Read Ebook: Folly as It Flies; Hit at by Fanny Fern by Fern Fanny

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Heaven forbid the coming woman should not have warm blood in her veins, quick to rush to her cheek, or tingle at her fingers' ends when her heart is astir. No, the coming woman shall be no cold, angular, flat-chested, narrow-shouldered, sharp-visaged Betsey, but she shall be a bright-eyed, full-chested, broad-shouldered, large-souled, intellectual being; able to walk, able to eat, able to fulfill her maternal destiny, and able--if it so please God--to go to her grave happy, self-poised and serene, though unwedded.

But your conventional "handsome man," of the barber's-window-wax-figure-head-pattern; with a pet lock in the middle of his forehead, an apple-sized head, and a raspberry moustache with six hairs in it; a pink spot in its cheek, and a little dot of a "goatee" on its cunning little chin; with pretty blinking little studs in its shirt bosom, and a neck-tie that looks as if he would faint were it tumbled, I'd as lief look at a poodle. I always feel a desire to nip it up with a pair of sugar-tongs, drop it gently into a bowl of cream, and strew pink rose-leaves over its little remains.

The verdant have an idea, that literary people are always under the influence of "the divine afflatus;" but, like the curious female who gazed through the bars of the doomed man's cell to gloat over his situation, and was told by her victim, that, although the gallows was impending, "he couldn't cry all the time," they are doomed to disappointment.

He wants--this wise man--to hear some merry little child sing:

"Hickory, dickory, dock, The mouse ran up the clock; The clock struck one, And down he ran: Hickory, dickory, dock."

Or he wants to lean over a fence and see the turnips grow. It rests him to think that the fat, lazy pigs never think, but lie winking their pink eyes forever at the sun. In short, as I told you, he wants just the antipodes of himself.

It is a difficult thing for literary people, as well as others, to tell the truth sometimes. Now here is a letter containing an article by which the writer hopes to make money; and of which my "candid opinion is asked, as soon as convenient."

Now in the first place, the article is most illegibly written; an objection sufficient to condemn it at once, with a hurried editor--and all editors are hurried--beside having always a bushel basket full of MSS. already in hand to look over. In the second place, the spelling is wofully at fault. In the third place, the punctuation is altogether missing. In the fourth place, if all these things were amended, the article itself is tame, common-place, and badly expressed. Now that is my "candid opinion" of it.

The writer would not like to descend from his pedestal, and hear that he must begin at the foot of the ladder, and first of all, learn to spell correctly, before he can write. And that after words, must come thoughts; and that after thoughts, must come the felicitous expression of thoughts. And that, after all that, he must then look about for a market for the same.

Chief of all sublunary abominations is the slatternly woman. I blame no man for longing to rush from a house, the mistress of which, habitually, and from choice, pays him the poor compliment of pouring out his coffee in curl-papers, or tumbled hair, or dingy, collarless morning gown, and slip-shod feet. If there is a time when a pretty woman looks prettier than at any hour in the twenty-four, it is in a neat breakfast toilette, with her shining bands of hair, and nice breakfast robe, ; and if there is a time when a plain woman comes the nearest to being handsome, it is in this same lovable, domestic dress.

I will maintain that the coffee and eggs taste better, and that the husband goes more smilingly and hopefully to his day's task, after helping such a wife to bread and butter. I could never comprehend the female slattern--thank heaven there are few of them--or understand how a woman, though she had no eye to please but her own, should not be scrupulously neat in all the different strata of her apparel.

I repeat it, I blame no man from rushing in disgust from a house whose mistress is a slattern; who never pays her husband the compliment to look decent in her person or in her house, unless company is expected; who reserves her yawns and old dresses for her husband, and strikes an attitude for his male friends; whose pretty carpets are defaced with spots; whose chairs are half dusted; whose domestic dinners are uneatable; whose table-cloth, castors, and salt-cellars are seldom regenerated; and whose muslins look as if they had been dipped in saffron.

I once had the misfortune to live in the house with such a female, whose husband roosted half his in-door time on the top of the table, to keep clear of the mop. How her cap-strings flew through the doors; what galvanized broomsticks she wielded; how remorselessly she ferreted out closets, and disembowelled cupboards; how horribly she scraped glass and paint; and how anxious she looked to begin again when it was all done. How I slunk behind doors, and dodged behind screens, and jumped out of windows, to get out of the vixen's way; and how I sat swinging in the elm tree in the orchard at a safe distance till the whirlwind was past.

Heavens; how that india-rubber woman would go to baking after she had done cleaning, and to ironing after she had done baking, and to sewing after she had done both; how vindictively she twitched her needle through, as if she wished it were some live thing, that she might make it feel weariness and pain. How like whipped spaniels her children looked; and what a reverence they had for washing and ironing days; how remorselessly she scrubbed their noses up and down of a Sunday morning, and shoved them into their "meetin clothes," turning the pockets carefully inside out, to see that no stray bit of string, or carnal marble, or fish-hook remained, to alleviate the torture of the long-drawn seventeenthlies of the parson's impracticable discourse.

Still this female gave her husband light bread to eat; his coffee and tea were always strong and hot; he might have shaved himself by the polish of the parlor table; his buttons were on his shirts, and his stockings always mended; but the man--and he was human--might as well have laid his night-cap beside a sewing-machine. And oh, the weary details of roasting, baking and broiling to which he was compelled to listen and approve between the pauses. The messes, which in any other female hands but hers, would inevitably have stewed over or burnt up or evaporated. The treasure he had in her, culinarily and pecuniarily, though he didn't know it!

What I want to know is this:

I pause for a reply.

Well-bred, too, are women to sister woman.--Never discuss the color of her hair, or the style of its arrangement, her smile, her gait, so that she can hear every word of it. Never take it for granted that she is making a dead-set at a man, to whom she is only replying--"Very well, I thank you, sir." Never sit in church and stare her out of countenance, while mentally taking her measure, or nudge some one to look at her, while recapitulating within ear-shot all the contemptible gossip which weak-minded, empty-headed women are so fond of retailing.

There are many kinds of women. Of course I adore them all; but there is one who excites my unfeigned astonishment. I allude to the rabbit woman. She has four chins and twelve babies. She has two dresses--a loose calico wrapper for home wear, and a black silk for "meetin'." She eats tremendously, and never goes out; she calls her husband "Pa." She is quite content to roll leisurely from her rocking-chair in the nursery to the dining-room table, and thence back again, year in and year out. She knows nothing that is passing in the outside world, nor cares. She never touches a book or a newspaper, not even when she is rocking her baby to sleep, and might. She never troubles herself about Pa, so long as he don't get in her way, or sit on the twelve babies. She has a particular fondness for the child who cries the most, and won't go to sleep without a stick of candy in each fist. She has a voice like an auctioneer, and prefers cabbage to any vegetable extant.

Thirdly, there is your butterfly woman, who, provided her wings are gay and gauzy, is not particular where she alights. Who cannot exist out of the sunbeams, and dreads a rainy day like an old gown. Who values her male acquaintance according to their capabilities for trotting her to balls, operas and parties, and giving her rings and bouquets. Who spoils all the good looks she has, trying to make herself "look better," and turns into a very ordinary caterpillar after marriage.

Fourthly, there is your library woman, steeped in folios; steeped in languages, both living and dead; steeped in ologies, steeped in politics; who walks round a baby as if it were a rattle-snake, and if she was born with a heart, never has found it out.

Fifthly, there is your female viper--your cat--your hyena. All claws, nails and tongue. Wiry, bloodless, snappy, narrow, vindictive; lapping up your life-blood with her slanders, and clawing out your warm, palpitating heart. Out on her!

Sixthly, there is your woman--pretty or plain, it matters not; lady-like by nature; intelligent, but not pedantic; modest, yet not prudish; strong-hearted, but not "strong-minded" ; no "scholar," and yet well read; no butterfly, and yet bright and gay. Merry without noise, silent without stupidity, religious without fanaticism, capable of an opinion, and yet able to hold her tongue. If married, not of necessity sinking into a mere machine; if unmarried, occupying herself with other things than husband-hunting. Liking books, yet not despising needles and brooms; genial, unaffected, good-natured; with an active brain, and a live heart under lock and key. God bless her! wherever she is, for she redeems all the rest.

Pshaw--there are no such women; they are only making the best of what they can't help; they are eating their own hearts and make no sign dying. They ought all to be wives and mothers. Cats, poodle-dogs, parrots--plants, canaries and vestry meetings--are nothing to it. No woman ever has the faintest glimpse into heaven till she has nursed her own baby; in fact, I half doubt if she has earned a right to go there till she has legitimately had one.

I believe every one is of the opinion that children should be taught civility; but there is one way that they are tortured, in the zealous parental endeavor to teach them politeness, which seems to us deserving of the severest reprehension. Some person comes to the house, it may be a valued and worthy friend, who is unfortunately repulsive in appearance and manners. Mamma tells Johnny to "go kiss" the lady, or gentleman, as the case may be. Now Johnny, like other human beings, has his personal preferences, and in a case like this especially, prefers spontaneity. He may obey, it is true, but it is a question when a simple recognition would have answered, whether an act involving hypocrisy were not better omitted. I speak from experience, remembering well the horror with which I looked forward, in my childhood, to the periodical visits of a snuffy old person. I think my uncompromising hatred of tobacco in every form, dates back to those forced snuffy kisses, followed in many cases by actual nausea, and in all by a vigorous facial ablution on my part, after the repulsive ceremony. To this day, a colored silk handkerchief, of the antique pattern most affected by snuff-takers, affects me as does the sight of a red shawl, a belligerent rooster, or bull.

Some mothers seem unwilling to recognize a child's individuality. "She is such a strange child--so different from other children," a mother remarked in my hearing, with a sigh of discontent; as if all children should be made after one model; as if one of the greatest charms of life were not individuality; as if one of the dearest, and weariest, and least improving, and most stagnating things in the world, were not a family or neighborhood which was only a mutual echo and re-echo.

Out of twenty violets in a garden, you shall not find any two alike, but this does not displease you. One is a royal purple, another a light lilac; one flecked with little bright golden spots, another shaded off with different tints of the same violet color, with a delicacy no artist could improve. You plant them, and let them all grow and develop according to their nature, now and then plucking off a dead leaf, now loosening the earth about the roots, or watering or giving it shade or sunshine, as the case may be, but you don't try to erase the delicate tints upon its leaves and substitute others which you fancy are better. No human fingers could recreate what you would mar--you know that; so you bend over it lovingly, and let it nod to the breeze, and bend pliantly to the shower, or lift its sweet face, when the sun shines out, and through all its various changes you do not sigh for monotony. So, when I see a family of children, I like the mother's blue eyes reproduced, and the father's black eyes. I like the waving, sunny locks, and the light brown, and the raven; I like the peach-blossom skin, and the gipsy olive, round the same hearthstone, all rocked in the same cradle. Each is beautiful of its kind; the variety pleases me. Just so I like diversity in regard to temperament and mental faculties. Each have their merits; Heaven forbid they should be rolled and swathed up like mental mummies, bolt upright, rigid, and fearfully repeated; no collision of mind to strike out new ideas, no progress, no improvement. Surely this is not the age for that.

A public toast recently given runs thus; "Our parents: the only tenders who never misplaced a switch."

Now you may laugh at that--so did I--but where could you find a greater fib? Many a time and oft have parents laid the switch on their children's backs, when they should have applied it to their own; many a time has the lash which should have descended upon the back of the favorite, fallen upon his much abused brother's. There is nothing in creation which parents so often misplace as the switch; and it need not of necessity be a birchen rod or a ferule; there are switches which cut deeper than either, of which many a ruined man and woman can tell you.

I knew two children--one blundering, but honest, sincere, self-reliant, speaking the plain truth on all occasions without qualification, making his requests in few words, and smothering his disappointment as best he might when refused. The other, wily, diplomatic, Chesterfieldian, ever with a soft word on the tip of his tongue, to pave the way for the much desired boon, which was never refused, so winning, so courteous, so apparently respectful was the seeker. Follow these two children. See the latter in the play-ground, boasting to his young associates what he has got from the "old gentleman" or the "old lady," boasting what he will yet get--boasting that he knows how to do it; rehearsing to them the disgusting pantomime of the caress, the respectful, deferential attitude which he uses on such occasions. Follow the other to his little room at the top of the house; see him sitting in gloomy silence, too proud to weep, too proud to complain, brooding over the injustice done him--not hating the fraternal owner of the "coat of many colors," no thanks to those who gave them both birth, but looking into the far dim future with that wistful longing which comes of unloved, precocious childhood; sitting there--with his own hand turning the poisoned arrow round and round in the festering wound, incapable of extracting it, and yet knowing no balm to assuage its intolerable anguish.

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?

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."

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 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?

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.

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.

Well may her glance, her touch, the rustle of her garments even, have power to soothe and bless; well may the soft touch of such upon brows knotted with the world's strife bring coolness and peace. Oh, woman, be strong-minded as you will, if only you be pure and gentle-hearted.

I shall be told that there are teachers who abuse their trust--mercenary, ungrateful, impervious to any moral considerations. Of course, in all professions there are those who are better out than in it. Plenty who are trying to regulate delicate microscopic springs with an iron crowbar. Teaching is not exempt from its bunglers and charlatans; but, outside of this, there is the long, pale-cheeked procession of female teachers, stretching out feeble hands from the jostling crowd, trembling lest by some unintentional oversight of theirs they lose the approbation of employers, and with it their means of subsistence; bearing patiently the petty insults of willfulness, of selfishness, of arrogance, all uncomplainingly, day by day, week by week, month by month, as the slow years roll on; nor, is there any help for this, as many young people are at present educated; when a teacher, though often possessed of double the native refinement of the taught, is considered by them merely as an upper servant, to be quizzed, to be cheated, to be tormented, at every possible opportunity; and with all her earnest and conscientious endeavors, to be held responsible for the consequences of natural dullness and premeditated sloth; and all for the grudging permission to keep soul and body together. Many may think this an overdrawn picture. Would that it were!

The men would hang themselves because there are three hundred and sixty-five days in a year, and every morning of all these days, they must button their shirt-wristbands. The women would think of nine children and one at the breast, and every one to be worried through the measles, scarlet fever, chicken-pox, and whooping-cough; while Bridget and Betty would incontinently drown themselves at the never-ending succession of breakfasts, dinners and suppers, to be gobbled up by people constantly ringing the bell for "more." Heaven and a clean apron! the idea is delicious. Let us hope the old woman got it.

Homeward bound! and now we must leave all these beautiful scenes, and say Farewell to the kind faces which greeted us so many happy "good mornings" and "good nights." There are mementoes now before me: mignonnette from the bright-eyed girl of "Marquette;" specimens of "ore" from "the Doctor," of sterling value as himself; and recollections of at least one member of the press, glad, like ourselves, to escape from pen and ink. Ah! who has not hated to say Farewell?

"We must come again next summer," said we all--so said the Captain.

Ah! the poor Captain. My eyes fill--my heart aches, as if I had known him years, instead of those few bright, fairy days. Poor Captain Jack Wilson, with his handsome, sunshiny face, cheery voice, and manly ways! How little I thought there would be no "next summer" for him, when he so kindly helped me up on the hurricane deck, and into the cosy little pilot-house, to look about; who was always sending me word to come "forward," or "aft," because he knew I so much enjoyed seeing all beautiful things; who was all goodness, all kindness, and yet, in a few hours after we left him, found a grave in that cruel surf!

Political meetings had been held that day, all along our route, and a great multitude of the unwashed, uncombed, and, for all I could see, unshirted men, entered the cars at the various stopping-places, shaking the rain from their manes like so many shaggy Newfoundlands; "fust-rate fellows"--fearful at spitting and the quill-toothpick exercise!--evidently unused to the curly specimen of female, judging by the looks of blank astonishment with which they regarded--open-mouthed--your humble servant. Of course, we did not see a "rolling prairie" on this route; however, as we had just done a little extra "rolling" on Lake Superior, perhaps it was as well deferred till another summer.

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