as to write over the window, Die and let die, the farce would have been complete.
They who please may sniff at Sunday. To us it is a blessed reprieve from care and business, and worry of every sort. The very putting on of the fresh, clean, "best" raiment, is suggestive of best thoughts and best feelings for all whom we meet, and more than all, for the dear ones at home, whose happiness it is ours to make or to mar. Then the sweet, soothing hymn and the pleading prayer; and the sermon, in which it were hard, as a rule, to find nothing that we could not take home with us for our improvement and self-help. Then the pleasant family group at table, where the children should be. Ah! we are glad for this blessed Sunday, let him who will, decry or pervert it.
A Pitiable Sight. – There is no more pitiable sight than that of a husband and father reeling home at the end of the week, having left the greater part of his week's wages at some drinking saloon. We think of the patient, toiling wife and hungry children, and the miserable Sunday, and the coming week in store for them, and the utter hopelessness of their future lot, and can find no words of denunciation strong enough for the man who grows rich by tempting a brother's weakness, knowing, when he does so, that for his victim there is in this world no redemption.
A VOICE FROM THE SKATING POND
Coats and trousers have the best of it everywhere, I exclaimed, for the thousandth time, as I looked at the delightful spectacle of the male and female skaters at the Central Park. Away went coat and trousers, like a feather before the wind; free, and untrammelled by dry-goods, and independent of any chance somerset; while the poor, skirt-hampered women glided circumspectly after their much-needed health and robustness, with that awful omnipresent sense of the proprieties, (and – horror of horrors – a tumble!) which sends more of the dress-fettered sex to their graves every year than any disease I wot of. That a few women whom I saw there had had the perseverance to become tolerable skaters, with all that mass of dry-goods strung round their waists, is infinitely to their credit. How much longer and better they could have skated, disembarrassed, as men are, of these swaddling robes, common sense will tell anybody. I should like to see how long a man's patience would hold out, floundering round in them, while he learned to skate! And yet were a lady to adopt any other costume, how decent soever, or how eminently soever befitting the occasion, what a rolling of eyes and pursing of mouths should we see from the strainers at gnats and swallowers of camels. All these thoughts passed through my mind as I mixed in with the merry crowd on that bracing winter day, whose keen breath was like rare old wine, so did it stir and warm the blood; and I wondered, as I gazed at those dress-fettered women, whether those heathen nations who strangled their female babies at birth were as naughty as we had been told they were!
"Why don't you get up a skating costume, Fanny, and set them an example?" whispers a voice at my elbow. Me? why don't I? Because, sir, custom has made me a poor, miserable coward in these matters, like the rest of my sex, and because, moreover, sir, you would have no more courage to walk by my side in such a costume, than I should have to wear it. No, no: a crowd of curious men in my wake would be no more agreeable in reality than it is in perspective. It is brave talking, I know, but the time has not yet come when men, by refraining from rude remarks on a female pioneer in such a cause, would remove one of the chief obstacles to its advancement. They "like healthy women" – oh, of course they do! but then, unfortunately, they like dainty prettiness of attire much better. Else, why don't they encourage women when they try to do a sensible thing? Why do they grin, and stroke their beards, and shrug their shoulders, and raise their eyebrows, and go home to Jane Maria, and say, "Let me catch you out in such a costume"? Till all that is done away with, we must be content to see puny, waxy-looking children, and read in "Notes on America" the usual number of stereotyped pages on "the fragility of our women." Now, let me say in closing that I don't wish to be misunderstood on this matter. I approve of no costume which a delicate-minded, self-respecting, dignified woman might not wear in public. But I will insist that nothing can be done in the way of reform, while husbands and fathers and brothers sniff the whole subject "under the table" as soon as it is mentioned. May every one of them have a yearly doctor's bill to pay as long as the moral law!
Bearing Trouble. – There are persons who emerge from every affliction and trouble and vexation, purified like fine gold from out the furnace. There are others, and they are the more numerous, who are imbittered and soured, and made despondent and apathetic. We think the latter belong to the class who try to stand alone during these storms of life, instead of looking above for aid. When one can truly say, "He doeth all things well," the sting is taken out of affliction, the tears are dried, and the courage given to bear what the future has in store. This, we think, makes the great difference between these two classes.
THE SIN OF BEING SICK
I wish women could be made to understand the importance of flannel under-clothing, and warm outer-clothing, and common-sense generally in food and exercise, when they talk about longing to have a "profession" or a "career." Not that good health should not always be a sort of religion with them; but they should remember that what failings soever men may have, as a general thing they are not such fools as to shiver in insufficient clothing when other may be had, or to go with wet or cold feet, because thick stockings "fill up the boot," or reject thick-soled boots because they make the feet look a size or two larger. They do not, either, think it attractive to bare their throats and necks to a biting wind in the street, thus inviting a blue nose and the pitying contempt of every beholder. Woman's great foe, "headache," is surely invited and perpetuated by these follies, even if no worse punishment follows. "I am so shivery all over!" you will hear these silly creatures exclaim, and the red and white located in the wrong spots in their faces attest the truth of it. One would think that, as a matter upon which their much-valued good looks depend, they would "consider their ways, and be wise;" but no. After this they come in and call for some "hot, strong tea." Tea! that woman's dram! morning, noon, and night. It makes her "feel like another being," she says. I'm sure it makes her act like one. This lasts an hour, perhaps; then she has such a "gnawing at her stomach." Then follows depression after the exhilaration. Then she eats nothing, because she has "no appetite." Then – another cup of tea, to "set her up," as she calls it.
I should like to see such a woman having any "career," except fitting herself speedily for a lunatic asylum. Such a course is reprehensible and suicidal enough, when good food is at hand and enough of it, and the women who practise it have money enough to pay a doctor to come and see them, and tell them lies, and give them nice messes to make believe cure them. But unfortunately our working girls and women, who have only a hospital bed to look forward to when sick, go on after the same crazy fashion. There is some shadow of excuse with them for their intemperate use of tea; the horrible fare of their boarding-places being so unpalatable and disgusting, and their long hours of labor so exhaustive and discouraging that this stimulant has become seemingly necessary to their existence – the one bit of comfort and luxury that they look forward to with eagerness in the interval of work. "I can't do without it," said a young shop-girl to me, when I remonstrated with her on its use, morning, noon, and night. "I couldn't do my work without it." And how did she spend the wages received for "her work"? In a flimsy, showy dress; in a gay hat; in a fashionable pair of boots with high heels. Meantime she had no flannel; she had no thick boots; she had no warm outer garments; she had nothing to insure either health or comfort, and she was in the same alternatives of exhilaration and depression as her richer sisters of whom I have spoken. I don't know why, either, that I should call them "richer," except that they could have a rosewood coffin with silver nails, and be buried in a fashionable cemetery, while the working-girl would have a pine one, and sleep her long sleep in the Potter's Field. Oh, dear! I see all these abuses, and I exclaim, Oh, the rare and priceless blessings of good health and common-sense! How I wish that every clergyman in our land – only that I know that in many cases they are as great sinners themselves in the matter of health – would preach on the sin of being sick.
Now there's a topic for those of them who have the face to speak of it, and a clear conscience to
