Fern Fanny
Fresh Leaves
HAS A MOTHER A RIGHT TO HER CHILDREN?
Most unquestionably, law or no law. Let us begin at the beginning. Let us take into consideration the physical prostration of mind and body endured by mothers antecedent to the birth of their offspring; their extreme nervousness and restlessness, without the ability for locomotion; the great nameless horror which hangs over those who, for the first time, are called upon to endure agonies that no man living would have fortitude to bear more than once, even at their shortest period of duration; and which, to those who have passed through it, is intensified by the vivid recollection (the only verse in the Bible which I call in question being this – “She remembereth no more her pains, for joy that a man-child is born into the world”). Granted that the mother’s life is spared through this terrible ordeal, she rises from her sick-bed, after weeks of prostration, with the precious burden in her arms which she carried so long and so patiently beneath her heart. Oh, the continuous, tireless watching necessary to preserve the life and limbs of this fragile little thing! At a time, too, of all times, when the mother most needs relaxation and repose. It is known only to those who have passed through it. Its reward is with Him who seeth in secret.
I speak now only of good mothers; mothers who deserve the high and holy name. Mothers who in their unselfish devotion look not at their capacity to endure, but the duties allotted to them (would that husbands and fathers did not so often leave it to the tombstone to call their attention to the former). Mothers, whose fragile hands keep the domestic treadmill in as unerring motion as if no new care was superadded in the feeble wail of the new-born infant. Mothers whose work is literally never done; who sleep with one eye open, intrusting to no careless hireling the precious little life. Mothers who can scarce secure to themselves five minutes of the morning hours free from interruption, to ask God’s help that a feeble, tried woman may hold evenly the scales of domestic justice amid the conflicting elements of human needs and human frailties. Now I ask you – shall any human law, for any conceivable reason, wrest the child of such a mother from her frenzied clasp?
Shall any human law give into a man’s hand, though that man be the child’s own father, the sole right to its direction and disposal? Has not she, who suffered, martyr-like, these crucifying pains – these wearisome days and sleepless nights, earned this her sweet reward?
Shall any virtuous woman, who is in the full possession of her mental faculties, how poor soever she may be, be beggared by robbing her of that which has been, and, thank God! will be the salvation of many a down-trodden wife?
“AND YE SHALL CALL THE SABBATH A DELIGHT.”
I like to throw open the windows of my soul on Sabbath morning – air it of the week’s fret, and toil, and care – and beckon in the white-winged dove of Peace to sing me a song of heaven. I like to go to church; it is to me like turning from the dusty highway of life into green fields, and, under the friendly shade of some sheltering tree, gazing, through its leafy canopy, into the serene blue depths above. The holy hymn soothes me like a mother’s lullaby to her weary child. I care not to read the words of the book which custom places in my hands. I would listen, with closed eyes, while my soul syllables its own secret burden; floating away on that melody to Him who has given us this blessed day of rest; and as the last note dies away, I would cross the sacred threshold, hugging to my heart this holy peace; nor stay to listen to the cold, theoretical, charnel-house sermons to which, Sunday after Sunday – vary the church as I may – I feel myself, unless I do this, a disappointed, disheartened, and wearied listener. No earnestness, no life, no soul; long, dry, windy, wordy skeleton-discourses; tame platitudes, disgusting rant, a school-boy’s parrot-lesson, injudicious depreciation of a world which is sweet to live in, and fair to see; injudicious denunciation of innocent, youthful pleasures – proper and healthful for life’s young spring-time; an ascetic rendering of that Blessed Book which is, has been, and will be, the soul’s life-boat, spite of its listless and blundering clerical expositors – many of whom offer us a Procrustean bed of theology, too short for any healthy creature of God to stretch himself upon. Who can wonder at the rebound? Who can wonder that our young people pass by the church-door, or cross its threshold compulsorily? or that their decorous seniors enter it but to sleep?
A few Sabbaths since I chanced into a church where a hundred and fifty children were assembled for the afternoon service, to be addressed as Sunday-school scholars. The out-door air was a luxury to breathe – it was one of those lovely spring days, which woo every living thing to bask in the warm sunshine. These children, many of them under four, none over fifteen, perspiring in their out-door clothing, were closely packed in those high-backed, uncomfortable seats – their cheeks at fever heat, and every pore in their crucified bodies crying out for ventilation and common sense – neither of which they had for a mortal hour-and-a-half, to speak within bounds. In vain did teachers frown, and nudge, and poke – in vain did the well-meaning but stupidest of possible ministers pound the pulpit cushions, to impress upon their memories, by gesticulation, his long-winded sentences; they were all written – as they deserved to be – in water. Flesh and blood couldn’t stand it —least of all that most unperverted, critical, and discerning of audiences – childhood!
That preacher, in my opinion (and I ached to tell him so), did more harm in that hour and a half than he can remedy in a life-time. This may seem a bold assertion. I think not. One hundred and fifty little children to carry away with them from that church (not only for that afternoon, but for a long life of Sundays), a disgust of that blessed day, and what should be its sweet and holy services. But what is the use of talking? Every great and good cause is sure to be knocked in the head by some blunderbuss. Why didn’t that man tell those children some short, simple story that the youngest child there could understand, appreciate, and be interested in? Why didn’t he open wide the church-doors before their attention and interest flagged? Why so enamored of the sound of his own voice, as to keep those steaming, par-boiled little victims in that sacerdotal vapor-bath, after he had said all he could think of to them, to address their teachers, who, if necessary, should have had a meeting by themselves for that infliction? And why – (I ask all of you who have not forgotten how your restless limbs ached when you were children) – must another minister get up after that, and torture common-sense, and his fainting, frying auditors, by another aimless, inflated, meaningless, and last-drop-in-the-bucket, but (thanks to a kind Providence), final address? And why didn’t somebody seize the sexton of that church, who had compelled a hundred and fifty children to breathe the foul air which the morning worshipers had bequeathed, and which he was too lazy to let out the windows – why didn’t somebody, I say, seize that sexton, and place him in an exhausted receiver, long enough to give him some faint notion of what he made those par-boiled children suffer in that “protracted meeting?”
“COME ON, MACDUFF.”
A correspondent wishes us to “oblige a lady,” by publishing a communication containing strictures on Fanny Fern. But, why should we “oblige a lady” whom we do not know, and at the same time disoblige a lady whom all the world knows? —New York Evening Mirror.
“Oblige a lady.” She is not the first, or the only lady, who has tried to be “obliged,” and obliging, in this way. Dear creatures! how they love me! There was Miss Moses, proper Miss Moses, who had been for a year or more writing for the Scribetown Gazette, when I commenced. How delighted she was at my advent – how pleased she was with my articles – how many things she said about me, personally and literarily, to the editor of the Gazette– what an interest she took in my progress. She never tried to keep my articles out of the paper, (benevolent soul!) “lest they should injure its reputation” – not she; she never, when looking over the exchanges, hid away those in which my articles were copied, and commended – not she, she never, when she found one containing a personal attack on me (written at her own suggestion), marked it with a double row of ink marks, and laid it in a conspicuous place on the editor’s table – not she. She liked my articles – liked them so well, that, on several occasions, she appropriated whole sentences and paragraphs; omitting (probably through forgetfulness), to make the necessary quotation marks! Dove-like Miss Moses! I think I see her now looking as though she was going to be translated (which by the way, her works never have been.) Pious Miss Moses, who rang threadbare changes on the ten commandments, and was addicted to meetings and melancholy; she tried hard to extinguish me, but success makes one magnanimous. I forgive her.
And there was Miss Fox, who “never could see any thing to like in Fanny Fern’s articles,” who knew her to have come from a family, “who always fizzled out” – (on this point this deponent saith nothing) – but who, when she (Miss Fox) had occasion to write a newspaper story, got some kind friend to say in print, “that the story by Rosa, was probably written by Fanny Fern.” Sweet Miss Fox!
Then there was Miss Briar, who “wondered if Mr. Bonner, of the New York Ledger, gave Fanny Fern, who had never been out of sight of America, $100 a column for her stupid trash, what he would give her, Miss Briar, who had crossed the big pond, when she touched pen to paper! Fanny Fern, indeed! Humph!”
Lovely creatures! I adore the whole sex. I always prefer hotels, ferry boats, and omnibusses, where they predominate, and abound; how courteous they are to each other, in case of a squeeze! Lord bless ’em! How truly Burns says:
“Auld Nature swears, the lovely dears
Her noblest work she classes, O:
Her ’prentice han’ she tried on man,
And then she made the lasses, O.
The sweetest hours that e’er I spend
Are spent amang the lasses, O.”
LOOK ALOFT
You are “discouraged!” You? with strong limbs, good health, the green earth beneath your feet, and the broad blue sky above? “Discouraged?” and why? You are poor, unknown, friendless, obscure, unrecognized, and alone in this great swarming metropolis; the rich man suffocates you with the dust of his pretentious chariot wheels.
As you are now, so once was he. Did he waste time whining about it? No, by the rood! or he would not now be President of the Bank before which he once sold beer at a penny a glass, to thirsty cabmen and newsboys. For shame, man! get up and shake yourself, if you are not afraid such a mass of inanity will fall to pieces. Cock your hat on your head, torn rim and all; elbow your way through the crowd; if they don’t move for you, make them do it; push past them; you have as much right in the world as your neighbor. If you wait for him to take you by the hand, the grass will grow over your grave. Rush past him and get employment. “You have tried, and failed.” So have thousands before you, who, to-day, are pecuniarily independent. I have the most unqualified disgust of a man who folds his hands at every obstacle, instead of leaping over it; or who dare not do any thing under heaven, unless it be to blaspheme God, wrong his neighbor, or dishonor woman.
I tell you, if you are determined, you can get employment; but you won’t get it by cringing round the doors of rich relations; you won’t get it if you can’t dine on a crust, month after month, and year after year, if need be, with hope for a dessert; you won’t get it if you stand with your lazy hands in your pockets, listening to croakers; you won’t do it if you don’t raise your head above every billow of discouragement which dashes over you, and halloo to Fate, with a stout heart: “Try again, old fellow!” No – and it is not right you should – you are good for nothing but to go sniveling through the world, making wry faces at the good fortune of other people. Bah! I’m disgusted with you.
You despair. Why? “You are a widow.” Of how much sorrow is that little word the voice? Oh! I know, poor mourner, how dark earth looks to you. I know that sun and stars mock you with their brightness. I know that you shut out the placid moonbeams, and pray to die. Listen! Are there no bleeding hearts but yours? Your dead sleep peacefully; their tears are all shed; their sighs all heaved; their weary hands folded over quiet hearts; but oh, repiner! the living sorrows that are masked beneath the smiling faces you envy! the corroding bitterness of a dishonored hearth-stone; the mantle all too narrow, all too scant, to hide from prying, malignant eyes, the torturing secret! – bone of your bone, flesh of your flesh, and yet, stranger to you than the savage of the desert – colder to you than the dead for whom you so repiningly grieve. Ah! are there no bleeding hearts save yours? Is the “last vial” emptied on your shrinking head?
But your little children stand looking into your tear-stained face, imploring you for bread – bread that you know not where to procure; your ear aches for the kind words which never come to you. Oh, where is your faith in God? Who says to you in accents sweeter than ever fell from human lips: “A bruised reed will I not break;” “Let your widows trust in me.” No kind words? Is it nothing, that those musical little voices call you “mother?” Is the clasp of those soft arms, the touch of those velvet lips, nothing? Is it thus you teach them to put their little hands into that of the Almighty Father, and say, “Give us this day our daily bread?” Oh, get on your knees before those sweet little teachers, who know no danger – no harm, who fear no evil while “mother” is near, and learn of them to watch, and hope, and trust; for sure as the sun shines above your and their heads, so sure is His promise to those who believingly claim it.
“Lonely,” are you? Oh, above all loneliness is his, who, having thrown away his faith in God, and bereft of earthly idols, stands like some lightning-reft tree, blossomless, verdureless, scathed, and blasted!
KNICKERBOCKER AND TRI-MOUNTAIN
The New York woman doteth on rainbow hats and dresses, confectionery, the theater, the opera, and flirtation. She stareth gentlemen in the street out of countenance, in a way that puzzleth a stranger to decide the question of her respectability. The New York woman thinketh it well-bred to criticise in an audible tone the dress and appearance of every chance lady near her, in the street, shop, ferry-boat, car, or omnibus. If doubtful of the material of which her dress is composed, she draweth near, examineth it microscopically, and pronounceth it – “after all – silk.” The New York woman never appeareth without a dress-hat and flounces, though the time be nine o’clock in the morning, and her destination the grocer’s, to order some superfine tea. She delighteth in embroidered petticoats, which she liberally displayeth to curious bipeds of the opposite sex. She turneth up her nose at a delaine, wipeth up the pavement with a thousand-dollar silk, and believeth point-lace collars and handkerchiefs essential to salvation. She scorneth to ride in an omnibus, and if driven by an impertinent shower therein, sniffeth up her aristocratic nose at the plebeian occupants, pulleth out her costly gold watch to – ascertain the time! and draweth off her gloves to show her diamonds. Arrived at Snob avenue, she shaketh off the dust of her silken flounces against her fellow-travelers, trippeth up her aristocratic steps, and holding up her dress sufficiently high to display to the retreating passengers her silken hose, and dainty boot, resigneth her parasolette to black John, and maketh her triumphant exit.
At the opera, the New York woman taketh the most conspicuous box, spreadeth out her flounces to their fullest circumference, and betrayeth a constant and vulgar consciousness that she is in her go-to-meetin-fixins, by arranging her bracelets and shawl, settling her rings, and fiddling at her coiffure, and the lace kerchief on her neck. She also talketh incessantly during the opera, to show that she is not a novice to be amused by it; and leaveth with much bustle, just before the last act, for the same reason, and also to display her toilette.
On Sunday morning, the New York woman taketh all the jewelry she can collect, and in her flashiest silk and bonnet, taketh her velvet-bound, gilt-clasped prayer-book out for an airing. Arrived at Dives’ church, she straightway kneeleth and boweth her head; not, as the uninitiated may suppose, to pray, but privately to arrange her curls; this done, and raising her head, she sayeth, “we beseech thee to hear us, good Lord!” while she taketh a minute inventory of the Hon. Mrs. Peters’s Parisian toilette. After church, she taketh a turn or two in Fifth Avenue, to display her elaborate dress, and to wonder “why vulgar people don’t confine themselves to the Bowery.”
THE BOSTON WOMAN
The Boston woman draweth down her mouth, rolleth up her eyes, foldeth her hands, and walketh on a crack. She rejoiceth in anatomical and chemical lectures. She prateth of Macaulay and Carlyle; belongeth to many and divers reading-classes, and smileth in a chaste, moonlight kind of way on literary men. She dresseth (to her praise be it spoken) plainly in the street, and considereth india-rubbers, a straw bonnet, and a thick shawl, the fittest costume for damp and cloudy weather. She dresseth her children more for comfort than show, and bringeth them up also to walk on a crack. She maketh the tour of the Common twice or three times a day, without regard to the barometer. She goeth to church twice or three times on Sunday, sandwiched with Bible-classes and Sabbath-schools. She thinketh London, Vienna, or Paris – fools to Boston; and the “Boulevards” and “Tuilleries” not to be mentioned with the Frog Pond and the Common. She is well posted up as to politics – thinketh, “as Pa does,” and sticketh to it through thunder and lightning. When asked to take a gentleman’s arm, she hooketh the tip of her little finger circumspectly on to his male coat-sleeve. She is as prim as a bolster, as stiff as a ram-rod, as frigid as an icicle, and not even matrimony with a New Yorker could thaw her.
THE NEW YORK MALE
The New York male exulteth in fast horses, stylish women, long-legged hounds, a coat-of-arms, and liveried servants. Beside, or behind him, may be seen his servant, with folded arms and white gloves, driven out daily by his master, to inhale the gutter breezes of Broadway, to excite the wonder of the curious, and to curl the lips of republicanism. The New York male hath many and divers garments; some of which he weareth bob-tailed; some shanghai, some with velvet collars, some with silk; anon turned up; anon turned down; and some carelessly a-la-flap. The New York male breakfasteth late, owing to pressing engagements which keep him abroad after midnight. About twelve the next morning he lighteth a cigar to assist his blear-eyes to find the way down-town; and with his hands in his pockets, and arms akimbo, he navigateth tortuously around locomotive “hoops;” – indefatigably pursueth a bonnet for several blocks, to get a peep it its owner; nor getteth discouraged at intervening parasols, or impromptu shopping errands; nor thinketh his time or shoe leather wasted. The New York male belongeth to the most ruinous club and military company; is a connoisseur in gold sleeve-buttons, and seal-rings, and diamond studs. He cometh into the world with an eye-glass and black ribbon winked into his left eye, and prideth himself upon having broken all the commandments before he arrived at the dignity of coat-tails.
