For I have much to say to you in the same free-masonic, free-and-easy strain in which you indulged me then.
It is a wild March night. Winter and Summer, Spring-time and Autumn, the wind sings, or plains at my sitting-room window. To-night its shout is less fierce than jocund to my ear, for it says, between the castanet passages of hail and sleet, that neither friend nor bore will interrupt our conference. Shutters and curtains are closed; the room is still, bright, and warm, and we are no longer strangers.
The poorest man of my acquaintance counts his money by the million, has a superb mansion he calls “home,” a wife and beautiful children who call him “husband” and “father.” He has friends by the score, and admirers by the hundred, for human nature has not abated one jot in prudential sycophancy since the Psalmist summed up a volume of satirical truth in the pretended “aside”—“and men will praise thee when thou doest well unto thyself.” For all that, he of whom I write is a pauper, inasmuch as he makes his boast that he never experienced the emotion of gratitude. He has worked his own way in the world, he is wont to say: has never had helping hand from mortal man or woman. It is a part of his religion to pay for all he gets, and never to ask a favor. Nevertheless, he confesses, with a complacent smirk that would be amusing were it not so pitiable an exhibition of his real beggary—“that he would like to know what it feels like to be grateful—just for the sake of the novel sensation!”
Poor wretch! I am sorry I introduced him here and now. There is a savage growl in the wind; our snuggery is a trifle less pleasant since I began to talk of him. Although I only used him as a means of “leading up” to the expression of my own exceeding and abundant wealth of gratitude to you, dear Reader and Friend. If I had only time and strength enough to bear me through the full relation of the riches and happiness you have conferred upon me! There are letters in that desk over there between the windows that have caused me to look down with a sense of compassionate superiority upon Nathan Rothschild and the Duke of Brunswick. I am too modest (or miserly) to show them; but now and then, when threatened with a fit of self-depreciation, I come in here, lock the door, stop the keyhole, get them out and read them anew. For three days thereafter I walk on air. For the refrain of all is the same. “You have been a help to me!” And only He who knows the depths, sad and silent, or rich and glad, of the human heart can understand how much I wanted to help you. Verily, I have in this matter had my reward. Again, I say, I am grateful. Had I “helped” you a hundred times as well as I have, I should still be your debtor.
May I read you somewhat copious extracts from a letter I received, the other day, from a wide-awake New England girl? Not only wide-awake, but refined, original and sprightly; a girl whom though I have never seen her face, I know to be a worker in life as well as a thinker. She says some things much better than I could have put them, and others as noteworthy, which I wish to answer—or, try to answer—since I recognize in her a representative of a class, not very large, perhaps, but certainly one of the most respectable and honored of all those for whom I write the “Common-Sense Series.” I should like to give the letter in full, from the graphic touches with which she sketches herself, “sitting upon the kitchen-table, reading ‘Common Sense in the Household,’ ” one bright morning, when herself and sisters had taken possession of the kitchen to make preparation for “an old New England tea-party,” at which their only assistant was to be “a small maiden we keep to have the privilege of waiting upon, and doing our own work into the bargain; who, in waiting at table, was never known to pass anything on the right side, and has an invincible objection to learning how”—to the conclusion, over against which she has, like the frank woman she is, set her name and address in full.
But the modesty (or miserliness) aforesaid rises in sudden arms to forbid the reproduction at my hand of certain portions of the epistle, and it would be neither kind nor honorable to set down in prospective print her pictures of home life and dramatis personæ. Steering clear, when possible, of these visible rocks and sunken reefs, I will indulge you and myself with a part of that which has added sensibly to my treasures—not debt—mind you! of gratitude.
“I want to tell you how much your compilation does for those poor mortals whom it rescues from the usual class of cook-books.”
A reef, you see, before we are out of harbor! We will skip two pages to get at one of the well-said things I spoke of just now.
“You speak of ‘company china’ and ‘company manners.’ I detest company anything! This longing for show and display is the curse and failing of Americans. I abhor the phrase ‘Anything will do for us.’ I do not believe that a person can be true clear through and without affectations who can put on her politeness with her company china any more than a real lady can deliberately put on stockings with holes in them. I seriously think that, so far from its being self-sacrifice to put up with the meanest every day, and hospitality to use the best for company, it is a positive damage to one’s sense of moral fitness. I knew a woman once who used to surprise me with the deceptions in which she unconsciously and needlessly indulged. This ceased to be a surprise when I saw her wear a twenty-dollar hat and a pair of unmended hose, and not seem to know that it was not quite the proper thing.”
Orthodox, you perceive, thus far, is our New England correspondent. Honest and outspoken in her hatred of shams and “dodges” of all kinds; quick to see analogies and deduce conclusions. Now comes the pith of the communication:—
“I wish you could set me right on one point that often perplexes me. Is housekeeping worth while? I do not despise the necessary work. On the contrary, I hold that anything well done is worth doing. But with the materials this country affords, can housekeeping be well done? Is it worth while for a woman to neglect the talents she has, and can use to her own and her friends’ advantage, in order to have a perfectly appointed house? to wear herself out chasing around after servants and children that things may be always done well, and at the stated time? I have seen so many women of brains wear out and die in harness, trying to do their self-imposed duty; to see that the large establishments their husbands’ wealth, position and wishes place in their care shall be perfect in detail. And these women could have been so happy and enjoyed the life they threw away, if they had only known how not to keep house. While, on the other hand, with a small income and one servant the matter is so much worse. I should not mind if one could ever say ‘It is a well-finished thing!’ But you only finish one thing to begin over again, and so on, until you die and have nothing to show for your life’s work. It looks hopeless to me, I confess. I wish you would show me the wisdom—or the folly of it all.”
Now, I do not propose to show the folly of anything such as a girl that writes. She is a sincere inquirer after truth. When her letter came I tucked it under my inkstand, and said, “There is a text ready-written, and in clerkly hand, for my next ‘Familiar Talk!’ ” She is altogether too sensible and has too true a sense of humor to be offended when I tell her, as I shall, that her lament over unfinished work reminded me comically of the story of the poor fellow who cut his throat, because, as he stated in his letter of explanation and farewell—“He was tired of buttoning and unbuttoning!” There is a deal that is specious in the threadbare adage set forth in dolesome rhyme:—
“Man’s work is from sun to sun,
But woman’s work is never done.”
Nothing in this world, or in all time, is finished. Or, if finished, it is not well with it. We hear this truth reiterated in every stroke of the artisan’s hammer, employed—from the day he enters upon his apprenticeship to that on which the withered hand can no longer, by reason of age, lift the ponderous emblem of his craft—in beating upon what looks to the observer of to-day like that which engaged him yesterday; which to the spectator of twenty to-morrows will seem the same as that which calls out the full strength of the brawny arm this hour. When he dies, who will care to chronicle the circumstance that he made, in the course of a long and busy life, forty thousand horseshoes, or assisted in the manufacture of one thousand engine-boilers? We learn the
