We and Our Neighbors: or, The Records of an Unfashionable Street

"Precisely," said Mr. Selby; "it is, if you will pardon my saying it, it is your great American public that wants these papers and takes them, and takes the most of those that have the most gossip in them, that are to blame. They make the reporters what they are, and keep them what they are, by the demand they keep up for their wares; and so, I say, if Mrs. Henderson will pardon me, that, as yet, I am unable to put down our national shyness in the catalogue of sins to be fought against. I confess I would rather, if I should ever happen to have any literary fame, I would rather shut my shutters, evenings, and have high walls with glass bottles on top around my grounds, and not have every vulgar, impertinent fellow in the community commenting on my private affairs. Now, in England, we have all arrangements to keep our families to ourselves, and to such intimates as we may approve."

"Oh, yes, I knew it to my cost when I was in England," said Eva. "You might be in a great hotel with all the historic characters of your day, and see no more of them than if you were in America. They came in close family carriages, they passed to close family rooms, they traveled in railroad compartments specially secured to themselves, and you knew no more about them than if you had stayed at home."

"Well," said Mr. Selby, "you describe what I think are very nice, creditable, comfortable ways of managing."

"With not even a newspaper reporter to tell the people what they were talking about, and what gowns their wives and daughters wore," said Bolton, dryly. "I confess, of the two extremes, the English would most accord with my natural man."

"So it is with all of us," said St. John; "the question is, though, whether this strict caste system which links people in certain lines and ruts of social life, doesn't make it impossible to have that knowledge of one another as human beings which Christianity requires. It struck me in England that the high clergy had very little practical comprehension of the feelings of the lower classes, and their wives and daughters less. They were prepared to dispense charity to them from above, but not to study them on the plane of equal intercourse. They never mingle, any more than oil and water; and that, I think, is why so much charity in England is thrown away – the different classes do not understand each other, and never can."

"Yes," said Harry; "with all the disadvantages and disagreeable results of our democratic jumble in society, our common cars where all ride side by side, our hotel parlors where all sit together, and our tables d'hote where all dine together, we do know each other better, and there is less chance of class misunderstandings and jealousies, than in England."

"For my part, I sympathize with Mr. Selby, according to the flesh," said Mr. St. John. "The sheltered kind of life one leads in English good society is what I prefer; but, if our Christianity is good for anything, we cannot choose what we prefer."

"I have often thought," said Eva, "that the pressure of vulgar notoriety, the rush of the crowd around our Saviour, was evidently the same kind of trial to him that it must be to every refined and sensitive nature; and yet how constant and how close was his affiliation with the lowest and poorest in his day. He lived with them, he gave them just what we shrink from giving – his personal presence – himself."

Eva spoke with a heightened color and with a burst of self-forgetful enthusiasm. There was a little pause afterwards, as if a strain of music had suddenly broken into the conversation, and Mr. Selby, after a moment's pause, said:

"Mrs. Henderson, I give way to that suggestion. Sometimes, for a moment, I get a glimpse that Christianity is something higher and purer than any conventional church shows forth, and I feel that we nominal Christians are not living on that plane, and that if we only could live thus, it would settle the doubts of modern skeptics faster than any Bampton Lectures."

"Well," said Eva, "it does seem as if that which is best for society on the whole is always gained by a sacrifice of what is agreeable. Think of the picturesque scenery, and peasantry, and churches, and ceremonials in Italy, and what a perfect scattering and shattering of all such illusions would be made by a practical, common-sense system of republican government, that would make the people thrifty, prosperous, and happy! The good is not always the beautiful."

"Yes," said Bolton to Mr. Selby, "and you Liberals in England are assuredly doing your best to bring on the very state of society which produces the faults that annoy you here. The reign of the great average masses never can be so agreeable to taste as that of the cultured few."

But we will not longer follow a conversation which was kept up till a late hour around the blazing hearth. The visit was one of those happy ones in which a man enters a house a stranger and leaves it a friend. When all were gone, Harry and Eva sat talking it over by the decaying brands.

"Harry, you venturesome creature, how dared you send such a company in upon me on washing day?"

"Because, my dear, I knew you were the one woman in a thousand that could face an emergency and never lose either temper or presence of mind; and you see I was right."

"But it isn't me that you should praise, Harry; it's my poor, good Mary. Just think how patiently she turned out of her way and changed all her plans, and worked and contrived for me, when her poor old heart was breaking! I must run up now and say how much I thank her for making everything go off so well."

Eva tapped softly at the door of Mary's room. There was no answer. She opened it softly. Mary was kneeling with clasped hands before her crucifix, and praying softly and earnestly; so intent that she did not hear Eva coming in. Eva waited a moment, and then kneeled down beside her and softly put her arm around her.

"Oh, dear, Miss Eva!" said Mary, "my heart's just breaking."

"I know it, I know it, my poor Mary."

"It's so cold and dark out-doors, and where is she?" said Mary, with a shudder. "Oh, I wish I'd been kinder to her, and not scolded her."

"Oh, dear Mary, don't reproach yourself; you did it for the best. We will pray for her, and the dear Father will hear us, I know he will. The Good Shepherd will go after her and find her."

CHAPTER XXXII

A MISTRESS WITHOUT A MAID

[Eva to Harry's Mother.]Valley of Humiliation.

Dear Mother: I have kept you well informed of all our prosperities in undertaking and doing: how everything we have set our hand to has turned out beautifully; how "our evenings" have been a triumphant success; and how we and our neighbors are all coming into the spirit of love and unity, getting acquainted, mingling and melting into each other's sympathy and knowledge. I have had the most delightful run of compliments about my house, as so bright, so cheerful, so social and cosy, and about my skill in managing to always have every thing so nice, and in entertaining with so little parade and trouble, that I really began to plume myself on something very uncommon in the way of what Aunt Prissy Diamond calls "faculty." Well, you know, next in course after the Palace Beautiful comes the Valley of Humiliation – whence my letter is dated – where I am at this present writing. Honest old John Bunyan says that, although people do not descend into this place with a very good grace, but with many a sore bruise and tumble, yet the air thereof is mild and refreshing, and many sweet flowers grow here that are not found in more exalted regions.

I have not found the flowers yet, and feel only the soreness and bruises of the descent. To drop the metaphor: I have been now three days conducting my establishment without Mary, and with no other assistant than her daughter, the little ten-year-old midget I told you about. You remember about poor Maggie, and what we were trying to do for her, and how she fled from our house? Well, Jim Fellows set the detectives upon her track, and the last that was heard of her, she had gone up to Poughkeepsie; and, as Mary has relations somewhere in that neighborhood, she thought, perhaps, if she went immediately, she should find her among them. The dear, faithful soul felt dreadfully about leaving me, knowing that, as to all practical matters, I am a poor "sheep in the wilderness;" and if I had made any opposition, or argued against it, I suppose that I might have kept her from going, but I did not. I did all I could to hurry her off, and talked heroically about how I would try to get along without her, and little Midge swelled with importance, and seemed to long for the opportunity to display her latent powers; and so Mary departed suddenly one morning, and left me in possession of the field.

The situation was the graver that we had a gentleman invited to dinner, and Mary had not time even to stuff the turkey, as she had to hurry off to the cars. "What will you do, Miss Eva?" she said, ruefully; and I said cheerily: "Oh, never fear, Mary; I never found a situation yet that I was not adequate to," and I saw her out of the door, and then turned to my kitchen and my turkey. My soul was fired with energy. I would prove to Harry what a wonderful and unexplored field of domestic science lay in my little person. Everything should be so perfect that the absence of Mary should not even be suspected!

So I came airily upon the stage of action, and took an observation of the field. This turkey should be stuffed, of course; turkeys always were stuffed; but what with? How very shadowy and indefinite my knowledge grew, as I contemplated those yawning rifts and caverns which were to be filled up with something savory – I didn't precisely know what! But the cook-book came to my relief. I read and studied the directions, and proceeded to explore for the articles. "Midge, where does your mother keep the sweet herbs?" Midge was prompt and alert in her researches and brought them to light, and I proceeded gravely to measure and mix, while Midge, delighted at the opportunity of exploring forbidden territory, began a miscellaneous system of rummaging and upsetting in Mary's orderly closets. "Here's the mustard, ma'am, and here's the French mustard, and here's the vanilla, and the cloves is here, and the nutmeg-grater, ma'am, and the nutmegs is here;" and so on, till I was half crazy.

"Midge, put all those things back and shut the cupboard door, and stop talking," said I, decisively. And Midge obeyed.

"Now," said I, "I wonder where Mary keeps her needles; this must be sewed up."

Midge was on hand again, and pulled forth needles, and thread, and twine, and after some pulling and pinching of my fingers, and some unsuccessful struggles with the stiff wings that wouldn't lie down, and the stiff legs that would kick out, my turkey was fairly bound and captive, and handsomely awaiting his destiny.

"Now, Midge," said I, triumphant; "open the oven door!"

"Oh! please, ma'am, it's only ten o'clock. You don't want to roast him all day."

Sure enough; I had not thought of that. Our dinner hour was five o'clock; and, for the first time in my life, the idea of time as connected with a roast turkey rose in my head.

"Midge, when does your mother put the turkey in?"

"Oh! not till some time in the afternoon," said Midge, wisely.

"How long does it take a turkey to roast?" said I.

"Oh! a good while," said Midge, confidently, "'cordin' as how large they is."

I turned to my cook-book, and saw that so much time must be given to so many pounds; but I had not the remotest idea how many pounds there were in the turkey. So I set Midge to cleaning the silver, and ran across the way, to get light of Miss Dorcas.

How thankful I was for the neighborly running-in terms on which I stood with my old ladies; it stood me in good stead in this time of need. I ran in at the back door and found Miss Dorcas in her kitchen, presiding over some special Eleusinian mysteries in the way of preserves. The good soul had on a morning-cap calculated to strike terror into an inexperienced beholder, but her face beamed with benignity, and she entered into the situation at once.

"Cookery books are not worth a fly in such cases," she remarked, sententiously. "You must use your judgment."

"But what if you haven't got any judgment to use?" said I. "I haven't a bit."

"Well, then, dear child, you must use Dinah's, as I do. Dinah can tell to a T, how long a turkey takes to roast, by looking at it. Here, Dinah, run over, and 'talk turkey' to Mrs. Henderson."

Dinah went back with me, boiling over with giggle. She laughed so immoderately over my turkey that I began to fear I had made some disgraceful blunder; but I was relieved by a facetious poke in the side which she gave me, declaring:

"Lord's sakes alive, Mis' Henderson, you's dun it like a bawn cook, you has. Land sake! but it just kills me to see ladies work," she added, going into another chuckle of delight. "Waall, now, Mis' Henderson, dat 'are turkey'll want a mighty sight of doin'. Tell ye what – I'll come over and put him in for you, 'bout three o'clock," she concluded, giving me a matronizing pat on the back.

"Besides," said little Midge, wisely, "there's all the chambers and the parlors to do."

Sure enough! I had forgotten that beds do not make themselves, nor chambers arrange themselves, as always had seemed to me before. But I went at the work, with little Midge for handmaid, guiding her zeal and directing and superintending her somewhat erratic movements, till bedrooms, parlors, house, were all in wonted order. In the course of this experience, it occurred to me a number of times how much activity, and thought, and care and labor of some one went to make the foundation on which the habitual ease, quiet and composure of my daily life was built; and I mentally voted Mary a place among the saints.

Punctually to appointment, Dinah came over and lifted my big turkey into the oven, and I shut the door on him, and thought my dinner was fairly under way.

But the kitchen stove, which always seemed to me the most matter-of-fact, simple, self-evident verity in nature, suddenly became an inscrutable labyrinth of mystery in my eyes. After putting in my turkey, I went on inspecting my china-closet, and laying out napkins, and peering into preserve-jars, till half an hour had passed, when I thought of taking a peep at him. There he lay, scarcely warmed through, with a sort of chilly whiteness upon him.

"Midge," I cried, "why don't this fire burn? This turkey isn't cooking."

"Oh, dear me, mum! you've forgot the drafts is shut," said Midge, just as if I had ever thought of drafts, or supposed there was any craft or mystery about them.

Midge, however, proceeded to open certain mysterious slides, whereat the stove gave a purr of satisfaction, which soon broadened into a roar.

"That will do splendidly," said I; "and now, Midge, go and get the potatoes and turnips, peel them, and have them ready."

The stove roared away merrily, and I went on with my china-closet arrangements, laying out a dessert, till suddenly I smelled a smell of burning. I went into the kitchen, and found the stove raging like a great red dragon, and the top glowing hot, and, opening the oven door, a puff of burning fume flew in my face.

"Oh, Midge, Midge," I cried, "what is the matter? The turkey is all burning up!" and Midge came running from the cellar.

"Why, mother shuts them slides part up, when the fire gets agoing too fast," said Midge – "so;" and Midge manipulated the mysterious slides, and the roaring monster grew calm.

But my turkey needed to be turned, and I essayed to turn him – a thing which seems the simplest thing in life, till one tries it and becomes convinced of the utter depravity of matter. The wretched contrary bird of evil! how he slipped and slid, and went every way but the right way! How I wrestled with him, getting hot and combative, outwardly and inwardly! How I burned my hand on the oven door, till finally over he flounced, spattering hot gravy all over my hand and the front breadth of my dress. I had a view then that I never had had before of the amount of Christian patience needed by a cook. I really got into quite a vengeful state of feeling with the monster, and shut the oven door with a malignant bang, as Hensel and Gretel did when they burned the old witch in the fairy story.

But now came the improvising of my dessert! I had projected an elegant arrangement of boiled custard, with sponge-cake at the bottom, and feathery snow of egg-froth on top – a showy composition, which, when displayed in a high cut-glass dish, strikingly ornaments the table.

I felt entirely equal to boiled custard. I had seen Mary make it dozens of times. I knew just how many eggs went to the quart of milk, and that it must be stirred gently all the time, in a kettle of boiling water, till the golden moment of projection arrived. So I stirred and stirred, with a hot face and smarting hands; for the burned places burned so much worse in the heat as to send a doubt through my mind whether I ever should have grace enough to be a martyr at the stake, for any faith or cause whatever.

But I bore all for the sake of my custard; when, oh! from some cruel, mysterious, unexplained cause, just at the last moment, the golden creamy preparation suddenly separated into curd and whey, leaving my soul desolate within me!

What had I done? What had I omitted? I was sure every rite and form of the incantation had been performed just as I had seen Mary do it hundreds of times; yet hers proved a rich, smooth, golden cream, and mine unsightly curd and watery whey!

The mysteriousness of natural laws was never so borne in upon me. There is a kink in every one of them, meant to puzzle us. In my distress, I ran across to the back door again and consulted Dinah.

"What can be the matter, Dinah? My custard won't come, when I've mixed everything exactly right, according to the rules; and it's all turned to curd and whey!"

"Land sake, missis, it's jest cause it will do so sometimes – dat are's de reason," said Dinah, with the certainty of a philosopher. "Soft custard is jest de aggravatinest thing! you don't never know when it's goin' to be contrary and flare up agin you."

"Well, Dinah," said Miss Dorcas, "you try your luck with some of our fresh morning's milk – you always have luck – and carry it over to Mrs. Henderson."

The dear old angel! No morning cap, however fearful, could disguise her. I fell upon her neck and kissed her, then and there, she was so good! She is the best old soul, mother, and I feel proud of having discovered her worth. I told her how I did hope some time she would let me do something for her, and we had quite a time, pledging our friendship to each other in the kitchen.

Well, Dinah brought over the custard, thick and smooth, and I arranged it in my high cut-glass dish and covered it with foamy billows of whites of egg tipped off with sparkles of jelly, so that Dinah declared that it looked as well "as dem perfectioners could do it;" and she staid to take my turkey out for me at the dinner hour; and I, remembering my past struggle and burned fingers, was only too glad to humbly accept her services.

Dinah is not a beauty, by any of the laws of art, but she did look beautiful to me, when I left her getting up the turkey, and retired to wash my hot cheeks and burning hands and make my toilette; for I was to appear serene and smiling in a voluminous robe, and with unsullied ribbons, like the queen of the interior, whose morning had been passed in luxurious ease and ignorant of care.

To say the truth, dear mother, I was so tired and worn out with the little I had done that I would much rather have lain down for a nap than to have enacted the part of charming hostess. Talk about women meeting men with a smile, when they come in from the cares of business! I reflected that, if this sort of thing went on much longer, Harry would have to meet me with a smile, and a good many smiles, to keep up my spirits at this end of the lever. However, it was but for once; I summoned my energies and was on time, nicely dressed, serene and fresh as if nothing had happened, and we went through our dinner without a break down, for little Midge was a well-trained waiter and did heroically.

Only, when I came to pour the coffee after dinner, I was astonished at its unusual appearance. Our clear, limpid, golden coffee had always been one of our strong points, and one on which I had often received special compliments. People had said, "How do you contrive to always have such coffee?" and I had accepted with a graceful humility, declaring, as is proper in such cases, that I was not aware of any particular merit in it, etc.

The fact is, I never had thought about coffee at all. I had seen, as I supposed, how Mary made it, and never doubted that mine would be like hers; so that when a black, thick, cloudy liquid poured out of my coffee pot, I was, I confess, appalled.

Harry, like a good fellow, took no notice, and covered my defect by beginning an animated conversation on the merits of the last book our gentleman had published. The good man forgot all about his coffee in his delight at the obliging things Harry was saying, and took off the muddy draught with a cheerful zeal, as if it was so much nectar.

But, on our way to the parlor, Harry contrived to whisper,

"What has got into Mary about her coffee to-day?"

"O Harry," I replied, "Mary's gone. I had to get the dinner all alone."

"You did! You wonderful little puss!" said the good boy. "Never mind the coffee! Better luck next time."

And, after we were alone that night, Harry praised and admired me, and I got out the cookery book to see how I ought to have made my coffee.

The directions, however, were not near as much to the point as the light I got from Dinah, who came across on a gossiping expedition to our kitchen that evening, and to whom I propounded the inquiry, "Why wasn't my coffee clear and nice like Mary's?"

"Land sakes, Mis' Henderson, ye didn't put in no fish-skin, nor nothing to clar it."

"No. I never heard of such a thing."

"Some uses fish-skin, and some takes an egg," continued Dinah. "When eggs is cheap, I takes an egg. Don't nobody have no clarer coffee 'n mine."

I made Dinah illustrate her theme by one practical experiment, after the manner of chemical lecturers, and then I was mistress of the situation. Coffee was a vanquished realm, a subjugated province, the power whereof was vested henceforth, not in Mary, but myself.

Since then, we have been anxiously looking for Mary every day; for Thursday is coming round, and how are we to have "our evening" without her? Alice and Angie are both staying with me now to help me, and on the whole we have pretty good times, though there isn't any surplus of practical knowledge among us. We have all rather plumed ourselves on being sensible domestic girls. We can all make lovely sponge cake, and Angie excels in chocolate caramels, and Alice had a great success in currant jelly. But the thousand little practical points that meet one in getting the simplest meal, nobody knows till he tries. For instance, we fried our sausages in butter, the first morning, to the great scandal of little Midge, who instructed us gravely that they were made to fry themselves.

Since "our boys" have found out that we are sole mistresses of the kitchen, they often drop in to lighten our labors and to profess their own culinary accomplishments. Jim Fellows declares that nobody can equal him in coffee, and that he can cook a steak with tomato sauce in a manner unequaled; and Bolton professes a peculiar skill in an omelette; so we agreed yesterday to let them try their hand, and we had a great frolic over the getting up of a composition dinner. Each of us took a particular thing to be responsible for; and so we got up a pic-nic performance, which we ate with great jollity. Dr. Campbell came in with a glass coffee-making machine by which coffee was to be made on table for the amusement of the guests as well as for the gratification of appetite; and he undertook, for his part, to engineer it. Altogether we had a capital time, and more fun than if we had got the dinner under the usual auspices; and, to crown all, I got a letter from Mary that she is coming back to-morrow, – so all's well that ends well. Meanwhile, dear mother, though I have burned my hands and greased the front breadth of my new winter dress, yet I have gained something quite worth having by the experience of the last few days.