Fanny Fern

“ Then, if a woman's husband dies, she will not stay to hear his or her relatives disputing over his dead body which shall contribute least to her support. No: she will rub the tears out of her eyes, and taking her children by the hand, pocket the well-earned wages of a book-keeper; or she will be an architect; or she will write books, or open a store; or she may even rise to the dignity of editor of a "Cape Ann" paper—who knows?—or through any one of the open doors through which the light of woman's millennium is shining, she will pass serenely to collect her dividends. ”

“ I am not now speaking of those foolish women, to whom a ribbon, or a necklace, is dearer than their husband's strength, life, or mercantile honor. I put such women entirely out of the question; only remarking, that if a man marries a fool in the hope of her being pliant, and easily ruled by him, he will find too late that he is mistaken. But that's his affair. Men always have, and always will keep on admiring their own perspicacity in reading female character, when not one in ten knows any more what his wife is spiritually made of, than what sheep furnished the coat for his own back. ”

“ The shining lock, the little shoe—my friend, it is long years since I shed a tear over mine—I can take them out of their wrappings in my hand, and smile to think that I am so far on my journey that I shall soon see my little one face to face. Whether she or I will be the child when we meet again, God only knows; or, what heavenly mysteries I shall learn, kneeling at my baby's feet, I cannot tell; but this I know, by the kisses I have given many a little face since she died, for her dear sake, that a mother's love was meant to reach far beyond the grave. ”

“ Even in the dull old yard of a tenement house, He sends up through the chinks tiny blades of grass and dandelion, and chickweed blossoms. And does not the pure white snow come sifting down over the garbage-heaps and ash-barrels before the door of poverty which man, less merciful, would doom to have all the year round before their disgusted vision?
Meantime, let us hope that "the minister's" holiday present may be a pair of boxing-gloves instead of a hymn-book, of which latter he has a surfeit. As to his wife—for goodness' sake, send her the same thing you would, were she the wife of a layman. ”

“ Now I know there are instances, for I have seen them, in which the husband is the only cheerful element in the house—when his step, his countenance, like the sunrise, irradiates and warms every nook and corner. But ah! how rare is this! I know too that cheerfulness is greatly a thing of temperament; but I also know, that it is just as much a man's duty to cultivate it by reading to his wife, and conversing with his wife, as it is hers to amuse and cheer him when the day's cares are over. And in this regard I must say that men, as a general thing, are disgustingly selfish. ”

“ The wickedness, to me, consists in making Sunday, which should be a delight, such a tedium, that, in after years, whenever the word strikes upon the ear, or the day returns, the first impulse is to shun and evade it. Oh, let Sunday be what the memory of "mother's room" is to us all—radiant with perfume of flowers and sunshine. The bright spot to look back upon, when old age sits in the chimney-corner, with the sweet psalm from voices hushed by death, or far removed, still sounding in the ears ”

“ I have been some time coming to my moral, which is this: that the "present" system is, to use a slang expression, "run into the ground." I except the present a husband gives his wife, for whom nothing of course is too good, or too tasteful, or too costly; and who can, while receiving it, ask him to give her a hundred dollars or so, to go out and buy him one! Also, in all heartiness, and without joking, I except the little children, whose lovely dream of Santa Claus vanishes with the flossy, golden-tipped curls of babyhood. ”

“ Fire-Fly came, how sensible and befitting the country was my wardrobe; and how proper and right it was that my husband should be taking his rest in the country with me, instead of divorcing himself at the risk of our mutual peace, to furnish me with nine trunks full of Paris dresses.'"
"I have done nothing to-day but keep things straight in the house," you say wearily at the close of it. Do you call that nothing? Nothing that your children are healthy, and happy, and secured from evil influence? Nothing that neatness, and thrift, and wholesome food follow the touch of your finger-tips? ”

“ But I, for one, can never wonder or condemn, though I often deplore, that, driven at bay, like hunted animals, and many of them with limited knowledge and intelligence, they should snatch at the passing sunbeam, lest another should never gild their lonesome path.
We need a wider charity for these girls; for all those on whom life bears so hardly. We who are well-fed, well-clothed, well-educated, how illy do we, with all these helps to virtue and goodness, perform our part. Let us remember this in our hasty judgment of them, in our disgust that they do not choose for themselves more wisely. ”

“ Oh, how my heart echoed these words—not for men, but for my own sex, of whose routine life the clergyman said nothing. I wanted to get up and say to him, "My dear sir, your address is eloquent, and true, scholarly, and sound, so far as it goes. It is the only hope for this life that these men of business should not become mere tools." But I wanted to ask him if men, with their freedom of action—men who, out in the world, inevitably come into collision with stirring, not stagnant life—find this difficult, what of their wives? ”

“ If you don't own a garden, and don't want to tire out the generosity of your friends; in short, if you are a sick pilgrim at a hotel, then more's the pity. Then you'll lie on your pillow and dream of big peaches, and luscious pears, and plums, in your native hunting-ground, the New York markets. You'll think of the stores in Broadway, where huge bunches of grapes, in purple bloom, lie clustering. Maybe at the butcher's, near your very door in New York, is the "sweet-bread," which, if cooked at the right moment, and in the right way, might tempt your flagging appetite. ”

“ When I see these women at nightfall, in this neglectful dress, sitting alone upon the back door-step, while the husband and father has strolled off to some neighbor's, and lies flat on his stomach on the grass, with half a dozen other husbands and fathers, browsing like so many cattle, without a thought of those weary women, I fall to thinking how much life would be worth to me reduced to this utilitarian standard of cow and cabbage. ”

“ Don't take away my human minister, whose God is no tyrant, and is better pleased to see us go smiling home from church, than bowing our heads like a bulrush, and groaning back to our dinners, till all you anti-Sabbatarians are mad to abolish Sunday,—and no wonder.
Our Catholic brethren have set us, at least one good example; their churches are not silent as the tomb on week-days. Their worshippers do not do up all their religion on Sunday. It may be only for a few moments they step in through that open church-door, on a week-day, to kneel and lay down burdens too heavy else to be borne. ”

“ What is the use of "my doctor," unless he comforts you under this affliction, and declares that to be the only place where you can regain your lost appetite? No wonder you like him; no wonder life is a blank to you when his carriage is not before your door. There is healing in the very sight of his beard and moustache; and how much handsomer they are than the "brute's." Ah! had you met "my doctor" years ago, you say; not stopping to reflect, that in that case he would have been attending women who paid fees, and left you, his wife, to some medical friend for pills and consolation. ”

“ Were we not, for weeks, before we came to these odious mountains, where men are as scarce as French hair-dressers, closeted with our dress-makers and milliners to produce these bewitching "suits," long and short, for morning and evening, out-door and indoor wear? Have we not cool dresses and warm dresses; dresses for rain, dresses for sunshine, dresses for neutral weather, with ribbons, gloves, sashes, parasols, hats and fans to "match," to the minutest shade? For whom should we take all that trouble but for the beaux? ”

“ Do you ever think how much work a little child does in a day? How, from sunrise to sunset, the dear little feet patter round—to us—so aimlessly. Climbing up here, kneeling down there, running to another place, but never still. Twisting and turning, rolling and reaching and doubling, as if testing every bone and muscle for their future uses. It is very curious to watch it. One who does so may well understand the deep breathing of the rosy little sleeper, as, with one arm tossed over its curly head, it prepares for the next day's gymnastics. A busy creature is a little child. ”

“ 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. ”

“ If rich Christians object to the promiscuous use of their velvet cushions and gilded prayer-books, at least let the aisles and altar be free for those who need God on the week-days; for the poor, the tried, the tempted; for those who shrink, in their shabby habiliments, from the Sunday exhibition of fine toilettes and superfine Christianity. Were I a minister, and obliged to preach to paniers and diamonds and satins, on Sunday, I think I should have to ease my heart in some such way as this, to make my pastoral life endurable, else my office would seem to me the most hollow of all mockeries. ”

“ A rich man, just stepping into the grave, burdened with more money than he has known all his life what to do with, is extolled to the skies for his legacies and bequests here and there—at home and abroad. Now, why all this laudation? Is not the poor servant girl, who can scarce keep herself comfortably clothed, and yet every Sunday puts her pittance religiously into the contribution box, more deserving of praise? ”

“ I wish here to place on record that Plymouth can make good bread. I had begun to fear, so long had I been fed on Cape Ann saleratus, that I might lose the taste of wholesome yeast and flour, just as the "marasmus" denizens of the Five Points learn to dislike pure air. A brief heaven of good city bread in blessed old Boston quite set me up; and its unexpected appearance in Plymouth was more than I dared to hope.
I presume to this I may attribute the number of hale-looking, cheerful old people in Plymouth. ”

“ It must be owned, that of all perplexing things on earth, the greatest is the perplexity of choosing a present. After you have considered, first your purse; then the multifarious demands upon it; then the age, desires, and taste of the recipient—comes the weary tramp in hot, crowded stores for the desired article; comes the known incivility of most women bent on shopping errands, to their fellow-women; of addressing the clerk, upon whom you, as first-comer, have a prior claim, or even drawing from your and his fingers the very article you have under distracted consideration. ”

“ It is horrible for a man of sense to be yoked to a fool, and vice versa. No one denies it. But the whole kernel of the woman matter is just this: Men no longer are what they were. There are no young men now. Before they have ceased to be young men, the majority of them, by a total disregard of Nature's laws, have unfitted themselves for contact with, and companionship and appreciation of, pure, good women. It is as if a baby should be fed from birth with highly-spiced condiments ”

“ What consolation her pretty dishes, with the handles knocked off? What pleasure her china nicked at the edges? Which way soever she turns, waste, ignorance, and obstinacy stare her in the face. And is her life to be all this? Yes, except an interval now and then, when she lies with a little one on her arm, with a doctor and a nurse between her and the "grapple;" and the vision, as she gets better, of hunting up a nurse-maid, who, horror of horrors! will be "always under her nose." ”

“ A WOMAN AT A LECTURE.
IF you want to see a woman act more like a goose than she need, watch her when she enters a place of public performance, where the seats are at the mercy of first-comers. Notice her profound survey of the situation, as she stands, preceding her John, who is supposed to know nothing about such things, poised on one foot, while she measures distances, drafts, and acoustics with the eye of a connoisseur. Now she decides! At last she swoops down on the seat in all the house which she prefers. John follows, with the shawl and family umbrella. ”

“ The devil is cunningly and wisely busy every day and every night in the week. Why should good Christians think to circumvent this skilful diplomatist in one?—on Sunday only? The devil makes easy all the paths leading to perdition. Christians make hard and difficult the road to heaven, with their fine churches, and fine worshippers, and empty preaching once a week. And all around us pitiful hands are outstretched, and hungry hearts are waiting for the loving Christian word of help, temporal and spiritual; and men and women go down into the maelstrom of despair, folly, and sin ”

“ Do yards of crape and bombazine never express the opposite emotion? Is real heart-breaking grief to be gauged by the width of a hem, or the length or thickness of a veil? Have not many a widow and orphan woke up, the morning after a funeral, to find the little left by the deceased, expended in funereal carriages, for people who would not lift a helping finger if it would keep them out of the almshouse? We all know that, or if we don't, we may wake up to the fact, some future day, when the sunshine of prosperity is clouded over. ”

“ Children who, mentally, morally, and physically, are being tortured in their several Gethsemanes to the death; and I know sweet and beautiful homes, where plenty, and intelligence, and Christianity dwell, where no little child's laugh has ever been heard, and no baby smile shall ever fill it with blessed sunshine. I know coarse-natured men and women who curse the earth with their presence, whose thoughts and lives are wholly base and ignoble, and yet who fill high places ”

“ It strikes me, rather an inglorious abdication for a woman of intelligence, who may be supposed to understand and take an interest in other things than the advance and retreat of salad, and ragouts, oysters, and chicken. I call it a relic of barbarism, of which men of intelligence should be ashamed. Then what advantage has the woman who cultivates her mental powers, over the veriest fool? ”