you have smashed my finger!" "Didn't you see you were pus.h.i.+ng me against the wall?" "Get out of our way! It's one o'clock, and your things are not half moved! Carmen! take hold and tumble these things into the street!" Our carmen and theirs get into a fight. Our servants on our side, their servants on theirs. We, opposed to anything but peace, try to quiet the strife, yet, if they must go on, feel we would like to have our men triumph. Like England during our late war, we remain neutral, yet have our preferences as to which shall beat. Now dash comes the rain, and the water cools off the heat of the combatants. The carmen must drive fast, so as to get the things out of the wet, but slow, so as not to rub the furniture.

As our last load starts we go in to take a farewell look at the old place.

In that parlor we have been gay with our friends many a time, and as we glance round the room we seem to see the great group of their faces. The best furniture we ever had in our parlor was a circle of well-wishers. Here is the bed-room where we slept off the world's cares, and got up glad as the lark when the morning sky beckons it upward. Many a time this room has been full of sleep from door-sill to ceiling. We always did feel grandly after we had put an eight-hour nap between us and life's perplexities. We are accustomed to divide our time into two parts: the first to be devoted to hard, blistering, consuming work, and the rest to be given to the most jubilant fun; and sleep comes under the last head.

We step into the nursery for a last look. The crib is gone, and the doll babies and the blockhouses, but the echoes have not yet stopped galloping; May's laugh, and Edith's glee, and Frank's shout, as he urged the hobby-horse to its utmost speed, both heels struck into the flanks, till out of his gla.s.s eye the horse seemed to say:

"Do that again, and I will throw you to the other side of the trundle-bed!" Farewell, old house! It did not suit us exactly, but thank G.o.d for the good times we had in it!

Moving-day is almost gone. It is almost night. Tumble everything into the new house. Put up the bedsteads. But who has the wrench, and who the screws? Packed up, are they? In what box? It may be any one of the half dozen. Ah! now I know in which box you will find it; in the last one you open! Hungry, are you? No time to talk of food till the crockery is unpacked. True enough, here they come. That last jolt of the cart finished the teacups. The jolt before that fractured some of the plates, and Bridget now drops the rest of them. The Paradise of crockery-merchants is moving-day. I think, from the results which I see, that they must about the first of May spend most of their time in praying for success in business.

Seated on the boxes, you take tea, and then down with the carpets. They must be stretched, and pieced, and pulled, and matched. The whole family are on their knees at the work, and red in the face, and before the tacks are driven all the fingers have been hammered once and are taking a second bruising. Nothing is where you expected to find it. Where is the hammer?

Where are the tacks? Where the hatchet? Where the screw-driver? Where the nails? Where the window-shades? Where is the slat to that old bedstead?

Where are the rollers to that stand? The sweet-oil has been emptied into the blackberry-jam. The pickles and the plums have gone out together a-swimming. The lard and the b.u.t.ter have united as skillfully as though a grocer had mixed them. The children who thought it would be grand sport to move are satiated, and one-half the city of New York at the close of May-day go to bed worn out, sick and disgusted. It is a social earthquake that annually shakes the city.

It may be that very soon some of our rich relatives will, at their demise, "will" us each one a house, so that we shall be permanently fixed. We should be sorry to have them quit the world under any circ.u.mstances; but if, determined to go anyhow, they should leave us a house, the void would not be so large, especially if it were a house, well furnished and having all the modern improvements. We would be thankful for any good advice they might leave us, but should more highly appreciate a house.

May all the victims of moving-day find their new home attractive! If they have gone into a smaller house, let them congratulate themselves at the thought that it takes less time to keep a small house clean than a big one.

May they have plenty of Spaulding's glue with which to repair breakages!

May the carpets fit better than they expected, and the family that moved out have taken all their c.o.c.kroaches and bedbugs with them!

And, better than all--and this time in sober earnest--by the time that moving-day comes again, may they have made enough money to buy a house from which they will never have to move until the House of many mansions be ready to receive them!

CHAPTER XLVII.

ADVANTAGE OF SMALL LIBRARIES.

We never see a valuable book without wanting it. The most of us have been struck through with a pa.s.sion for books. Town, city and state libraries to us are an enchantment. We hear of a private library of ten thousand volumes, and think what a heaven the owner must be living in. But the probability is that the man who has five hundred volumes is better off than the man who has five thousand. The large private libraries in uniform editions, and unbroken sets, and Russia covers, are, for the most part, the idlers of the day; while the small libraries, with broken-backed books, and turned-down leaves, and lead-pencil scribbles in the margin, are doing the chief work for the world and the Church.

For the most part, the owners of large collections have their chief anxiety about the binding and the type. Take down the whole set of Walter Scott's novels, and find that only one of them has been read through. There are Motley's histories on that shelf; but get into conversation about the Prince of Orange, and see that Motley has not been read. I never was more hungry than once while walking in a Charleston mill amid whole harvests of rice. One handful of that grain in a pudding would have been worth more to me than a thousand tierces uncooked. Great libraries are of but little value if unread, and amid great profusion of books the temptation is to read but little. If a man take up a book, and feel he will never have a chance to see it again, he says: "I must read it now or never," and before the day is past has devoured it. The owner of the large library says: "I have it on my shelf, and any time can refer to it."

What we can have any time we never have. I found a group of men living at the foot of Whiteface Mountain who had never been to the top, while I had come hundreds of miles to ascend it. They could go any time so easily. It is often the case that those who have plain copies of history are better acquainted with the past than those who have most highly adorned editions of Bancroft, Prescott, Josephus and Herodotus. It ought not so to be, you say. I cannot help that; so it is.

Books are sometimes too elegantly bound to be read. The gilt, the tinge, the ivory, the clasps, seem to say: "Hands off!" The thing that most surprised me in Thomas Carlyle's library was the fewness of the books. They had all seen service. None of them had paraded in holiday dress. They were worn and battered. He had flung them at the ages.

More beautiful than any other adornments are the costly books of a princely library; but let not the man of small library stand looking into the garnished alcoves wis.h.i.+ng for these unused volumes. The workman who dines on roast beef and new Irish potatoes will be healthier and stronger than he who begins with "mock-turtle," and goes up through the lane of a luxuriant table till he comes to almond-nuts. I put the man of one hundred books, mastered, against the man of one thousand books of which he has only a smattering.

On lecturing routes I have sometimes been turned into costly private libraries to spend the day; and I reveled in the indexes, and scrutinized the lids, and set them back in as straight a row as when I found them, yet learned little. But on my way home in the cars I took out of my satchel a book that had cost me only one dollar and a half, and afterward found that it had changed the course of my life and helped decide my eternal destiny.

We get many letters from clergymen asking advice about reading, and deploring their lack of books. I warrant they all have books enough to shake earth and heaven with, if the books were rightly used. A man who owns a Bible has, to begin with, a library as long as from here to heaven. The dullest preachers I know of have splendid libraries. They own everything that has been written on a miracle, and yet when you hear them preach, if you did not get sound asleep, that would be a miracle. They have all that Calvin and other learned men wrote about election, and while you hear them you feel that you have been elected to be bored. They have been months and years turning over the heavy tomes on the divine attributes, trying to understand G.o.d, while some plain Christian, with a New Testament in his hand, goes into the next alley, and sees in the face of an invalid woman peace and light and comfort and joy which teach him in one hour what G.o.d is.

There are two kinds of dullness--learned dullness and ignorant dullness. We think the latter preferable, for it is apt to be more spicy. You cannot measure the length of a man's brain, nor the width of his heart, nor the extent of his usefulness by the size of his library.

Life is so short you cannot know everything. There are but few things we need to know, but let us know them well. People who know everything do nothing. You cannot read all that comes out. Every book read without digestion is so much dyspepsia. Sixteen apple-dumplings at one meal are not healthy.

In our age, when hundreds of books are launched every day from the press, do not be ashamed to confess ignorance of the majority of the volumes printed. If you have no artistic appreciation, spend neither your dollars nor your time on John Ruskin. Do not say that you are fond of Shakespeare if you are not interested in him, and after a year's study would not know Romeo from John Falstaff. There is an amazing amount of lying about Shakespeare.

Use to the utmost what books you have, and do not waste your time in longing after a great library. You wish you could live in the city and have access to some great collection of books. Be not deceived. The book of the library which you want will be out the day you want it. I longed to live in town that I might be in proximity to great libraries. Have lived in town thirteen years, and never found in the public library the book I asked for but once; and getting that home, I discovered it was not the one I wanted.

Besides, it is the book that you own that most profits, not that one which you take from "The Athenaeum" for a few days.

Excepting in rare cases, you might as well send to the foundling hospital and borrow a baby as to borrow a book with the idea of its being any great satisfaction. We like a baby in our cradle, but prefer that one which belongs to the household. We like a book, but want to feel it is ours. We never yet got any advantage from a borrowed book. We hope those never reaped any profit from the books they borrowed from us, but never returned.

We must have the right to turn down the leaf, and underscore the favorite pa.s.sage, and write an observation in the margin in such poor chirography that no one else can read it and we ourselves are sometimes confounded.

All success to great libraries, and skillful book-bindery, and exquisite typography, and fine-tinted plate paper, and beveled boards, and gilt edges, and Turkey morocco! but we are determined that frescoed alcoves shall not lord it over common shelves, and Russia binding shall not overrule sheepskin, and that "full calf" shall not look down on pasteboard.

We war not against great libraries. We only plead for the better use of small ones.

CHAPTER XLVIII.

REFORMATION IN LETTER-WRITING.

We congratulate the country on the revolution in epistolary correspondence.

Through postal cards we not only come to economy in stamps, and paper, and ink, and envelopes, but to education in brevity. As soon as men and women get facility in composition they are tempted to prolixity. Hence some of us formed the habit of beginning to read a letter on the second page, because we knew that the writer would not get a-going before that; and then we were apt to stop a page or two before the close, knowing that the remaining portions would be taken in putting down the brakes.

The postal card is a national deliverance. Without the conventional "I take my pen in hand," or other rigmarole--which being translated means, "I am not quite _ready_ to begin just now, but will very soon"--the writer states directly, and in ten or twenty words, all his business.

While no one can possibly have keener appreciation than we of letters of sympathy, encouragement and good cheer, there is a vast amount of letter-writing that amounts to nothing. Some of them we carry in our pockets, and read over and over again, until they are worn out with handling. But we average about twenty begging letters a day. They are always long, the first page taken up in congratulations upon "big heart,"

"wide influence," "Christian sympathies," and so on, winding up with a solicitation for five dollars, more or less. We always know from the amount of lather put on that we are going to be shaved. The postal card will soon invade even that verbosity, and the correspondent will simply say, "Poor--very--children ten--chills and fever myself--no quinine--desperate-- your money or your life--Bartholomew Wiggins, Dismal Swamp, Ia."

The advantage of such a thing is that, if you do not answer such a letter no offence is taken, it is so short and costs only a cent; whereas, if the author had taken a great sheet of letter paper, filled it with compliments and graceful solicitations, folded it, and run the gummed edge along the lips at the risk of being poisoned, and stuck on a stamp (after tedious examination of it to see whether or not it had been used before, or had only been mauled in your vest pocket), the offence would have been mortal, and you would have been p.r.o.nounced mean and unfit for the ministry.

Postal cards are likewise a relief to that large cla.s.s of persons who by sealed envelope are roused to inquisitiveness. As such a closed letter lies on the mantel-piece unopened, they wonder whom it is from, and what is in it, and they hold it up between them and the light to see what are the indications, and stand close by and look over your shoulder while you read it, and decipher from your looks whether it is a love-letter or a dun. The postal card is immediate relief to them, for they can read for themselves, and can pick up information on various subjects free of charge.

But, after all, the great advantage of this new postal arrangement is economy in the consumption of time. It will practically add several years to a man's life, and will keep us a thousand times, at the beginning of our letters, from saying "Dear Sir" to those who are not at all dear, and will save us from surrendering ourselves with a "Yours, truly," to those to whom we will never belong. We hail the advent of the postal-card system.

CHAPTER XLIX.

ROYAL MARRIAGES.

There has lately been such a jingle of bells in St. Petersburg and London that we have heard them quite across the sea. The queen's son has married the daughter of the Russian emperor. We are glad of it. It is always well to have people marry who are on the same level. The famous affiancing in New York of a coachman with the daughter of the millionaire who employed him did not turn out well. It was bad for her, but worse for the coachman.

Eagle and ox are both well in their places, but let them not marry. The ox would be dizzy in the eyrie, and the eagle ill at home in the barnyard.

When the children of two royal homes are united, there ought be no begrudging of powder for the cannonading, or of candles for the illumination. All joy to the Duke of Edinburgh and his fortunate d.u.c.h.ess.

But let not our friends across the sea imagine that we have no royal marriages here in this western wilderness. Whenever two hearts come together pledged to make each other happy, binding all their hopes and fears and antic.i.p.ations in one sheaf, calling on G.o.d to bless and angels to witness, though no organ may sound the wedding-march, and no bells may chime, and no Dean of Westminster travel a thousand miles to p.r.o.nounce the ceremony,--that is a royal marriage.