style="font-size:15px;"> Another suggestion: When employers have any occasion to reprove these young women, if they would not mortify them by doing it in the presence and in the hearing of customers, it would not only be more pleasant for the latter, but would be more likely to have its proper effect on the offender. I have sometimes heard such brutal things said by employers to a blushing young girl, whose eyes filled with tears at her helplessness to avert it, or to reply to it, that I never could enter the store again, for fear of a repetition of the distressing scene, although, so far as I personally was concerned, I had nothing to complain of.
The moral of all this is, that men in the family, and in the store too, must look upon women in a different light from that to which they are accustomed; before, to use a detestable phrase, but one which will appeal most strongly to the majority, they "can get the most work out of them." Physicians understand this. Every man is not a physician, but he ought at least to know that backaches and headaches, and heartaches too, are not confined to his own sex.
BLUE MONDAY
"BLUE Monday." By this name clergymen designate the day. Preaching as they do, two sermons on the Sabbath, sometimes three – not to mention Sunday-school exhortations, and possible funerals and marriages; of course, I take no account of what may have happened, on Sunday, in their own families, no more than does the outside world. "The minister" must, like a conductor of a railroad train, be "up to time," – hence "Blue Monday." Flesh and blood is flesh and blood, although covered by a surplice or a cassock, and will get tired, even in a good cause. Therefore the worn-out clergyman takes Monday for a day of rest, for truly the Sabbath is none. He wanders about and tries to give his brains a holiday – I say tries, because he often misses it by wandering into the book-stores, or going to see a publisher, instead of taking a drive, or a ramble in the fields, or wooing nature, who never fails to lay a healing hand on her children.
But Blue Monday does not belong exclusively to clergymen – oh, mother of many children! as you can testify. True, you call it by another name – "Washing-day," – but it is all one, as far as exhaustion is its characteristic. May the gods grant that on that day, when your assistant in nursery-labor must often make up the deficiencies involved in the terrible "family-wash," that no "plumber" or "gas-fitter" send in his bill, to "rile" the good man of the house, to exclaim against the "expenses of housekeeping," and send you into your Babel of a nursery, with moist eyes and a heavy heart? It is poor comfort, after you have cried it out, to try to pacify yourself by saying, Well, he didn't mean to say I'm sorry I ever was married, yet it hurts me all the same; men are so thoughtless about such things, and they go out after hurling such a poisoned arrow, and forget, even if they ever knew it, that they have left it there to rankle all day; and are quite astonished, and, perhaps, disgusted when they come back that the good lady is not in excellent spirits, as they are, and wonder what she, with a comfortable home, and nothing but house matters to attend to, can find to worry her. Now, Mrs. Jones, and Mrs. Jenkins, and Mrs. Smith, I'll lay a wager with each of you, that your husbands have done that very thing, more times than you can count, and on "Blue Monday" too.
Ah! these "chance words," and the thick-skinned utterers of them. Ah! the pity that the needle is no hindrance to the bitter thoughts they bring; but that over the little torn apron or frock, the tears of discouragement fall; the bitterest of all – that he hasn't the least idea "he has said anything," but is, very likely, inviting some fellow that very minute to "take a drink" with him, or to smoke a dozen cigars more or less, spite the "expense." My dears, wipe your eyes. If you look for consistency in the male creature, you'll need a microscope to find it. Your expenses hurt him dreadfully; when I say yours, I mean not only your personal expenses, but the house expenses; for don't you see, had he staid a bachelor, he wouldn't have had a plumber's bill to pay – and that's all your fault, because you said "yes," when he got on his knees to implore you that he might have the felicity of paying your mutual plumber's bill.
But that was then, and this is now!
But isn't it perfectly delicious when those men come home, after making some such blundering speech, the innocent way, after hanging up their hats, that they'll walk into your presence, rubbing their hands, and fetch up standing in the middle of the room with, "Why! what's the matter?" as they catch sight of their wives' lugubrious faces. I tell you, Mr. Smith, and Mr. Jones, and Mr. Jenkins, whatsoever else you do, don't hold your wives responsible for that which they are no more to blame for than yourselves. Or if you will insist upon going over their hearts with a cart-wheel, in this manner, have the manliness when you come home, not to pooh-pooh the resentful tears you have caused.
The fact is, you are but blunderers as far as women are concerned. You are elephants trying with your huge paws to pat humming-birds. Nine out of every ten you demolish. Only physicians understand a woman; and they don't always act up to the light they have.
I would like to write a book on some kinds of legal murder; that is if really good people had not such moonshine notions about "delicacy." This class are really the drags on the wheel of reform. I don't say that sometimes it is not necessary, and even right, to drive rough-shod right over them, if they will persist in walking in such a narrow path; but one does it after all with regret, because they so sincerely believe themselves to be in the "path of duty," as they call it. Dear me! if there ever was a perverted phrase, this is one! It makes me sick to hear it.
What do I mean by "legal murders"? Well, if a woman is knocked on the head with a flat-iron by her husband and killed, or if arsenic is mixed with her food, or if a bullet is sent through her brain, the law takes cognizance of it. But what of the cruel words that just as surely kill, by constant repetition? What of the neglect? What of the diseased children of a pure, healthy mother? What of the ten or twelve, even healthy children, "who come," one after another, into the weary arms of a really good woman, who yet never knows the meaning of the word rest till the coffin-lid shuts her in from all earthly care and pain? Is the self-sacrifice and self-abnegation all to be on one side? Is the "weaker" always to be the stronger in this regard? I could write flaming words about "the inscrutable Providence which has seen fit to remove our dear sister in her youth from the bosom of her young family," as the funeral prayer phrases it.
Providence did nothing of the sort. Poor Providence! It is astonishing how busy people are making up bundles to lay on His shoulders! I imagine Providence meant that women, as well as men, should have a right to their own lives. That they, equally with men, should rest when they can go no further on the road without dying. That while the father sits down to smoke the tobacco which "Providence" always seems to furnish him with, although his family may not have bread to eat, his wife should not stagger to her feet, and try to shoulder again her family cares and expenses.
Sometimes – nay, often – in view of all this, I rejoice in regarding the serene Mrs. Calla-Lily. She goes on just like a man. When she is tired she lies down, and stays there till she is rested, and lets the domestic world wag. If she don't feel like talking, she reads. If the children are noisy, she sweetly and cunningly gets out of the way, on that convenient male pretext, "putting a letter in the post-office." She don't "smoke," but she has her little comforts all the same, and at the right time, although the heavens should fall, and little Tommy's shoes give out. She looks as sleek and smooth and fair as if she were really a lily; and everybody says, "What a delightful person she is! and how bright and charming at all times!"
Now this spectacle soothes me, after seeing the long procession of bent, hollow-eyed, broken-spirited women who are legally murdered.
I exclaim, Good! and think of the old rhyme:
"Look out for thyself,
And take care of thyself,
For nobody cares for thee."
Of course this is very "unamiable" in me, but amiability is not the only or the best
