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DOLLARS AND DIMES

 
“Dollars and dimes, dollars and dimes,
An empty pocket is the worst of crimes.”
 

Yes; and don’t you presume to show yourself anywhere, until you get it filled. “Not among good people?” No, my dear Simplicity, not among “good people.” They will receive you with a galvanic ghost of a smile, scared up by an indistinct recollection of the “ten commandments,” but it will be as short-lived as their stay with you. You are not welcome – that’s the amount of it. They are all in a perspiration lest you should be delivered of a request for their assistance, before they can get rid of you. They are “very busy,” and what’s more, they always will be busy when you call, until you get to the top of fortune’s ladder.

Climb, man! climb! Get to the top of the ladder, though adverse circumstances and false friends break every round in it! and see what a glorious and extensive prospect of human nature you’ll get when you arrive at the summit! Your gloves will be worn out shaking hands with the very people who didn’t recognize your existence two months ago. “You must come and make me a long visit;” “you must stop in at any time;” “you’ll always be welcome;” it is such a long time since they had the pleasure of a visit from you, that they begin to fear you never intended to come; and they’ll cap the climax by inquiring with an injured air, “if you are nearsighted, or why you have so often passed them in the street without speaking.”

Of course, you will feel very much like laughing in their faces, and so you can. You can’t do anything wrong, now that your “pocket is full.” At the most, it will only be “an eccentricity.” You can use anybody’s neck for a footstool, bridle anybody’s mouth with a silver bit, and have as many “golden opinions” as you like. You won’t see a frown again between this and your tombstone!

OUR NELLY

“Who is she?” “Why, that is our Nelly, to be sure. Nobody ever passed Nelly without asking, ‘Who is she?’ One can’t forget the glance of that blue eye; nor the waving of those golden locks; nor the breezy grace of that lithe figure; nor those scarlet lips; nor the bright, glad sparkle of the whole face; and then, she is not a bit proud, although she steps so like a queen; she would shake hands just as quick with a horny palm as with a kid glove. The world can’t spoil ‘our Nelly;’ her heart is in the right place.

“You should have seen her thank an old farmer, the other day, for clearing the road that she might pass. He shaded his eyes with his hand when she swept by, as if he had been dazzled by a sudden flash of sunlight, and muttered to himself, as he looked after her – ‘Won’t she make somebody’s heart ache?’ Well, she has; but it is because from among all her lovers she could marry but one, and (God save us!) that her choice should have fallen upon Walter May. If he don’t quench out the love-light in those blue eyes, my name is not John Morrison. I’ve seen his eyes flash when things didn’t suit him; I’ve seen him nurse his wrath to keep it warm till the smouldering embers were ready for a conflagration. He’s as vindictive as an Indian. I’d as soon mate a dove with a tiger, as give him ‘our Nelly.’ There’s a dozen noble fellows, this hour, ready to lay down their lives for her, and yet out of the whole crowd she must choose Walter May! Oh, I have no patience to think of it. Well-a-day! mark my words, he will break her heart before a twelvemonth! He’s a pocket edition of Napoleon.”

A year had passed by, and amid the hurry of business and the din of the great city, I had quite forgotten Glenburn and its fairy queen. It was a time to recall her to mind, that lovely June morning – with its soft fleecy clouds, its glad sunlight, its song of birds, and its breath of roses; and so I threw the reins on Romeo’s neck, that he might choose his own pace down the sweet-briar path, to John Morrison’s cottage. And there sat John, in the doorway, smoking his pipe, with Towser crouched at his feet, in the same old spot, just as if the sun had never gone down behind the hills since I parted with him.

“And ‘our Nelly?’” said I, taking up the thread of his year-old narrative as though it had never been broken – “and ‘our Nelly?’”

“Under the sod,” said the old man, with a dark frown; “under the sod. He broke her heart, just as I told you he would. Such a bridal as it was! I’d as lief have gone to a funeral. And then Walter carried her off to the city, where she was as much out of her element as a humming-bird in a meeting-house; and tried to make a fine lady of her, with stiff, city airs, and stiff, city manners. It was like trying to fetter the soft west wind, which comes and goes at its own sweet will; and Nelly – who was only another name for Nature– pined and drooped like a bird in a darkened cage.

“One by one her old friends dropped off, wearied with repeated and rude repulses from her moody husband, till he was left, as he desired, master of the field. It was astonishing the ascendency he gained over his sweet wife, contemptible as he was. She made no objection to his most absurd requirements; but her step lost its spring, her eye its sparkle; and one might listen long for her merry-ringing laugh. Slowly, sadly to Nelly came that terrible conviction from which a wife has no appeal.

“Ah! there is no law to protect woman from negative abuse! – no mention made in the statute book (which men frame for themselves), of the constant dropping of daily discomforts which wear the loving heart away – no allusion to looks or words that are like poisoned arrows to the sinking spirit. No! if she can show no mark of brutal fingers on her delicate flesh, he has fulfilled his legal promise to the letter – to love, honor and cherish her. Out on such a mockery of justice!

“Well, sir; Nelly fluttered back to Glenburn, with the broken wing of hope, to die! So wasted! so lovely! The lips that blessed her, could not choose but curse him. ‘She leaned on a broken reed,’ said her old gray-haired father, as he closed her blue eyes forever. ‘May God forgive him, for I never can,’ said an old lover, whose heart was buried in her grave.

“‘Nelly May, aged 18.’

“You’ll read it in the village churchyard, Sir. Eighteen! Brief years, Sir, to drain all of happiness Life’s cup could offer!”

“STUDY MEN, NOT BOOKS.”

Oh, but books are such safe company! They keep your secrets well; they never boast that they made your eyes glisten, or your cheek flush, or your heart throb. You may take up your favorite author, and love him at a distance just as warmly as you like, for all the sweet fancies and glowing thoughts that have winged your lonely hours so fleetly and so sweetly. Then you may close the book, and lean your cheek against the cover, as if it were the face of a dear friend; shut your eyes and soliloquise to your heart’s content, without fear of misconstruction, even though you should exclaim in the fullness of your enthusiasm, “What an adorable soul that man has!” You may put the volume under your pillow, and let your eye and the first ray of morning light fall on it together, and no Argus eyes shall rob you of that delicious pleasure, no carping old maid, or strait-laced Pharisee shall cry out, “it isn’t proper!” You may have a thousand petty, provoking, irritating annoyances through the day, and you shall come back again to your dear old book, and forget them all in dream land. It shall be a friend that shall be always at hand; that shall never try you by caprice, or pain you by forgetfulness, or wound you by distrust.

“Study men!”

Well, try it! I don’t believe there’s any neutral territory where that interesting study can be pursued as it should be. Before you get to the end of the first chapter, they’ll be making love to you from the mere force of habit – and because silks, and calicoes, and delaines, naturally suggest it. It’s just as natural to them as it is to sneeze when a ray of sunshine flashes suddenly in their faces. “Study men!” That’s a game, my dear, that two can play at. Do you suppose they are going to sit quietly down and let you dissect their hearts, without returning the compliment? No, indeed! that’s where they differ slightly from “books!” – they always expect an equivalent.

Men are a curious study! Sometimes it pays to read to “the end of the volume,” and then again, it don’t – mostly the latter!

“MURDER OF THE INNOCENTS;” OR, HOME THE PLACE FOR MARRIED FOLKS

Happy Mrs. Emily! Freed from the thraldom of house keeping, and duly installed mistress of a fine suite of rooms at – Hotel. No more refractory servants to oversee, no more silver or porcelain to guard, no more cupboards, or closets, or canisters to explore; no more pickles or preserves to make; no more bills of fare to invent, – and over and above all, mistress of a bell-wire which was not “tabooed” on washing and ironing days.

Time to lounge on the sofa, and devour “yellow-covered literature;” time to embroider caps, and collars, and chemisettes; time to contemplate the pretty face where housekeeping might have planted “crows feet,” had she not fortunately foreseen the symptoms, and turned her back on dull Care and all his croaking crew.

Happy Mrs. Emily! No bird let loose from a cage was ever more joyous; not even her own little children – for she had two of them, and pretty creatures they were too, with their cherry lips, and dimpled limbs, and flaxen ringlets; and very weary they grew, of their gloomy nursery, with its one window, commanding a view of a dingy shed and a tall spectral-looking distilhouse chimney, emitting clouds of smoke and suffocating vapor. Nannie, the nurse, didn’t fancy it, either, so she spent her time in the lobbies and entries, challenging compliments from white-jacketed waiters, while the children peeped curiously into the half-open doors, taking drafts of cold air on their bare necks and shoulders. Sometimes they balanced themselves alarmingly on the spiral ballustrade, gazing down into the dizzy Babel below, inhaling clouds of cigar smoke, and listening, with round-eyed wonder, to strange conversations, which memory’s cud should chew, for riper years to digest.

“No children allowed at the table d’hôte” – so the “hotel regulations” pompously set forth – the landlord’s tablecloths, gentlemen’s broadcloth, and ladies’ silk dresses being sworn foes to little Paul Pry fingers. Poor little exiles! they took their sorrowful meals in the servants’ hall, with their respective nurses, the bill of fare consisting of a rehash of yesterday’s French dishes, (spiced for the digestion of an ostrich.) This was followed by a dessert of stale pastry and ancient raisins, each nurse at the outset propitiating her infant charge with a huge bunch, that she might regale herself with the substantials! – mamma, meanwhile, blissfully ignoring the whole affair, absorbed in the sublime occupation of making German worsted dogs.

Papa, too, had his male millennium. No more marketing to do; no more coal, or wood, or kindling to buy; no cistern, or pump, or gaspipe to keep in repair. Such a luxury as it was to have a free pass to the “smoking room,” (alias bar-room,) where the atmosphere was so dense that he couldn’t tell the latitude of his nose, and surrounded by “hale fellows well met.” His eldest boy accompanied him, listening, on his knee, to questionable jokes, which he repeated at bed-time to pert Nannie, the nurse, who understood their significance much better than his innocent little lordship.

Papa, to be sure, had some drawbacks, but they were very trifling; – for instance, his shirts were quite buttonless, his dickeys stringless, and his stockings had ventilator toes; – but then, how could mamma be seen patching and mending in such an aristocratic atmosphere? – she might lose caste; and as to Nannie, her hands were full, what with babies and billet-doux.

You should have seen Mrs. Emily in the evening; with sparkling eyes and bracelets, flounced robe and daintily-shod feet, twisting her Chinese fan, listening to moustached idlers, and recollecting, with a shudder, the long Caudle evenings, formerly divided between her husband, his newspaper, and her darning-needle.

Then the petite soupers at ten o’clock in the evening, where the ladies were enchanting, the gentlemen quite entirely irresistible; where wit and champagne corks flew with equal celerity; and headaches, and dyspepsia, and nightmare, lay perdu amid fried oysters, venison steaks, chicken salad, and India-rubber, anti-temperance jellies.

Then followed the midnight reünion in the drawing-room, where promiscuous polkaing and waltzing, (seen through champagne fumes,) seemed not only proper, but delightful.

It was midnight. There was hurrying to and fro in the entry halls and lobbies; a quick, sharp cry for medical help; the sobs and tears of an agonized mother, and the low moan of a dying child; for nature had rebelled at last, at impure air, unwholesome food, and alternate heats and chills.

“No hope,” the doctor said; “no hope,” papa mechanically repeated; “no hope!” echoed inexorable Death, as he laid his icy finger on the quivering little lips.

It was a dearly bought lesson. The Lady Emily never forgot it. Over her remaining bud of promise she tearfully bends, finding her quiet happiness in the healthful, sacred and safe retreat of the home fireside.

AMERICAN LADIES

“The American ladies, when promenading, cross their arms in front, and look like trussed turkeys.”

Well, you ought to pity us, for we have no such escape-valves for our awkwardness as you have – no dickeys to pull up – no vests to pull down – no breast pockets, side pockets, flap pockets to explore – no cigars between our teeth – no switch canes in our hands – no beavers to twitch, when we meet an acquaintance. Don’t you yourselves oblige us to reef in our rigging, and hold it down tight with our little paws over our belts, under penalty of being dragged half a mile by one of your buttons, when you tear past us like so many comets.

Is it any joke to us to stand vis-a-vis, with a strange man, before a crowd of grinning spectators, while you are disentangling the “Gordian knot,” instead of whipping out your penknife and sacrificing your offending button, as you ought to do?

Is it any joke to see papa scowl, when we ask him for the “needful,” to restore the lace or fringe you tore off our shawl or mantilla?

Do you suppose we can stop to walk gracefully, when our minds have to be in a prepared state to have our pretty little toes crushed, or our bonnets knocked off, or our skirts torn from our belts, or ourselves and our gaiter boots jostled into a mud-puddle?

Do you ever “keep to the right, as the law directs?” Don’t you always go with your heads hindside before, and then fetch up against us as if we were made of cast-iron? Don’t you put your great lazy hands in your pockets, and tramp along with a cane half a mile long sticking out from under your armpits, to the imminent danger of our optics? “Trussed turkeys” indeed! No wonder, when we are run a-fowl of every other minute.

THE STRAY SHEEP

“He’s going the wrong way – straying from the true fold; going off the track,” said old Deacon Green, shaking his head ominously, as he saw young Neff enter a church to hear an infidel preacher. “Can’t understand it; he was taught his catechism and ten commandments as soon as he could speak; he knows the right way as well as our parson; I can’t understand it.”

Harry Neff had never seen a day pass since his earliest childhood, that was not ushered in and closed with a family prayer. He had not partaken of a repast upon which the divine blessing was not invoked; the whole atmosphere of the old homestead was decidedly orthodox. Novels, plays and Byronic poetry were all vetoed. Operas, theatres and the like most decidedly frowned upon; and no lighter literature was allowed upon the table, than missionary reports and theological treatises.

Most of his father’s guests being clergymen, Harry was early made acquainted with every crook and turn of orthodoxy. He had laid up many a clerical conversation, and pondered it in his heart, when they imagined his thoughts on anything but the subject in debate. At his father’s request, they had each and all taken him by the button, for the purpose of long, private conversations – the old gentleman generally prefacing his request by the remark that “his heart was as hard as a flint.”

Harry listened to them all with respectful attention, manifesting no sign of impatience, no nervous shrinking from the probing process, and they left him, impressed with a sense of his mental superiority, but totally unable to affect his feelings in the remotest degree.

Such a pity! they all said, that he should be so impenetrable; such wonderful argumentative powers as he had; such felicity of expression; such an engaging exterior. Such a pity! that on all these brilliant natural gifts should not have been written, “Holiness to the Lord.”

Yes, dear reader, it was a pity. Pity, when our pulpits are so often filled with those, whose only recommendation for their office is a good heart and a black coat. It was a pity that graceful gesticulation, that rare felicity of expression, that keen perception of the beautiful, that ready tact and adaptation to circumstances and individuals, should not have been effective weapons in the gospel armory. Pity, that voice of music should not have been employed, to chain the worldling’s fastidious ear to listen to Calvary’s story.

Yet it was a pity that glorious intellect had been laid at an unholy shrine; pity “he had strayed from the true fold.” How was it?

Ah! the solution is simple. “Line upon line, precept upon precept,” is well – but practice is better! Religion must not be all lip-service; the “fruits of love, meekness, gentleness, forbearance, long-suffering” must follow. Harry was a keen observer. He had often heard the harsh and angry word from lips upon which the Saviour’s name had just lingered. He had felt the unjust, quick, passionate blow from the hand which a moment before had been raised in supplication to Heaven. He had seen the purse-strings relax at the bidding of worldliness, and tighten at the call of charity. He had seen principle sacrificed to policy, and duty to interest. He had himself been misappreciated. The shrinking sensitiveness which drew a vail over his most sacred feelings, had been harshly construed into hard-heartedness and indifference. Every duty to which his attention was called, was prefaced with the supposition that he was averse to its performance. He was cut off from the gay pleasures which buoyant spirits and fresh young life so eloquently plead for; and in their stead no innocent enjoyment was substituted. He saw Heaven’s gate shut most unceremoniously, upon all who did not subscribe to the parental creed, outraging both his own good sense and the teachings of the Bible; and so religion, (which should have been rendered so lovely,) put on to him an ascetic form. Oh, what marvel that the flowers in the broad road were so passing fair to see? that the forbidden fruit of the “tree of knowledge” was so tempting to the youthful touch?

Oh, Christian parent! be consistent, be judicious, be cheerful. If as historians inform us, “no smile ever played” on the lips of Jesus of Nazareth, surely no frown marred the beauty of that holy brow.

Dear reader, true religion is not gloomy. “Her ways are ways of pleasantness, her paths are peace.” No man, no woman, has chart or compass, or guiding star, without it.

Religion is not a fable. Else why, when our household gods are shivered, do our tearful eyes seek only Heaven?

Why, when disease lays its iron grasp on bounding life, does the startled soul so earnestly, so tearfully, so imploringly, call on its forgotten Saviour?

Ah! the house “built upon the sand” may do for sunny weather; but when the billows roll, and tempests blow, and lightnings flash, and thunders roar, we need the “Rock of Ages.”

THE FASHIONABLE PREACHER

Do you call this a church? Well, I heard a prima-donna here a few nights ago: and bright eyes sparkled, and waving ringlets kept time to moving fans; and opera glasses and ogling, and fashion and folly reigned for the nonce triumphant. I can’t forget it; I can’t get up any devotion here, under these latticed balconies, with their fashionable freight. If it were a good old country church, with a cracked bell and unhewn rafters, a pine pulpit, with the honest sun staring in through the windows, a pitch-pipe in the gallery, and a few hob-nailed rustics scattered round in the uncushioned seats, I should feel all right; but my soul is in fetters here; it won’t soar – its wings are earth-clipped. Things are all too fine! Nobody can come in at that door, whose hat and coat and bonnet are not fashionably cut. The poor man (minus a Sunday suit) might lean on his staff; in the porch, a long while, before he’d dare venture in, to pick up his crumb of the Bread of Life. But, thank God, the unspoken prayer of penitence may wing its way to the Eternal Throne, though our mocking church spires point only with aristocratic fingers to the rich man’s heaven.

– That hymn was beautifully read; there’s poetry in the preacher’s soul. Now he takes his seat by the reading-desk; now he crosses the platform, and offers his hymn-book to a female who has just entered. What right has he to know there is a woman in the house? ’Tisn’t clerical! Let the bonnets find their own hymns.

Well, I take a listening attitude, and try to believe I am in church. I hear a great many original, a great many startling things said. I see the gauntlet thrown at the dear old orthodox sentiments which I nursed in with my mother’s milk, and which (please God) I’ll cling to till I die. I see the polished blade of satire glittering in the air, followed by curious, eager, youthful eyes, which gladly see the searching “Sword of the Spirit” parried. Meaning glances, smothered smiles and approving nods follow the witty clerical sally. The orator pauses to mark the effect, and his face says, That stroke tells! and so it did, for “the Athenians” are not all dead, who “love to see and hear some new thing.” But he has another arrow in his quiver. Now his features soften – his voice is low and thrilling, his imagery beautiful and touching. He speaks of human love; he touches skilfully a chord to which every heart vibrates; and stern manhood is struggling with his tears, ere his smiles are chased away.

Oh, there’s intellect there – there’s poetry there – there’s genius there; but I remember Gethsemane – I forget not Calvary! I know the “rocks were rent,” and the “heavens darkened,” and “the stone rolled away;” and a cold chill strikes to my heart when I hear “Jesus of Nazareth” lightly mentioned.

Oh, what are intellect, and poetry, and genius, when with Jewish voice they cry, “Away with Him!”

With “Mary,” let me “bathe his feet with my tears, and wipe them with the hairs of my head.”

And so, I “went away sorrowful,” that this human preacher, with such great intellectual possessions, should yet “lack the one thing needful.”