Caper-Sauce: A Volume of Chit-Chat about Men, Women, and Things.

Oh! could I by a word have summoned the advocates of Free Love to that spot – then and there would I have given them my dumb, eloquent answer to their nauseous, hell-begotten doctrines. I would have summoned thither those women who have lately stood up in public as champions of their sex's "rights" (Heaven defend us from their polluted, polluting tongues), and bade them look upon what they must know to be the inevitable end of promiscuous "affinity." I would have summoned there those men of position in the community, who sit in their carpeted, well-stocked library, and in full view of their household gods – within sound of the innocent prattle of their own children – by their own yet undesecrated hearthstones – write fine-spun theories upon Free-Love, claiming for its brazen female advocates the title of "modest" women! I would have summoned thither the editors of those respectable daily journals, who publish in their columns the sophistical effusions of such men, and bade them, one and all, look upon that young, gasping girl, and the coarse men who stood by and jeered at her.

As I turned soul-sick away, I saw a woman standing at a little distance with an infant in her arms, her face white with fear. As she gave a last glance at the girl she pressed her babe convulsively to her breast and covered its innocent face with kisses. The action was suggestive. Alas, just so must that lost young girl's mother once have kissed her!

How Easy to Say "be Cheerful"! – "Be cheerful," says the man who is easy in his circumstances, missing no loved face at the table, nor by the hearth. But does he ever consider how hard it may be to be "cheerful" when the heart aches, and the cupboard is empty, and there are little fresh graves in the churchyard, and friends are few or indifferent, and even God, for the time being, seems to have forgotten us, so desolate is our lot? How difficult for one man to understand another, in such different circumstances! How easy to say, "Be cheerful!" How hard he would find it to practise it, were he stripped of all life's brightness!

DOG-DAYS IN THE MOUNTAINS

To whomsoever human nature is a pleasant study, I would recommend as an inviting field a summer boarding-place. Wood, rocks, and lakes are nothing beside human nature. We can form some sort of an idea on geological, aquarian, and other principles, why they exist. We quite indorse the Scriptural statement at creation that they are all "very good." But I am puzzled to know why a woman who can do nothing but simper and fold her hands should be married and have children without number, and another beneath whose large motherly heart no little one ever has or ever will nestle, should go mourning all her days on account of it. Why a man whose every impulse and feeling and purpose are unswervingly in the right direction should have an empty pocket; and a mean, narrow-minded, ignorant, miserable apology for a man, have his tight fist on a full one. Why consumptives and scrofulous people should insist on industriously increasing the census, and men and women made physically on the right principles pertinaciously cling to celibacy. Why the serving-maid should have more womanliness, intelligence, and goodness, than the mistress whose irate voice makes her tremble. Why the clergyman should pay such undeviating attention to the soul of his child that he cannot spare time to see that his body at twelve years of age is "standing from under." Why a man marries a woman merely for her beauty, and is disgusted in two weeks that she has not turned out an intellectual companion. Why a good man, but not an intellectual one, marries a "strong-minded woman," and instantly sets about teaching her that obedience and silence are the first duties of wives. Why young men should decline marriage on the score that "they cannot afford it," when they spend more than would support a family, on their vices. Why a man with the proportions of Hercules should have a voice like a squeaking door-hinge, and a lovely girl deafen you every time she opens her rosebud mouth. In short, why, when men and women are such natural curiosities – singly or in groups, married or celibate – should showmen, at such cost of outlay, stock their premises with anacondas and giraffes, when their fellow-critters "would be so rich" an exhibition?

But think as long and as industriously as I may on these vexed questions, no solution comes. I turn them over to some philosopher who will unravel the skein while I take an evening sail upon the lake. In fact, when I get there, I don't care what becomes of my kind so that my sunset sail is not denied me. Nor is this as selfish as it seems, since I should not be safe company for them in the dog-days without this soothing process. Keep close to the shore now, oh, boatman: and above all, keep silence. Pickerel are good in their way, but bony; and I would fain listen dreamily to the plashing oar, and the twit-twit of the little birds as they seek their nests in the trees, while my eye rests on the changing clouds and their reflections in the smooth mirror below. Vex me not with talk of "dead swells" and "whitecaps." I would sail here till midnight in silence, and thence straight into the other world, before a ripple of earthly fret came over my spirit.

But it is not to be. One of our party "wants to pick pond-lilies," slimy and smell-less; not like the dear old pond-lilies in Massachusetts, though mockingly like in form and color. Another is yelling at an echo, which answers back as persistently as if it were of the feminine gender; but, unlike the feminine gender, always agrees colloquially. Another pokes me up from my reverie to know "why I am so stupid?" And now when the shadows are loveliest and the moon beginning to silver the lake, the universal voice is "to land." Let them go. Good riddance! Two of us stay with the boatman. Now flash up the Northern lights! Now appears the evening star, crowning yonder hill, and twinkling defiantly in the very face of the new moon. Plucky star! That's right! to take for your motto that of America —Room and freedom for all.

"What will we ever do when we get back to New York?" dolefully asked little Bright Eyes of me, the other day, as she came in with her apron full of mosses and flowers. That's just it. That's what I want to know. No cool lake awaits me there at eventide, on whose broad expanse one can float into serenity. But instead, gas-lighted, unventilated public assemblies, where vexed questions are agitated: and in place of bird-singing, inodorous streets, full of children whose "childhood" is a myth. And for the lovely fresh morning, with its aromatic odors, the whoop of milkmen, the rush of street cars, and the old mäelstrom whirl of business, folly, and sin. My very soul sickens to think of it. I won't think of it. I'll lay off and dream.

Every summer vacation I ask myself, why people who have no relish for country life doom themselves to yawn through six or eight weeks of it? People who never move from a certain chair on the piazza save to migrate to their beds, or to the dining-table; who have neither eyes to see earth's glory, nor heart to be grateful for it, or ears open to its myriad musical voices – living discords amid all its harmony. If invalids, I can understand and pity their misfortune; but your fat, well-to-do, buxom men and women, who have no earthly impediment to their locomotion, and yet who live weeks in the vicinity of grand natural objects, and are just as dead to them as the ox in the meadow – why do they travel thousands of dusty miles to get to them? People who look pityingly at you, as you return exhilarated from your delicious rambles, as if to say, "Poor lunatics!" One turns from them to the children, to whom every daisy and blade of grass is a bright heaven, and counts sadly over their lost years. Also, I would like to ask, is there anything in the climate of Vermont which turns out such huge trees, mountains, and men, that dwarfs nearly all its womankind? Again: Do preserves and pills, flapjacks and ipecac, plum-cake and castor-oil, jelly and jalap have a natural affinity, that they are so often found in each other's company? In other words: Why do the country-women of New England waste their time in concocting the indigestible richness which everybody is better without, and which renders these drugs necessary? Half the time thus spent, if devoted to the manufactory of that rare commodity – sweet, wholesome bread – or to the best way of cooking meat so as to preserve its juices, would shut up the drug-shops, prolong their own lives and good looks, and make them a credit to the glorious country in which they are born. Give us good bread, my dear country-women. What else soever you pass over, don't slight the bread. It is the crying sin of the country, that if there are cakes and pies in plenty, the bread may be sour, or filled with saleratus, or so stale that a dog would not swallow it, or so "slack-baked" that one might as well eat dough. Now the digestion of an ostrich would fail on such fare as this. A healthy stomach revolts at it, and refuses to be put off with sweets and preserves. It is a crime to set such bread before little children, even if adult digestion were equal to it, which it is not. A great reform is needed here, and if I can help it on, I care not who boxes my ears for the attempt. To see human beings making and swallowing such messes, and then sending physic after it, like a detective, to clear it from the system, is a proceeding which should give them all a free pass to the Lunatic Asylum. There – now I feel better! While I am catechising, do you suppose there was ever an invalid who didn't button-hole everybody, to recapitulate his or her symptoms, exhibit their tongues, and discuss patent medicines? It gets monotonous after a while, particularly when you know that they are bound personally to experiment on every pill, powder, and plaster that any heartless quack may invent to make a living. If half of them were to stop taking physic entirely, live on wholesome food, take plenty of fresh air and sleep, they would never know pain or ache. Don't the doctors know this, and laugh in their sleeves at it? And does a doctor ever give drugs to his own family? I think I have asked questions enough for the present, so we will consider the meeting adjourned.

SPRING IN THE CITY

There are those who like to begin the day vociferously; with demonstrative step and voice; with hurry and rush. I confess to a love of the serene, soft-stepping way in which Nature heralds in the day. Soft skies, softer music; the gradual rolling up of night's mantle, and the genial warmth which steals imperceptibly about us. Oh, that sweet, quiet, devotional coming in of the new-born day! How I long for it, as the blades of grass begin to grow green, between the pavement-stones of the crazy city! How I tire of its quips and pranks and circus-clown-tumblings. How stale grow its jests! How I pant for freedom outside its artificial, heated walls! How disgusting is the road woman must travel to secure all this happiness! Woollens and furs to be put safely out of reach of moths. House-cleaning and carpet-shaking to be done. Dresses to be bought, and horror! worse than all, to be fitted. Trunks to be packed – writing to be done, weeks ahead. My brain spins to think what a purgatory one must travel through, to reach that serene heaven, the bird-peeping-morning-hour of the country; when nobody comes to me with horrible questions about meat and butter. When as soon as my shoes and stockings are on, and before the dew is off, or the lovely mist done creeping off the mountains, Nature's cool hand is laid on my temples, and I give her the best of me. With my head on her bosom, I forget all that is askew in life and rest there contented with the present; like the babe who dreams not that its mother will presently loose its hand from her neck, and disappear while yet the trance continues.

If I am sentimental, forgive me; but sometimes I sigh to think how much of life goes to consideration of food and clothes. Now, while I sojourned in a tent on the James river, during the war, I used to lie in my cot, and consider these things among others. There were just the cot, a rough pine table, and my trunk, for furniture. I had only to wash my face and hands in the tin basin of water that Sambo slipped under the tent every morning, and all those bothering, small considerations were disposed of for the day.

There was no carpet there to be swept – there were no pictures or china to look after. Sambo made my bed, while I went into another tent to breakfast; and the fighting was going on outside, which was to leave it optional with Sambo about handing tin-basins of water to white folks. All that suited me. Life under these circumstances seemed to have something in it. I felt dignified to be alive, and thanked my father and mother for it.

We have finished the war since then. I am not sorry for that, but life in that tent has spoiled me for parlor fripperies. That's the worst of it. I keep all the time asking everybody if they don't think we should be a great deal happier without all these artificial wants, that so wear our spirits and souls out. Bless you, they all say, yes; but they keep going on all the same, and I suppose I shall.

A Woman's Motion. – I rise to make a proposition. It is this: that the name and denomination, and the name of the pastor, of our respective churches, should be neatly placed beside the principal entrance door, that strangers may be able to find those churches they desire. Why not? as well as the name of the sexton and his residence, which we find upon nearly all our churches. I won't charge anything for the hint, provided it is carried out. The thought came to me as I was touched upon the arm by a stranger the other Sunday, in the porch of a New York church, and asked, "Of what denomination is the pastor here?" I had to rub my head to remember, for creeds and denominations find little lodgment there. Provided I find Christianity, that's enough for me, and to my thinking, no one church has the monopoly of that.

WAIFS

Did you ever try to rid yourself of a thing you did not want? An old glove or a faded knot of ribbon, or a bit of lace? After Bettina has picked it up, and with honest delight returned it as a missing valuable, and every adult and minor in the house has taken his or her turn in depositing it carefully on your table, were you ever driven "clean" demented by the dust-man ringing the area bell, with the article in question, thinking, deluded philanthropist, that he had performed a virtuous action? Go where you may, can you rid yourself of it? Don't it turn up between the covers of books, and stare at you from bureau drawers, and appear simultaneously with your pocket-handkerchief on some august occasion from your robe pocket? Will water quench it, or fire burn it? Don't it always fly up chimney unharmed by the sparks, and watch an opportunity to re-enter at the area door? When you go out, don't it frisk along the gutter, timing itself to your steps, slow or quick; or eddy round your head in a gust of wind, and finally get blown back upon your door-step, where it persists in lodging, spite of brooms and Bettys, till you get as nervous about it as if it were some relentless enemy, dogging your every step? Perhaps all this while you are hunting every nook and corner vainly to find some article you really want, and which persistently keeps out of your way, or at least until you have given it up, and replaced it with a duplicate, when it takes that occasion suddenly to appear, and innocently to confront you, from a fold in an arm-chair, or sofa, or from the corner of a carpet.

When I experience these trials, I no longer marvel at the clutching fingers thrust through the grated windows of lunatic asylums, or the unearthly howls of rage or peals of wild laughter with which these unfortunates give vent to their feelings. I no longer smile at the annoyed man who, waking one fine spring morning, and looking at the fresh grass, exclaimed, "What! Green again! and —blue– his brains (?) out."

Partial Judgment. – How few people are gifted with the faculty of seeing round a corner; in other words, looking at both sides of a question before deciding! Those who have not this gift are always sinning, and always repenting; always asserting, and always retracting. They may have many estimable qualities, and yet, their house being built on such a sandy foundation, one hesitates before entering it; or, if he makes up his mind to do so, it is with the deliberate expectation that he may possibly be buried under its ruins.

TACT

I'm not particularly good at definitions, but I know what tact is not. It is not tact to sit down by the side of a person grieving for the dead, and tell them how much more comfortable life would now be to them, did they not love so strongly; and how much wiser, could they only be more diffusive in their attachments, and concentrate less; so that when the crape flutters from the door, one could coolly say: "Yes, it is true – he or she is dead and gone; and there's no help for it; let us turn to something else and be jolly."

It is not tact to tell a mother, who has an idiotic or deformed child, how smart, and sweet, and bright are your own; with what a zest they enter into rollicksome sports; how apt they are to learn, and how brilliant may be their own and your future.

It is not tact, if you have an acquaintance, who only by the most rigid and painstaking economy can maintain a presentable appearance, to make a call on such, in an elaborate toilet, with manners to match.

It is not tact to embarrass persons of limited education, and little reading, by conversing upon topics of which they can by no possibility know anything, save that you have the advantage of them in that regard. It is not tact, in the presence of an invalid, to dilate upon savory dishes, and the pleasures of the table. It is not tact to converse with an editor upon a quiet, peaceful life; or with a compelled authoress upon the safe and uninvaded sanctities of the fireside for women.

The most astounding instance of tact, is to listen, inwardly crucified, with a pleased air, to an old —old joke, and a poor one at that: to improvise a laugh at the proper moment, and successfully to resist the malicious instinct to flatter the narrator, at the close, by saying: "Yes, I have heard that before."

Answer your Children's Questions. – Education is erroneously supposed only to be had at schools. The most ignorant children often have been constant in their attendance there, and there have been very intelligent ones who never saw the inside of a school-room. The child who always asks an explanation of terms or phrases it cannot understand, who is never willing to repeat, parrot-like, that which is incomprehensible, will far outstrip in "education" the ordinary routine scholar. "Education" goes on with children at the fireside – on the street – at church – at play – everywhere. Do not refuse to answer their proper questions then. Do not check this natural intelligence, for which books can never compensate, though you bestowed whole libraries.

THE INFIRMITIES OF GENIUS

"Poor Burns!" all exclaim after reading his life and his poems. Poor Burns! I too say; and the next minute I ask, impatiently, why he, so conscious of his God-given powers, should have miserably shortened his life one-half by ill-governed appetites and excesses. Why, if coining his brain into dollars, for the widow and fatherless, proved impossible, he should become so disgusted with manual labor, that even his filial, fraternal, and conjugal love could not dignify its repulsive features, since it needs must be. Why, with a loving, prudent, industrious, faithful wife to help him, he could not emulate her everyday but sublime heroism, not by paroxysms of effort, only to show us how well he might have done, but that steady, determined persistence which seldom fails of success. Why he, at once so great and so little, took pleasure and pride in wallowing in the mire, merely because strait-laced hypocrisy stepped daintily over it with white-sandalled feet. There was no greatness in this. It was but the angry kick of the impatient urchin upon the chair over which he had stumbled. Did his ambition to be written down a publican and a sinner lessen the ranks of the Pharisee? Could he look into the trusting faces of his innocent children, and feel no secret pang that for so petty and unworthy a motive he was content to hazard or forego their future respect? Had he none but himself to consult in such unworthy disposition of his time and talents? Was it manly in the midst of that loving group coolly to look forward to the possibility of an old age of beggary, and toleration by chance firesides, in the undignified character of jester or clown? Because a man is a "genius," must one indorse these things and write them down as "eccentricities" inseparable from it and to be lightly passed over? Must intellect necessarily be at variance with principle?

And yet – and yet – because I can say this, I do not fall a whit behind the most ardent admirer of his genius. But I do hold that he is to be held as accountable for his errors as the most ordinary farmer's boy who is unable to spell the name of the plough which he guides. Nor does this interfere with the heart-aching pity with which I look upon the soiled wings, so capable of soaring into a pure atmosphere, yet trailing their beauty in the dust. Nor does this keep my eyes from overflowing when some lofty or beautiful sentiment of his shines out diamond-like from the rubbish.

How could he? Why did he?

Softly – reverently let us answer. We so full of faults – always sinning – sometimes repenting. Softly let us answer. We who have not sinned only because we were not tempted. Softly – we whom pride, not principle, has saved. Softly – we whose lives the world writes fair, and perhaps God's eye leprously foul.

Country Matins. – He who sleeps at early dawn in the country, stops his ears to the prayers of Nature. That early tuneful waking! What can compare with it? Evening is soothing and sweet, with its stars and its calm; but the gradual brightness of the new day, softly stealing upon us, as the tints deepen and the songs strengthen, till the full orchestra is complete, oh! this is soul strengthening and sublime! We were weak of purpose, we were dispirited, the night before. Yesterday had overlapped its cares, and our tired shoulders shrank from the coming burden. But this bright resurrection heralded so thrillingly by soulless creatures! Shall we immortals only be thankless and dumb? We join the chorus! Care sits lightly at this blessed hour. All things for that day are possible to us – hard duty sweet. Blessed be God, then, for the sweet dawning of each new day!

A TRIP TO THE CAATSKILLS

Well – I've "done" the Caatskills! I've tugged up that steep mountain, one of the hottest days in which a quadruped or a biped ever perspired, packed to suffocation, with other gasping sufferers, in that crucifying institution called a stage-coach, until I became resignedly indifferent, whether it reached its destination, or rolled head over heels – or rather head over wheels – over the precipice. Landing at last at the hotel, I was conscious of only one want – a bedroom; which, when obtained, was close enough, and which I shared with three other jaded mortals. The next morning, thanks to a good Providence and the landlord, I emigrated into unexceptionable quarters.

Ah – now I breathe! now I remember no more that purgatorial reeling stage-coach, and its protracted jigglings – wriggling – joltings and bumpings. Now I am repaid – now I gaze – oh, how can I gaze with only one pair of eyes, on all this beauty and magnificence? This vast plain spread out so far below our feet like an immense garden, with its luxuriant foliage – its little cottages, smaller than a child's toy: its noble river, specked with white sails, lessened by distance to a silver thread, winding through the meadows; and beyond – still other plains, other streams, other mountains – on – on – stretching far beyond the dizzy ken, till the eye fills, and the heart swells, and leaning in an ecstasy of happiness on the bosom of "Our Father," we cry, "Oh! what is man that Thou art mindful of him?"