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

Could you sit down together, woman and woman, and talk this all over, how different often would be your judgment of each other! She thinks, perhaps, of graves far away, or worse, living sorrows, which she cannot forget, and that will not bear thinking of, and may only be poured into the ear of "Our Father." She has learned to shut them in, and therefore you see no sign; but they are there all the same. I want you to try and remember this, because else I think many, situated as you are, make themselves unnecessary misery.

Then, again, do not call everything city boarders consider important "only a notion." If you have done making bread because your folks like pies better, try and understand that tastes and opinions may differ on so vital a point of "vittles" and digestion. If your house and its belongings are so constructed that the decencies of life are impossible, remember that because you "don't mind your husband or the men on the farm," your lady boarders may, even at the risk of being called "fussy."

To sum all up, there must be consideration on both sides. Still, the cases are rare in which farm-houses can be the best boarding-places for city people. The ideas of the two parties on the most vital questions relating to the topics I have touched upon are so widely apart, that assimilation is next to impossible. The country housewife knows much more on many subjects than her city boarder. In return, the former might often be enlightened by the latter, even on purely physical matters. But while one side starts with the "I'm as good as you" motto, and the other feels it necessary to fence this feeling at all points, the millennium of peace and good-will must of course be indefinitely postponed.

FIRST MORNING IN THE COUNTRY

Peace, new-mown hay, and a sniff of the sea; I'm content. "Don't the country make you sleepy?" asked a lady of me. Sleepy! why, every part of me is so wide-awake to bliss, that I doubt whether it were not a sin to sleep, lest I might lose some fine note of Nature the while. The music of the shivering leaves, swelling, then dying away so softly; the exquisite trill of some little bird near my window; the march of the waves to the shore; the soft lights and shadows on the far hills; the happy laugh of the little brown children in the hay! I'm afraid I shall quite forget "female suffrage" here! The whirl out of which I have emerged into this temporary heaven seems like a horrid nightmare, from which I have been roused to find myself encircled in loving arms, and looked down upon by a smiling face. I dare say omnibusses are still thundering down Broadway, and piles of stone, and chaos generally, reign therein; but I can scarce conceive it in this sweet hush and prayer of Nature.

I have no doubt doctors may still be found there, giving nauseous pills by the pound, and awful "mixtures" by the quart, when all their deluded patients want is hay – and fresh milk. And I suppose ministers are there, preaching about "hell," and I don't wonder at it; but if they came here, I think heaven would come more naturally to their lips. But where is "here"? you ask. As if I should tell you! I shall want all the fresh air for myself. I need a great deal of breath, and the world is wide. The Great Artist too decorates it all over; so that in every spot lovely flowers shall be tinted all the same, though you may never chance to light upon them; and the clouds shall be heavenly blue; and the giant trees shall spread their sheltering, graceful arms, though you may never happen to lie on the grass beneath; and the birds in their branches will have as much melody in their throats as if you had promised to come and listen. So, you see, I may be stingy of my little paradise, and not defraud you either!

It is often very oppressive to me, the sight of so much beauty, the sound of so much harmony, that none but God perhaps may ever hear or see. Nothing expresses Omnipotence so well to me as this: the perfect finish of every leaf and blade; nothing left unworkmanlike; even the old rocks coated with soft moss – even the decayed tree-trunk wreathed with a graceful vine. I know there are good, lovely Quakers, but God is no Quaker. The red wild roses from yonder hedge, advertising their presence with wafts of incense on every passing breeze, make that fact patent. The richness of the red clover and yellow buttercups, and the myriad rainbow hues on every field and hedge-row, are anti-Quaker. So that, good as they are, I'm glad they didn't make this world. I'm sure that glorious red and yellow oriole looks better on yonder branch than would a drab bird. I like his saucy little ways, too. But there's one thing for which I will always shake hands with all Quakerdom: they allow their women to speak in "meetin'!" Nothing hurts a woman like shutting down the escape-valves of talk; but men never learn that until they find them getting dangerous, and then, when a terrible explosion comes off, they wonder "what's got into 'em!"

A Hint to Gentlemen Critics. – It is a pity men don't praise women when they are sensible in dress. Now, notwithstanding the pressure which fashion has brought to bear upon them to return to the long trailing skirts for street wear, they have courageously resisted it, and sensibly insisted upon the comfortable, cleanly, short walking skirt for the street; and yet men keep on growling all the same about minor matters of no consequence; so that women may well exclaim, "There's no suiting them; so we will just please ourselves." A word to the wise is sufficient.

CONSCIENCE KILLING

People seem to think that there is but one form of self-denial; and that is the "No" form. Now we maintain that great self-denial is often put forth, and intense mental pain incurred, in the "Yes" form; i. e., the gradual acceptance of wrong-doing. Conscience killing is a slow, torturing process, and the successful muffling of the protesting voice of one's better nature is at the expense of days and nights of misery. The son, whose every perverse step away from a loving home is on his mother's heart-strings, cannot at first plant them firmly; many a backward glance, many a sigh and tear, many a half-retraced foot-track marks his downward progress. Is there no self-denial in these abortive attempts? Can he forget at once all her pure aspirations and fond hopes for her boy? Are there not kind words, more dreadful to remember than would be the bitterest curses? Can he turn any way, in which proofs of her all-enduring love do not confront him, and shame him, and sting him into acutest misery? Again, can the husband and father, who screens himself behind the love of wife and children, to perpetrate acts, the constant repetition of which wears away their hope and life in the process – can he, while saying "yes" to the fiends who beckon him on, be deaf to the despairing sighs that follow him, and blind to the wrecks of broken promises that lie thickly strewn around him? Does he suffer nothing in the attempt to extinguish all that is best and noblest in him? can the mother, who, stifling the voice of nature, perjures her daughter, for ambition, at the altar, face calmly that daughter's future? Are there no misgivings, no terrible fears, no shrinking back at the last retrieving moment, from a responsibility so dreadful? Can she kiss her away from her own threshold, and forget the little trusting eyes of her babyhood, and the clinging clasp of her fingers, and the Heaven-sent thrill of happiness when she first pillowed that little head upon her bosom? Can she ever cut the cord, strive as she may, by which the Almighty has solemnly bound her to that child for this world and for eternity? Has it cost her nothing in the process, this denial of her better nature? And so, through all the relations of society, wherever a sacred trust is abused, and a confidence outraged, and obligations rent recklessly asunder, there this self-incurred species of suffering, in a greater or less degree, exists accordingly as the moral sensibilities are blunted, or the contrary. The Almighty has not ordained that this path shall be trodden thornless. Coiled in it is many a deadly serpent; the balmiest air it knows is surely death-laden. Following its tortuous windings to the close, its devotee comes to no refuge, when his heart and soul grow faint, and he casts a backward, yearning glance for the holy "long ago."

THE CRY OF A VICTIM

There's eight dollars gone! If I thought it was the last time I should be cheated, I shouldn't mind it; but I know it isn't. In this case it was friendless eighteen —female eighteen – sole support of widowed mother and an indefinite number of small children, and all that; got her money, and turned out a humbug. I hope the recording angel will remember that in my favor. Not to speak of the man who rushed into the area to tell me that he had just had a baby – I mean that his wife had – and that they needed everything; when I immediately scooped up an armful of whatsoever I could find; and, thanking me with grateful tears, he hastened to pawn them for rum. Then there was the gifted but unfortunate artist, who had been sketching at the White Mountains and wished me to "lend him" a greenback to carry him home, because he had read my books, and because he wanted it, and because there was not another person in the world of whom he could possibly ask such a favor; oh, no! Then there was the man who looked like the ten commandments on legs, and must see me, if only a few moments; whose sepulchral errand turned out to be a desire to sell me some Furniture Polish, which I bought to get rid of him, and which, when uncorked a few days after, caused the family to rush into the street without the usual ceremonial hat and bonnet. Then there was the interesting child whom I brought in to feed and warm, who helped himself to several things without leave while I was looking for others. And there was the old gentleman who sent me an illegible MS. story to read and get published; whose i's I dotted, and whose t's I crossed, and for whom I furnished commas and semicolons and periods ad libitum; whose grammar I touched up, and whose capital letters in the wrong place I extinguished; and who abused me like a pickpocket because the Editor to whom I sent it thought that Dickens or Thackeray wrote quite as well as he. Then there was the young man with a widowed mother, for whom I wore out several pairs of boots "getting him a situation;" who used to lie in bed till noon, and go to it when it didn't rain, and spend all he earned in cherry-colored cravats.

Now, I'm going to stiffen myself up against all this sort of thing in future. I've done giving pennies to the little street-sweepers to buy cream-tarts with. I hand no more hot buckwheat cakes through the grating of my basement window to red-nosed little boys with ventilator trousers. I buy no more pounds of lucifer matches from frowsy-headed women at the area door, or "Windsor soap" for sweet charity's sake, knowing it to be only common brown, with a counterfeit label. I shall turn sternly away from the Liliputian venders of flimsy boot-lacings and headless shawl-pins. I wish it distinctly understood that I have no use for corset-lacings, or home-made pomatum, or questionable "Lubin" perfumes in fancy bottles.

I have looked upon the humanitarian side of the question till I don't know whether to be most disgusted at my own credulity, or the perfidy of my fellow-creatures. Now let somebody else take a turn at it.

A Hint To Organ-Grinders. – It is a curious fact that organ-grinders prefer to select for their purpose that house whose windows are ornamented with statues or flowers. There is philosophy in this; since the lady who is fond of beauty and of sweet perfumes, is also fond of music. And though some of our street strains are sufficiently wheezy and harrowing, yet much of it also is sweet and soothing, and suggestive of past luxurious evenings, and of happy faces, and of hours that flew all too swiftly. But alas! for the uplifted pen, with its suspended drop of ink, at such moments! Alas! for the printer's devil waiting on one leg in the hall! Why won't organ-grinders learn where scribblers abide?

STONES FOR BREAD

Some of our papers publish, the latter part of every week – and a very good custom it is – a list of different preachers, their places of worship, and the topics selected for the ensuing Sunday. We often read over this list with curiosity and interest, and lay it down with a sad wonder at some of the topics selected for the sermons. We sometimes say, why don't they preach about something that will come home to the worn, weary, tried heart – vexed enough already with its life-burthens – instead of entangling it in theological nets, till the blessed voice that says so sweetly, "Come unto Me," never reaches the perplexed ear? We say this in no spirit of fault-finding, or dictation, but because we are sure that hungry souls, who every Sunday beg for bread, receive only a stone; and go away to take up their daily burden again on Monday, with faltering, hopeless step, when they might and should march – singing the song of triumph!

If a mother weeps over her lost babe, if a wife mourns her husband, or a father bends over a dead son, whom he thought would live to close his aged eyes, do you choose that time to distress them with abstract questions and transcendental theories? "No – you see before you an aching, tried heart; and you yearn with all your sympathetic nature to comfort it. Your words are few but earnest, and full of love. You go softly with them and look at the dear, dead face, which perhaps you never saw living, and say with quivering lips, "God help you, my friend." Just so, we long sometimes to have clergymen look at the dead faces of men's lost joys and hopes, and pity the bereaved, lonely hearts that want something to lean upon besides cold, dull abstractions; that yearn for the warm, beating, pulsating heart of Infinite Love, and yet cannot find it. Oh! what mission on earth as blessed as to teach them where and how?"

"Come unto Me." These words, thousands of years old, and yet never worn out! "Come unto Me." Oh, shake off the dust of your libraries, and say, as He said it, "Come unto Me!"

THE END