Ginger-Snaps

I wanted to hear this clergyman say something about that. I wanted to know of him whether these women were doing God and their husbands service, by so sinking the spiritual part of them that one could hardly tell that it had existence. I wanted to ask him whether, if their husbands, through indifference or selfishness, or both, gave no thought to this matter, if he – set in a high place to teach the people – had no word of advice to such men, that they look as well to the spiritual deterioration of the mothers of their children as to their own – the fathers. Nay, I insist that for the mother it is of more consequence, as having infinitely more to do with the forming years of these children. And what time, pray, have many of these "routine" mothers for "thought," properly so called? What time for reading even the daily papers, to keep up intelligently with the great issues of the day, of which it is a shame and disgrace for any American wife and mother to be ignorant? How can they in this way be fit companions for their children's future? How can they answer their questions, on this subject and on that, while their vision is for ever bounded by the horizon of the physical wants of the household? You may preach "woman's duty" to me till you are hoarse; and I will preach to you the lust and the selfishness, which is ever repeating the dilemma of "the old woman in the shoe," till she has not an interval to think whether she or her brood have souls. "Routine life" of men! Men can and do get out of it – "business takes them away from home on journeys." "Business" takes him out pleasant evenings; on rainy ones, he never has "business;" then he goes early to bed, to prepare for a long evening of "business" when the sky clears.

His wife – well, "she don't seem to need it; or if she does, she don't say so;" and I might add, in the language of Dickens's nurse, Sary Gamp, "it is little she needs, and that little she don't get," at least from him.

Routine men! Oh, bah! "Routine men" have a result to show for their "routine." They have clerks – not from Intelligence-offices either – who have to do as they bid them. They also lock up shop at dark. They also walk or ride home in the fresh air, and talk with their male friends while doing it. They also are not dependent on the whim or caprice of any man to take them out for a breath of fresh air at night, after an exhaustive day of indoor stifling detail. And so, though the sermon to which I listened was excellent from a man to men, I made up my mind to add this little Appendix to women, from a woman, on the routine-woman's side of the question. You may talk of the selfishness of women till your head is white; there never lived that selfish woman so execrably selfish as a selfish man can be. I don't say you are so, sir: though at this distance, I venture to inquire whether, were you in your wife's place, you wouldn't occasionally like to climb up on the edge of the peck-measure in which she daily revolves, and look about outside, even if it should tip over on the whole brood of young ones in the process?

JUSTICE FOR CLERGYMEN

CAN anybody tell why clergymen should not receive fees for attending funerals? They receive fees, and generous ones often, for performing the marriage-ceremony, which is very unnecessary in comparison; a wedding being a joyful, happy, inspiriting occasion, with its bright faces, sweet flowers, and happy congratulations of friends; the exceptions to which are so few as not to need enumerating; and it must needs rest a man instead of wearying him, cobwebbed all over with theological tangles as he is, to witness all this; for no matter what vicissitudes fate and the future have in store for the two he has made one, at least for that hour they are supremely blessed, and he has made them so. But a funeral! with all its present unnecessary and dreadful accumulation of horrors; with its closed blinds, its piling up of sable garments, its pale dead face, which needs no such auxiliaries of gloom. Imagine a clergyman, already worn out, mentally and physically, entering such a room, filled with mourning friends, to whom even the Saviour's own sweet words would seem cold, who must each for himself tread the wine-press alone, till such time as they can find Him. Imagine this minister trying, by prayer and exhortation, to lift that heavy load of sorrow which all who have grieved know, that time and faith alone can lighten. Then he goes and looks into the face of the dead – oh! how many dead faces has he looked at, through the eyes of others, in the same way! – then he offers a friendly hand to the widow, or the orphan, as the case may be, and then with this immense draft on his sympathies, with those heart-rending sobs still sounding in his ears, perhaps within that very hour, he is called to a repetition of the sad scene. I am very sure that any clergymen of experience and sensibility will say, that I have not overstated this wear and tear of feeling in the delicate endeavor to say just the right thing, to the differing faiths of the craving, sorrowing hearts present.

Now why, I ask, should clergymen, in addition to their other exhaustive duties, be expected to go through this most exhaustive service of all, without remuneration? More especially, when one considers the often danger of contagious atmospheric influences, at such times and places, upon his tired frame.

I have often pondered, without yet being able to find a shadow of a reason for this unjust demand upon clerical strength. If you say it is the custom, I only say it is time that, with other bad customs, it were reformed; and more – since clergymen themselves have their lips delicately closed on this especial subject, while on others they might be considered at liberty to speak. That's why I have spoken for them.

I like ministers. I was brought up with them. My father's house was a minister's tavern, lacking the sign swinging before the door. I was a wild slip in those days; that's why they always "wanted a little conversation with Sarah." It was philanthropic, but thrown away. I had been told so often that I was "a child of wrath," that I had it at my fingers' ends – I might have said, at my toes' ends, for it was they who helped me out the nearest door after meals, lest I should hear the stale announcement again. I persisted I "loved God," when I was asked. Why shouldn't I? for no bugaboo of anybody's raising could have made me believe I was born by him to be tormented. The flowers, the clouds, the ocean, the sun, moon, and stars – what priceless gifts were they! No "doctrine" or "creed" could rob me of them; and didn't he make them, and give me a soul to enjoy them? It was of no use telling me I was a "child of wrath" under circumstances like these! One soft sweet breath from my flower-garden knocked that idea "all to smithereens."

Now I didn't hate those ministers for trying to darken what should have been, and what was, in spite of them, youth's festival hour. I knew they thought they were right, and I believe them to be truly good, though mistaken, men. They didn't know that, child as I was, if I ever went to Heaven, it would be taking hold of my Heavenly Father's hand, not cowering before him through fear of "hell." So they fired over my curls, when they got me in a corner, and talked to me that way. They didn't make me hate "meetin'" either; though I was driven there to hear so many "seventeenth-lies" at the point of the bayonet; and when skewered up on the seat between rows of big folks, I felt as if little ants were creeping out from under my finger-nails, so fidgety did I get for the blessed outdoors.

But I have not outgrown "meetin'" yet, and I count no Sunday a Sunday when I don't go there some part of the day. Oh, had they only known how to talk to me, instead of driving me within myself, and making me put my worst religious foot foremost. But clergymen have found a better way since, thank God! Still I often smile at the bits of the old leaven in the ministerial make up. How they will wonder at it all, when eternity's light shines down on their life-path, and shows them these mistakes. For I make no apology here for boldly asserting that a minister can, and does, and always will, make an occasional mistake; although I was once pounced down upon by an evangelical critic, who talked to me about "wounding the Lord in the house of his friends," when I said so. It is just such stuff as that, that drives everybody from the "Lord." Better face the music, and own up, that even ministers are human. For my part, were I a minister, and fenced in, and badgered about, and cross-questioned and interfered with, and expected to be a sound, rounded, well-disposed human being, morally, mentally, and physically, all the same as if a coroner's inquest wasn't squatting on my free-agency every hour in the day, I'll warrant you I should make a great many more mistakes than they do. Old Adam in me, would soon see that they didn't want material for a verdict to suit their narrowness.

And now I hope I have shown you that I am a friend to ministers. So that without getting a boxed ear, I must tell you here, what a laugh I got out of a lot of them yesterday. You see, I was in an omnibus alone, save one lady, when a meeting of some sort in one of our churches "bust up," – excuse the expression – "bust up." Five ministers emerging from the church porch, hailed the omnibus and got in, and decorously seated themselves. Now, some ministers look jolly, and as if they were alive. These were thin, cavernous, and had the ten commandments written all over them. They had heard of New York Delilahs evidently, for they wouldn't see the fare of the lady or myself between our gloved fingers waiting for the driver – not a bit of it! Catch them at it! They looked straight past us both, safely out the window at an innocent brick wall. Oh, heavens! how I laughed! It carried me back to the days I was a curly-headed little sinner, rebelling at being called "a child of wrath." I wanted to say, "Brethren, I too am a Christian" – and I will persist that I am; so don't be afraid of my innocent female pennies, nor "cross" yourselves because your foot accidentally touched the hem of my robe when you got in; for though I believe in ministers, I don't like to have the devil laugh in his sleeve at their queer, poky, solemn ways, and say to himself, "Aha! so would I have it."

May clergymen sneeze? Well – not exactly that; but a question quite as foolish, I saw gravely propounded and treated, the other day, in a religious paper. The debate was upon this highly important point: "Whether it was right for ministers to play croquet." Now I really had hoped that the day had gone by when the only amusement allowed to ministers was counting the scores of little heads that surrounded their table. I did hope that they might wash their faces on a towel, though it had not a funereal urn embroidered in the corners. And that they need not of necessity plant a cypress, or weeping willow, at their front door, to designate their raven-like calling; or banish every plant from their garden save the funereal rue and rosemary. It seems I was mistaken; more's the pity. Now if there is anything the devil likes, it is fine-spun, wire-drawn distinctions, on unimportant questions like these. If there is anything he likes, it is this ascetic rendering of religious things, to disgust the young, and throw a pall over that which should attract them by a wise recognition of their human needs. When we place a young plant down cellar and shut out light and sunshine, though it may put out shoots, we all know that they are white, sickly, and destined early to perish; just so with this misnamed "godliness" which the well-meaning but over-zealous religionist would thrust upon us and persuade us was doing God-service. I tell you it is not. I tell you that a minister, above all others, needs innocent and proper recreation, like croquet. Every summer, in my travels to and fro, I meet "ministers" enjoying their brief respite of a summer-vacation; most of them bearing unmistakable evidence in their pale faces and narrow chests, of their great necessity for it. I have watched them, sympathetically, as they sat on the piazzas of the hotels and boarding-houses where we were thrown together. I have seen them commit this unpardonable sin of "playing croquet" on a nice green lawn, while the fresh mountain air tinged their pale cheeks, and their eyes grew brighter, and their tones grew cheerful, and I blessed God for the sight. I said to myself, that's the way to foil the devil, when the young people found, day after day, that even a "minister" could be cheerful himself and promote cheerfulness; and that religion, after all, was not death to innocent happiness. I have been with ministers to the ten-pin alley, in company with their wives, children, and friends; I have climbed mountains with them, when I had a better frolic than I ever had with any of the laymen; and after a three-hours climb, and we all sat upon the top and enjoyed the view of the surrounding country, and, seated upon the grass, ate our luncheon, I never perceived that religion suffered by it. I have often, on the contrary, heard young people of the party say, "Well, this is the first time I ever really liked a minister. I thought they were all stiff and solemn, and – to use a juvenile but expressive epithet – 'poky'"! Nor when the following Sunday, sweet as Sunday always dawns on the hills and valleys, dawned on us, in some such lovely spot, and these same clergymen were requested to preach, sometimes in the parlor of the hotel, sometimes, which was better, in a grove near the house, did I for one perceive anything incongruous in his doing so, though the audience was the very same merry party of the day before. And when they have joined in the sweet hymn under the trees, where he stood with uncovered head, as in God's best temple, I confess to much more devotion than I am apt to feel, when surrounded and hedged in, and, allow me to say, sometimes stifled with all the clerical city paraphernalia, whose husk often seems to me so to shut in and compress the kernel, that one almost doubts if it has existence.

Ministers play croquet? I wish every minister had a violin and a brisk saddle-horse. Away with this bogus sanctity. Take a lesson from our Roman Catholic friends in the virtue of cheerfulness. Drive not from you, but draw soothingly, caressingly to you the lambs of the flock. Terror never yet made a true Christian. Frigidity never yet glorified God. The world is not a charnel-house. Else the blue sky would have been as black as some of these ascetics fain would make it. No! It is full of perfume and song and color, and you can never shut the eyes of young people to it with your distorted views of life. Oh, be wiser, lest the sad rebound of the atheist come, and they find only at the end of a life misspent, that in their zeal to prove your detested "religion" a sham, they had overlooked the fact that the counterfeit presupposes the true coin.

How seldom, in judging of those who excite our anger or contempt, do we judge them, as the Almighty does, by the extenuating circumstances of birth and education, and the lack of spiritual light! "Nobody ever told me;" "I did not know it was wrong;" "Nobody cared whether I was good or bad." What pitiful words are these! The Saviour recognized these facts when he said, "Neither do I condemn thee; go and sin no more."

THE OLD MAID OF THE PERIOD

SHE don't shuffle round in "skimpt" raiment, and awkward shoes, and cotton gloves, with horn side-combs fastening six hairs to her temples; nor has she a sharp nose, and angular jaw, and hollow cheeks, and only two front teeth. She don't read "Law's Serious Call," or keep a cat, or a snuff-box, or go to bed at dark, save on vestry-meeting nights, nor scowl at little children, or gather catnip, or apply a broomstick to astonished dogs.

Not a bit of it. The modern "old maid" is round and jolly, and has her full complement of hair and teeth, and two dimples in her cheek, and has a laugh as musical as a bobolink's song. She wears pretty, nicely fitting dresses too, and cunning little ornaments around her plump throat, and becoming bits of color in her hair, and at her breast, in the shape of little knots and bows; and her waist is shapely, and her hands have sparkling rings, and no knuckles; and her foot is cunning, and is prisoned in a bewildering boot; and she goes to concerts and parties and suppers and lectures and matinees, and she don't go alone either; and she lives in a nice house, earned by herself, and gives jolly little teas in it. She don't care whether she is married or not, nor need she. She can afford to wait, as men often do, till they have "seen life," and when their bones are full of aches, and their blood tamed down to water, and they have done going out, and want somebody to swear at and to nurse them – then marry!

Ah! the modern old maid has her eye-teeth cut. She takes care of herself, instead of her sister's nine children, through mumps, and measles, and croup, and chicken-pox, and lung fever and leprosy, and what not.

She don't work that way for no wages and bare toleration, day and night. No, sir! If she has no money, she teaches, or she lectures, or she writes books or poems, or she is a book-keeper, or she sets types, or she does anything but hang on to the skirts of somebody's else husband, and she feels well and independent in consequence, and holds up her head with the best, and asks no favors, and "Woman's Rights" has done it!

That awful bugbear, "Woman's Rights"! which small-souled men, and, I am sorry to say, narrow women too, burlesque and ridicule, and wont believe in, till the Juggernaut of Progress knocks them down and rides over them, because they will neither climb up on it, nor get out of the way.

The fact is, the Modern Old Maid is as good as the Modern Young Maid, and a great deal better, to those who have outgrown bread and butter. She has sense as well as freshness, and conversation and repartee as well as dimples and curves.

She carries a dainty parasol, and a natty little umbrella, and wears killing bonnets, and has live poets and sages and philosophers in her train, and knows how to use her eyes, and don't care if she never sees a cat, and couldn't tell a snuff-box from a patent reaper, and has a bank-book and dividends: yes, sir! and her name is Phœbe or Alice; and Woman's Rights has done it.

A newspaper lately announced that the fashion of blue coats and brass buttons for gentlemen had received its death-blow. Now, listen, ye men who are constantly preaching to us women, about our "slavery to fashion." It was done by Prince Arthur, who didn't wear it at a recent great public ball. Deadly stab! We hope the gentlemen who did appear in that costume will not commit suicide. But if we might give them a little bit of advice, it would be, that they should keep on wearing blue coats and brass buttons, just because "the Prince" didn't. Show yourself superior to fashion, gentlemen, as you so often advise ladies to do. Try the boot on that foot. Don't throw aside a good coat for the puerile reason that it is out of fashion! Oh, no!

THE NURSE OF THE PERIOD

ALL honor to Mr. Bergh for his remedial measures to prevent cruelty to animals. Cats, they say, have nine lives; so, with this in their favor, will the gentleman above mentioned let them wriggle a while, and devote that portion of his time to an animal which has only one life. I refer to the New York child – the rich New York child. If he will take a walk through any of our city parks with his eyes open, he cannot fail to see suffering enough among this class to enlist his warmest sympathies. I often stroll through the parks to hear the birds sing, and to see the children. One day last week I saw a bright little boy of four years amusing himself by picking up little twigs that had fallen from the trees, while his nurse was engaged in interminable gossip with one of her class. Turning her head suddenly, she perceived him engaged in this harmless and natural amusement. Snatching them from his hand, she took each little twig separately and struck him with each across his happy little face; then, throwing them away out of his reach, left him standing there, sobbing, with nothing to do, while she continued her chapter of gossip. Walking on a little farther, I saw a little girl who had strayed across the path to look at a "dolly" which another child was drawing in a little wagon. It was a wonderful "dolly;" with flaxen curls, and pink boots, and a muslin dress; and its eyes were closed in slumber, after the fashion of the doll of the period, while in a recumbent position. Oh! the sweet little face, as it peered into the tiny wagon, and the precocious mother look of adoration at the "dolly"! Instantly came darting after her the Gorgon nurse, and with a smart slap upon her head and a shake of her little shoulders, till her bright hair flew quite over the frightened little face, she tore her violently away, and seating herself upon a bench, where she had been talking with a coarse-looking man, set the sobbing child so hard upon her knee that I could distinctly hear it catch its breath. I mention here only these two instances of brutal treatment, which I could multiply by dozens. Why do not mothers take pains to follow their nurses occasionally, to see if all is right with their children when out of doors? And why could not Mr. Bergh order some backs placed to the torturing benches in our parks where the little children sit? The Central Park benches are a good model in this regard, as many a weary pedestrian can testify. And while he is up there looking at them with a view to this, if he will just pass under the damp bridges, and rout out those self-same nurses, who sit there talking with their beaux, instead of taking their little charges out into the sunshine, and among the flowers, as they were told to do, this also would be a humanitarian act.

In fact, the rich child of the period is at present an object for his especial consideration. Deserted apparently by its natural protector, the mother, except so far as its dress is concerned, it is peculiarly helpless and friendless, at least when out of doors. I speak advisedly; for not a day passes that my blood does not boil at the cruelty it endures; at the innocent little instincts, for the gratification of which it is immediately slapped, as if they were crimes; just as if we should stone a bird for warbling, or a bee for humming, or a leaf for fluttering in the sweet south wind.

Oh! the harsh Juggernaut wheel which crushes out all this sweetness into the dust!

And what of the temper permanently spoiled and soured by such roughness and injustice? What of the aching little head, which is slapped and shaken? What of the tired little feet, while the nurse and her comrades occupy the seat, and the little ones, forbidden to play, lean wearily against the nurse's knee, and cry for "mamma"? Surely, where is mamma? Good Mr. Bergh, do you be the rich children's "mamma," and let the cat with her "nine lives" look out for herself!

A LOOK BACKWARD

OH! to be a child again. My only treasures, bits of shell and stone and glass. To love nothing but maple sugar. To fear nothing but a big dog. To go to sleep without dreading the morrow. To wake up with a shout. Not to have seen a dead face. Not to dread a living one. To be able to believe. Does life give us anything, in after years, as compensation for the lack of all this; I asked, as I watched the busy little feet about me, never weary of chasing some butterfly of the minute. But then when this thought overshadowed me it was a blue day. Things had somehow got "contrary." My shoe might have pinched, or my belt have been too tight; or I had been up too long without my coffee; or I had forgotten the touch of my first baby's velvet cheek, or my mother's praise of my first pie, or my exultation when I cut and fitted down a carpet all myself, sewing on the thick seams till my fingers were swollen and sore, because help was not to be had. I remember, when it was finished, how intensely I admired myself and that carpet. Then I have strutted round very proudly in dresses of my own fitting, that "were fits." And once I roasted a piece of beef, and seasoned it with saleratus, instead of salt; think of the triumph of that moment! But that was owing to a too-fascinating novel under my cooking-apron, in a day when novels were forbidden fruit. And once, at the romantic age of twelve years, I gave a little blue-eyed boy one of my long, yellow curls, and he threw it in the gutter, and said "he hated girl's hair," but then another boy was standing by at the time, and the world's jeer was too much for him; but I may mention in this connection, that the next handful of "three-cornered nuts" he offered me, when we were alone, followed that curl into the gutter!