F. Gould, who wrote many verses that were rather graceful and arch than witty. But her epitaph on her friend, the active and aggressive Caleb Cushing, is as good as any made by Saxe.
"Lay aside, all ye dead,
For in the next bed
Reposes the body of Cushing;
He has crowded his way
Through the world, they say,
And even though dead will be pushing."
Such a hit from a bright woman is refreshing.
Our literary foremothers seemed to prefer to be pedantic, didactic, and tedious on the printed page.
Catharine Sedgwick dealt somewhat in epigram, as when she says: "He was not one of those convenient single people who are used, as we use straw and cotton in packing, to fill up vacant places."
Eliza Leslie (famed for her cook-books and her satiric sketches), when speaking of people silent from stupidity, supposed kindly to be full of reserved power, says: "We cannot help thinking that when a head is full of ideas some of them must involuntarily ooze out."
And is not this epigrammatic advice? "Avoid giving invitations to bores – they will come without."
Some of our later literary women prefer the epigrammatic form in sentences, crisp and laconic; short sayings full of pith, of which I have made a collection.
Gail Hamilton's books fairly bristle with epigrams in condensed style, and Kate Field has many a good thought in this shape, as: "Judge no one by his relations, whatever criticism you pass upon his companions. Relations, like features, are thrust upon us; companions, like clothes, are more or less our own selection."
Miss Jewett's style is less epigrammatic, but just as full of humor. Speaking of a person who was always complaining, she says: "Nothing ever suits her. She ain't had no more troubles to bear than the rest of us; but you never see her that she didn't have a chapter to lay before ye. I've got 's much feelin' as the next one, but when folks drives in their spiggits and wants to draw a bucketful o' compassion every day right straight along, there does come times when it seems as if the bar'l was getting low."
"The captain, whose eyes were not much better than his ears, always refused to go forth after nightfall without his lantern. The old couple steered slowly down the uneven sidewalk toward their cousin's house. The captain walked with a solemn, rolling gait, learned in his many long years at sea, and his wife, who was also short and stout, had caught the habit from him. If they kept step all went well; but on this occasion, as sometimes happened, they did not take the first step out into the world together, so they swayed apart, and then bumped against each other as they went along. To see the lantern coming through the mist you might have thought it the light of a small craft at sea in heavy weather."
"Deaf people hear more things that are worth listening to than people with better ears; one likes to have something worth telling in talking to a person who misses most of the world's talk."
"Emory Ann," a creation of Mrs. Whitney's, often spoke in epigrams, as: "Good looks are a snare; especially to them that haven't got 'em." While Mrs. Walker's creed, "I believe in the total depravity of inanimate things," is more than an epigram – it is an inspiration.
Charlotte Fiske Bates, who compiled the "Cambridge Book of Poetry," and has given us a charming volume of her own verses, which no one runs any "Risk" in buying, in spite of the title of the book, has done a good deal in this direction, and is fond of giving an epigrammatic turn to a bright thought, as in the following couplet:
"Would you sketch in two words a coquette and deceiver?
Name two Irish geniuses, Lover and Lever!"
She also succeeds with the quatrain:
A signal name is this, upon my word!
Great Juno's geese saved Rome her citadel.
Another drowsy Manlius may be stirred
And the State saved, if I but cackle well.
I recall a charming jeu d'esprit from Mrs. Barrows, the beloved "Aunt Fanny," who writes equally well for children and grown folks, and whose big heart ranges from earnest philanthropy to the perpetration of exquisite nonsense.
It is but a trifle, sent with a couple of peanut-owls to a niece of Bryant's. The aged poet was greatly amused.
"When great Minerva chose the Owl,
That bird of solemn phiz,
That truly awful-looking fowl,
To represent her wis-
Dom, little recked the goddess of
The time when she would howl
To see a Peanut set on end,
And called – Minerva's Owl."
Miss Phelps has given us some sentences which convey an epigram in a keen and delicate fashion, as:
"All forms of self-pity, like Prussian blue, should be sparingly used."
"As a rule, a man can't cultivate his mustache and his talents impartially."
"As happy as a kind-hearted old lady with a funeral to go to."
"No men are so fussy about what they eat as those who think their brains the biggest part of them."
"The professor's sister, a homeless widow, of excellent Vermont intentions and high ideals in cup-cake."
And this longer extract has the same characteristics:
"You know how it is with people, Avis; some take to zoölogy, and some take to religion. That's the way it is with places. It may be the Lancers, and it may be prayer-meetings. Once I went to see my grandmother in the country, and everybody had a candy-pull; there were twenty-five candy-pulls and taffy-bakes in that town that winter. John Rose says, in the Connecticut Valley, where he came from, it was missionary barrels; and I heard of a place where it was cold coffee. In Harmouth it's improving your mind. And so," added Coy, "we run to reading-clubs, and we all go fierce, winter after winter, to see who'll get the 'severest.' There's a set outside of the faculty that descends to charades and music and inconceivably low intellectual depths; and some of our girls sneak off and get in there once in a while, like the little girl that wanted to go from heaven to hell to play Saturday afternoons, just as you and I used to do, Avis, when we dared. But I find I've got too old for that," said Coy, sadly. "When you're fairly past the college-boys, and as far along as the law students – "
"Or the theologues?" interposed Avis.
"Yes, or the theologues, or even the medical department; then there positively is nothing for it but to improve your mind."
Listen to Lavinia, one of Mrs. Rose Terry Cooke's sensible Yankee women:
"Land! if you want to know folks, just hire out to 'em. They take their wigs off afore the help, so to speak, seemingly."
"Marryin' a man ain't like settin' alongside of him nights and hearin' him talk pretty; that's the fust prayer. There's lots an' lots o' meetin' after that!"
And what an amount of sense, as well as wit, in Sam Lawson's sayings in "Old Town Folks." As this book is not to be as large as Worcester's Unabridged Dictionary, I can only give room to one.
"We don't none of us like to have our sins set in order afore us. There was David, now, he was crank as could be when he thought Nathan was a talkin'
