don't bend spines, nor make drunkards, nor thieves, nor write a shameful history on the pure brow of any woman who ever has or ever shall live; he don't ordain perpendicular ghosts of ministers, to defile sepulchrally through creation, and scare people into heaven. He don't smile on those suicidal mothers, who run breathlessly round and round the nursery treadmill, thinking they are doing God service, till they drop dead in the harness, and leave eight or nine children motherless, at an age when they most need maternal guidance. He don't manufacture scrofulous constitutions out of unwholesome food, and bad ventilation, and dissipated habits. It is not one of the ten commandments that babies should be taught Greek and Latin before they have cut their teeth, that they may become idiots before maturity; or that school-boys should smoke pipes and cigars; or that school-girls should drink strong coffee for breakfast, and eat rich pastry and pickles for luncheon. It is high time that people shouldered their own sins, and called things by their right names, and told the truth at funerals, and on tombstones, if they must say anything there. In my opinion, an "All-wise and inscrutable Providence" has borne quite blasphemy enough in this way.
A CHAPTER ON NURSES
Can anybody tell why nurses are fat? Is there anything in the atmosphere of a sick room, or in the sight of phials, pills, leeches, potions, blisters, and plasters to give one an appetite? I solemnly affirm that I never saw a bony nurse – never. There's a horrid mystery about it which I have in vain tried to solve. With what a lazy waddle they roll round the apartment, and how your flesh creeps as they fix their unsympathizing eyes upon you; you are so sure that they had just as lief bring you your shroud as a clean nightcap; that it is quite immaterial to them whether the next thing that comes through the door is a bowl of gruel or your coffin; in fact, that they would be immensely gratified if you'd hurry up your dying, and let them off to the pleasurable excitement of a new subject.
And then that professional sniffle when a visitor asks, "How is your patient, nurse?" It is a poor satisfaction, to make faces at her under the sheet, as she answers; but I have done it; I shouldn't be surprised now, if you thought that was unamiable. Ah! you never had her twitch down the curtain over a lovely sunset, that was soothing you like a cool hand on your forehead, and light a little, nasty "nurse-lamp," merely because she knew you hadn't strength enough to say, "Please don't." A nurse-lamp! that you have contemplated night after night in the silent, dreary watches, till it seemed like an evil eye, glimmering and glowing, fascinating you in spite of yourself, till the perspiration stood in cold drops on your forehead, while the watch went "tick," "tick," and the fat, old nurse snored away, and each nerve in your body seemed a separate and more perfect engine of torture. No wonder you hate to see her unnecessarily shorten the daylight and repeat the horror. But she'll do it; of course she'll do it. If you had not wanted her to, you should have told her that of all sublunary things, you fancied a night-lamp. Now I leave it to you, if, after that and kindred crucifixions of momentary occurrence, you could stand that pious sniffle with which she answers the question, "How is your patient, nurse?"
And then, if she wouldn't be so excruciatingly officious at such a time, one might swallow one's disgust. If, when a visitor comes in, she wouldn't twitch your pillow from under your head, just as you are knowing your first comfortable moment, and giving it a shake and a pat, thrust it under your head again, forcing your chin down into your breastbone, and half dislocating your neck, just to show them how attentive she is; if she wouldn't strip down the blanket, or pile on a dozen quilts, when you are just the right temperature, for the same reason, I think it would be more jolly. Then if, after all that, she wouldn't stand, and keep standing, so near the corner of your mouth, that you couldn't call her some "rantankerous" name by way of relief; though, at another time, when you were dying for a glass of water, she'd leave you all alone and take half an hour to get it; if she wouldn't do all these things; but she will. She grows fat on thwarting her patients: I know it. Of course, if your strength equalled your disgust, you wouldn't be thwarted; you'd obstinately persist in admiring everything she did, though she should comb your hair with a red-hot poker, but being sick and babyish, one can only whimper; and there is where they have us.
"Ill-natured article." Well, suppose it is an ill-natured article? Am I to be the only saint in the world? Am I to pussy-cat round a subject, and never show my claws, or stick up my back, when I catch sight of the enemy! I cry you mercy; in that case I should have been devoured long ago. Beside, wasn't the handle broken off a lovely little porcelain "gift cup" this morning? and isn't it raining cats and dogs, though I must go out? and are not these as good reasons for making somebody uncomfortable as you had, Sir, or you, Madam, for that little thing you did or said this morning to some poor soul in your power, who couldn't resent it? Please get out of your own glass-house before you throw stones at mine.
"But there are good, kind nurses." Well, I am glad to hear it. Upon my soul, I believe it. Since you say so, and I have had my growl out, I think I remember two or three. They'll go to heaven, of course. What more do you want?
A Reasonable Being. – If there's anything I hate, it is "a reasonable being." Says the lazy mother to her restless child whom she has imprisoned within doors and whose active mind seeks solutions of passing remarks, "Don't bother, Tommy; do be reasonable, and not tease with your questions." Says the husband to his sick or overtasked wife, when she cries from mere mental or physical exhaustion, "How I hate tears; do be a reasonable being." Says the conservative father to his son, whom he would force into some profession or employment for which nature has utterly disqualified him, "Are you wiser than your father? do be a reasonable being." Says the mother to sweet sixteen, whom she would marry to a sixty-five-year old money-bag, "Think what a thing it is to have a fine establishment; do be a reasonable being."
As near as I can get at it, to be a reasonable being, is to laugh when your heart aches; it is to give confidence and receive none; it is faithfully to keep your own promises, and never mind such a trifle as having promises broken to you. It is never to have or to promulgate a dissenting opinion. It is either to be born a fool, or in lack of that to become a hypocrite, trying to become a "reasonable being."
DO AMERICAN WOMEN LOVE NATURE?
I read an article in The Nation the other day, in which the writer deplores "that American women are not lovers of Nature." Now, sins enough both of omission and commission are laid to their charge, without adding to the list those that are baseless. "American women not lovers of Nature!" Where does the writer keep his eyes, that he does not see, even here in the city, in mid-winter, the parlor-windows of almost every house he passes, decorated by the American ladies who preside over it, with hanging baskets of flowering plants, with ivies and geraniums tastefully arranged, besides bouquets of fresh-cut flowers always upon the mantel? Even the humblest house will have its cracked pitcher filled with green moss; as if unwilling to do without that little suggestion of Nature, although the fingers which tend it are coarse with washing, or sewing on shirts at six cents apiece. Did the writer never notice the "American women" going up and down Broadway? How impossible it is for them to resist stopping at the street corners to invest a few pennies in the little fragrant bunch of pansies or tuberoses, for private delectation, and the adornment of their own pretty rooms at home! Then, too, I am a great haunter of green-houses and florists' shops generally; whom, by the way, I consider in the light of missionaries in this work-a-day world, to educate and stimulate our artistic propensities, by the various and beautiful arrangements of form and color, in their floral offerings; and I find there plenty of "American women" enthusiastic in their praises and lavish in their expenditures in this direction. Many of them are flowers themselves, bright, beautiful, lovely, beyond all the buds and sprays and tinted leaves they hover over, like so many humming-birds.
Then, again, when I go into the country each summer, I find "American ladies" rambling in the woods, with a keen appreciation of Nature in all its varied forms, from a lovely sunrise to the last faint chirp of the sleepiest little bird who is safely nestled for the night in his leafy little home. I meet them too in the odorous warm autumn noons, with branches and garlands of gay-tinted leaves, so embarrassed with their wealth of richness that they cannot carry more, and
