OUT ON THE END OF CAPE ANN
GOOD-BY, City! I'm off! Now that wretched ragman may jingle the six great cow-bells attached to his miserable hand-cart, to his heart's content. They have driven me to the verge of distraction with their monotonous clang – clang – clang, ever since the weather was warm enough to sit with open windows. How many times I have resolved to call the attention of the policeman on our "beat" to this illegal disturbance of the peace; particularly as he chooses our street to meander up and down in, merely because I am a scribbler, and it drives me mad – why else does he do it? For Heaven knows, I never did, or would bestow a "rag" upon him, though I never was to see paper again. Good-by to the unfeeling wretch; I bequeath him to the unfortunates I leave behind; who like myself are too lazy to chase up a policeman for his summary ejection.
Good-by, I say again. I am going out to grass. I shall shortly find a clover-field where I intend to bury my disgusted nose until October. So anybody who chooses may leave their odorous dirt-barrels on the sidewalk till sundown to regale neighborly olfactories. The postman may pull my bell-wire till it breaks; he will get no response from me. I don't care who didn't do what; or when it wasn't done. I'm for Katy-dids!
I've done with shopping, thank Heaven! If my clothes or shoes give out, let 'em. I've done with grocer-boys, and ice-men, and bakers, and brewers. I'm going back to milk and nature; and I'm going to be weighed before I go, to see what will come of it.
Perhaps I shall meet you there; and you – and you. If I should, for Heaven's sake don't talk "shop" to me. Speak of "caows" and "medder-land," and welcome – but don't mention books, not even my last new one, "Folly as it Flies," which any of you who can, are welcome to read —I can't. And don't pump me as you always do, to know "what sort of a man is Mr. Bonner?" I tell you, once for all, that he is the right sort, and you couldn't improve on that.
And if you see me coming in to dinner, and think it worth while to announce the fact, in a place where there is a dearth of news, just do it quietly, so that I shan't feel like throwing a biscuit at your head, and don't think, because I am a literary woman, that I live on violets and dew – I don't. I wear awful thick shoes, and go out in the mud, and like to get stuck there; and I am horrid old – fifty-six – and ugly besides; and I shall speak when I feel like it, and when I don't, I shan't, because it is too much to be on my good behavior all the year round, and this is my vacation.
Now we have settled all that, I hope, and there's nothing left but to toss my traps into my trunk, and lock it. I don't care much whether there is anything inside of it or not, for I'm desperate. These few last hot days have finished me. I'm almost afraid to trust myself to "write a character" for my departing chamber-maid, I feel so savage. You can take her, though; the only crime she will have to "carry to confession" is, that when she puts my room "to rights," she invariably turns the table which has a drawer in it, the drawer-side next the wall. To a person of my feeble intellect, this is distracting, especially in the dark; and I have so many distractions, and am so much in the dark, that really, Father Malooney, or some other nice priest, ought to jog her elbow on this point. They who will may abuse Roman Catholic priests – every sensible housekeeper knows their value. Long life to the like of 'em, I say.
Good-by! If I am smashed on the railroad, weep over my pieces. I think you told me you had already done that – on less provocation.
Geography never could find a lodgement in my head; but this I will assert, without fear of being sent to "the foot of the class," that granite, fish, and sand, are the principal products of Cape Ann. When you go down Broadway and see those square stone blocks in process of being pounded down for our mutual benefit, know that I am up here, a self-constituted superintendent of the work. Said a Cape-Ann-der the other day, "When you see six hundred ton of granite taken out of a quarry every week for the whole summer, you'd not-erally think that 'twould leave a hole there, but it don't." I mention this remark to you as a proof of the fertility of the soil.
Needle and thread are not to be despised any more than the deft fingers which ply them; but you should sit on a big stone at one of the quarries, and watch four or five of these stalwart fellows, each muscular hand grasping the hammer, coming down rhythmically, surely, powerfully, at the same instant, hour after hour, on the same huge granite block, till it is shaped for its purpose. It was a grand and suggestive sight to me. The men who did it were heroes; shaping – who can tell what? – monuments for history – public buildings – that will stand long after you and I are forgotten. And the other side of these exhaustless stone caverns rolled the broad ocean, waiting to float off on its mighty bosom these huge masses of granite to any desired port. And close by were woods, so filled with song, and perfume, and deep, cool shadows, and soft hum of insect life, and ancient trees, moss-coated, where the swell of the ocean and the sound of all this labor came with muffled breath, as if fearful to bring jarring discord to all that harmony. This granite, thought I, may stand for our pilgrim fathers; these woods, with their song and perfume, for their wives and daughters, who brought to this "rock-bound coast" the softening influence of their sweet, holy presence.
Away from all this, over the hill, down in the village, are the stores, and, more important to me, the post-office. I don't know what our pilgrim fathers did, but I know that to-day their descendants close them when they go to tea or dinner, while expectant customers patiently roost on the neighboring fences till their places reopen. But I am happy to state that the Cape-Ann-ders make up for this placidity when they get hold not only of granite, but of horse-flesh. It is their stereotyped rule to race up-hill, at break-neck speed. It is therefore needless to state how they go down-hill and how perfectly immaterial to them it is whether the horse fetches up in a stone-quarry or in the ocean. I ought to know, for I have danced often enough into the wet grass and dust, and over stone walls, in order to save my neck, to know. You see the Cape-Ann-ders, being born with oars in their hands, have not studied horse-flesh like Mr. Bonner. The ocean is their hunting-ground. One can't excel in all the virtues; but such fish as they coax out of it, and such chowder as they make of it, would go far to make one forget their equestrianism. I've seen about every kind of fish on the table except whales, of which I had my first astonished view yesterday. That bulk can be frisky was the first lesson they taught me. As to their spouting, a political meeting is nothing to it! When they came up out of water to breathe, you might have heard them in New York – that is, if the rag-man, with his six infernal jangling cow-bells, hadn't been going through your street.
There is nothing I have sighed for in those streets since I left them, except some digestible bread. I suppose you know that commodity is seldom furnished out of the city. If you don't, you may read it in the faces of nearly every woman, and child too, after a certain age, in the country. The men, by virtue of working in the open air, worry through with it better. Saleratus, soda, shortening, grease, and sugar! these are as infallibly married to pills, and castor-oil, and rhubarb, and bitters, as are the sexes to each other. All over New England, in these lovely leafy homes, with the blessing of sweet, pure, untainted air, with literally no excuse for sickness, vile bread vitiates and neutralizes God's best gifts.
The cupboards and closets of these naturally healthy homes are stuffed full of "physic;" and the country doctor, who ought, in these lovely villages, to be a pauper, thrives on the disastrous consumption of fried everything, and clammy bread. Meantime my excellent country friends put up pounds and quarts of "jell" every fall. Now, let them know that half, or a quarter of the time spent in making these indigestible sugary concoctions, if spent in learning to make good bread, would obliterate all traces of dyspepsia both under their belts and in their faces. If I seem to speak unkindly, I do not feel so; only it seems to me such a useless waste of material, and what is infinitely worse, such a criminal waste of health, that I cannot help entering my earnest protest against it.
I boldly assert that dyspepsia in the country is a disgrace. The birds' song is not heard by a dyspeptic. The flowers by the road-side throw out no incense for him. There may be fish in his ocean, but there is no beauty there. How can there be with that fiend plucking at his suspenders?
And oh, the country washerwoman! Can anybody tell why she, having tried her fists only on red flannel, calico, and sheets, should announce herself as a professional laundress, and up to the mysteries of bluing, rinsing, clear-starching, and ironing? Trustingly you place your linen in her hands, and she departs to some spot where sun, fresh air, clover-blossoms, and plenty of water are all in her favor. In process of time she returns your clothes. The next morning your husband reproachfully requests you to examine that shirt-bosom, with its streaks of bluing, its little globules of starch, and its scorched spots, presenting a zebra front rivalled only in a menagerie. Now, perhaps shirt-bosoms are the only part of your husband's apparel in which he takes any interest; your educatory efforts in behalf of his gloves, boots, &c., having failed utterly; for that reason you weep, that this single germ of neatness, thus untimely nipped in the bud, should cause him to backslide into that normal slovenliness from which woman alone delivers him.
Well – he struggles into that shirt-bosom, and, with a man's inability to face disagreeable things, goes off without consulting his looking-glass; and you sit on the side of the bed, with your hair in your eyes, contemplating a pair of "clean" stockings just taken from your drawer.
That streak of dirt, carefully preserved, was got last week down on the rocks, from contact with seaweed; and that in the meadows, where you went for ferns and wild flowers; and that, when you slipped one leg down a deep and treacherous dirt-hole, trying to get a big blackberry. You can identify every one. You go to your closet for a gingham dress. When you put it in the wash it was gray, now it is a sickly green. You get a "clean" collar and cuffs – they are both saffron color. You are rather particular about the mixing of tints, and so have to give up the idea of a bow at your neck that will "go" with this rainbow apparel, and fall back, instead, on a safe jet pin, as emblematic also of your feelings.
I don't mention in this connection a little habit the country washerwoman has of returning Mrs. Smith's husband's flannel drawers, instead of the conjugal pair which generally delight my eyes, well mended and with buttons on the waistband, (hem!) while Smith's are in a state of non-repair, disgusting even to "a literary woman." I don't speak of my cambric under-waist, irretrievably torn down the back, or Smith's night-gown, about half the length of mine, which last is probably at that moment quietly reposing beside Mrs. Smith; but I pause to ask you to survey – yes, survey, for that is the proper word – this great table-cloth of a pocket-handkerchief of Smith's instead of my own dear little hem-stitched one, with a tiny fern-leaf in the corner. As to Smith's socks, they make it their home in my room, without any permit from the priest. I'm getting sick of Smith.
Again, my sisters, can you tell me why the country washerwoman invariably appears with her bundle of "clean" clothes just as you are starting for a ride, or going down to breakfast? Can one enjoy lovely scenery, or relish one's coffee and eggs, while this intermarriage of strange stockings and nightgowns is going on in one's room, and the fruitless hunt for ten cents to make "even change" is looming up in the horizon? I am constrained to say that in what light soever I view the country washerwoman, she is – . Yes, ma'am!
P.S. – A Cape Ann editor gave me a box on the ear the other day for some remark I made on country washing. Now be it known that I am so accustomed to a boxed ear in a good cause, that I have learned to stiffen up to it, and I can endure it now without even winking.
But to business. This Cape Ann editor inquires, "why, if I do not like the Cape Ann washing, I do not get out the wash-tub, and wash my clothes myself." I smile serenely, while I answer, that while Mr. Bonner pays me enough for my articles to buy out this editor's printing-office, I prefer to do precisely what he would do, were he in my place – turn my back on the wash-tub and face the inkstand. Is he answered? I am sorry also to inform him that all womanhood seems to be "marching on" to the same or similar results, and that by and by men will have to choose their words in addressing "women folks;" not, I hope, for fear of being "knocked down," but because woman, be she married or single, being able to earn her own living independent of marriage, – that often hardest and most non-paying and most thankless road to it, – she will no longer have to face the alternative of serfdom or starvation, but will marry, when she does marry, for love and companionship, and for co-operation in all high and noble aims and purposes, not for bread and meat and clothes; and the men who sneer at this picture are always sure to be men with souls narrow as a railroad track, who never look or desire to look beyond the curve and out into the wide world of progress.
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. No more hysterics, sirs! no more fainting! no more trudging miles to match a ribbon! no more eating her heart out, trying to bear rough usage! She wont have rough usage! She will be in a position to receive good treatment, from motives of policy, from those natures which are incapable of better and higher. She will, in short, stand on her own blessed independent feet, so far as "getting a living" is concerned, as I do to-day, and able to make mouths even at Cape Ann, which – blessed be its rocks and "cunner"! – has not yet found the philosopher's stone, or made, even out of its vile bread, a "dyspeptic" of me, as its editor asserts.
Me "a dyspeptic"? – me! who could eat a block of its granite for dinner, and ask for another for dessert? – me! who, at fifty-eight, can tramp ten miles, every day, over its horrid rocky roads, and come back red as a peony and fresh as a lark! – me a dyspeptic? I am sorry to inform "Cape Ann" that I am as "live" as one of its whales, and none of its harpoons will ever finish me. And that my mission, wheresoever I sojourn in summer, is to preach down bad country washing, and bad bread, and country dyspepsia; and Cape Ann might as well, first as last, burn down its churches, for sal-eratus and sal-vation will never wed; for the victims of the former will walk this bright earth, so full of sparkle and sunshine and fragrance and bloom, with bowed heads, contracted chests, and pallid faces, nursing the dyspeptic's cherished vision of an "angry God"! That's where bad bread lands them!
As to "washing," bless you! there was a time when I did all my own washing, and did it well too. That's the way I came to know how to speak with authority on the starch and flat-iron question; and besides, as I said before, if Mr. Bonner will insist on paying my washing bills, whose business is it, save his and mine? He is quite welcome.
There are people who get up in the morning for the express purpose of making somebody uncomfortable before the day is out. They generally pitch upon some sunny-faced, happy, singing human lark carolling high above the ditches and marshes of life, soaring in the blue ether of his happiness, nearer God and the angels than he himself knows anything about, and, taking practised aim at some vulnerable point, bring him plump down, with maimed wing, to flutter in the dust. Now what is good enough for such a miscreant? The more you flutter the better he likes it; every writhe of your agonized spirit is delicious music to this vulture; there is one other person in the world as uncomfortable as himself. What right had you to be happy when his liver was out of order? It was clearly a piece of impertinent presumption, and so there you lie moaning and turning, the sunshine all gone, the chill mist of despondence gathering thick about you, and your persecutor standing by, turning you over now and then with his foot, to see if there is life enough left for a fresh attack.
COUNTRY DIET
FOREIGN missions and missionaries. These have their place and their work. What I want to see is a Home Mission and Home Missionaries, having for an object the extermination of the unhealthy and immoral bread of New England. When matters have got to that pass that a perfectly sound, healthy person cannot decline eating this poison without being supposed to have an imperfect digestion, the climax of stupidity and ignorance is reached by its makers and defenders. "The heathen?" Great Cesar! who are heathen, if the makers of this bread are not? I know of a factory where pie, whose principal ingredient is "lard," is the staple article of food placed before the operatives. And so imperfectly is it baked, that the lard is not really melted in the process. This for breakfast! with muddy coffee and sour bread! This for supper, with sour bread. This "pie" taken to the factory for lunch or dinner also. Imagine a hundred or so of young women feeding on such poison as that. Future wives, possibly, of hard-working mechanics, expected to do the family washing, and bear and rear children, on the results of such an atrocious diet. It were enough to expect them even to bear themselves, robbed of the vitality and spring of their youth by these fiendish providers. The man who sets fire to a house at night, and smothers all the inmates, is a saviour in comparison. They die at once. These linger weary years, fighting disease, fighting gloomy thoughts, as truly needing compassion and sympathy as any victim of delirium-tremens. Now take a girl, fresh from the old country, her cheeks red with the rich, pure blood manufactured from sweet-milk, potatoes, and oatmeal, and place her in one of these factories on this fare. It needs no seer to tell how long, even with such a stock of health as she brings, that she can stand this exterminating process; how long before those sound white teeth will begin to ache and blacken, and the bright clear eyes dim, and the cheek wear yellow instead of red roses, and the flesh become flabby, and the whole creature become demoralized. Now, I ask, Is nobody guilty for all this waste and wreck? Is it any more trouble to make sweet, wholesome bread, than to manufacture and multiply bad pies? As a matter of policy, wouldn't these operatives work better on a piece of beefsteak and a slice of sweet bread, than on pie and pickles? As a matter of morality, ought not such caterers to be held to strict account? Can virtue even flourish where the whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint; when morbidness takes the place of hope, and faith is merged in despair? What wonder that of dyspepsia should come the suicide's rope?
And as to the usual country boarding-house or hotel fare, for which the keepers of these places coolly pocket their fees, I propose some deduction be made by them for the doctor's bills consequent the ensuing winter; some reduction for the sour milk that the children have drunk, because the cans in which it was kept were not properly washed and aired, or the ice-house kept in good order; some reduction for the state of the stomach caused by taking refuge from bad bread in poor crackers; some reduction for generating such a disgust of meat, from the sight of it in its various stages of raw, burnt, and grease-soaked, that weeks or months even of wholesome food can scarcely tempt one trial of the article; some reduction for aching limbs produced by bunchy beds an entire "season;" some reduction for boarders performing the part of "waiters," through the season, in the total absence of bell-wires in the establishment; some reduction for inhaling the noxious gases of refuse kitchen matter, carelessly thrown around the house, or the nuisance of beating about the country in search of a washerwoman. Before the bill is finally settled, and the trunks packed, I would like to see these questions considered by the country landlord.
But you say, "It is all ignorance; they don't know any better." As if that was not just where the agony came in! As if an "ignorant" person had any right to take such a position, or any right to expect anything like the same pay as a competent, intelligent one receives.
Now I have made up my mind to "speak in meetin'". I don't care how many country editors jump on the fence and say, "Silence!" I wont be silent. I intend to fight a crusade against this crying sin of New England, so long as I can make a pen wag; and anybody whose rustic feathers get ruffled in the process may take his own time to oil them down. I persist that I have never yet "boarded" anywhere in the country that I found wholesome bread there, or meat cooked other than fried, unless it has been through line upon line and precept upon precept of my own; and that in these awful experiences of mine, Cape Ann bears off the palm. There! I am going to-morrow to the city to get some decent bread – the only place where it is to be found – and get some fish; for if you want fish, never go where they swim. Put that in your note-book too.
And now, in conclusion, I will add, that in a place where, through sour bread and sour theology, the element of cheerfulness is especially needed to keep the young folks from turning into premature vinegar cruets, it is a very great pity that at a picnic their only outlet for conviviality – dancing, by the youngsters – should be considered a sin. "It would break up the whole thing – it would never do!" was the reply to a philanthropic suggestion of the kind. Heavens! I wonder they don't fetter the legs of their lambs and calves; and insist upon all their birds singing, "Hark! from the tombs a dreadful sound!" Do you know what young people so brought up will do? – that is, if they don't commit suicide first. They'll just go to the city, and break every one of the ten commandments smack through, the first day they get there. Alas! when will "good people" learn that the devil is never better pleased than when they try to make "religion" a gloomy thing.
Said a little child to her mother, "Shall you live as long as I do?" – "Perhaps not – but I cannot tell," was the reply; "I have lived a long while, you know." – "Well," said the little one, skipping about the room and singing, "I guess there'll be somebody to take care of me." Oh, ye who are "careful and troubled," – groping like the mole in the earth, blind to the brightness overhead, look up! like this little trusting child, look up! When you have made provision for to-day, as intelligently as you know how, do not be anxiously forecasting the morrow.