good enough for her child, and which is much more appropriate in the school-room than silk or satin. It is this child of the upstart rich mother, whose priceless infancy and childhood have been spent with illiterate servants; with the exception of the hour after dessert, when she was reminded that she had a mother, by being taken in an embroidered robe to be exhibited for a brief space to her guests. It is this girl, whose childhood, as I said, has been passed with servants, peeping into the doubtful books with which doubtful servants often beguile the tedious hours (for there are bad servants as well as bad masters and mistresses) – this girl, lying awake in her little bed, hearing unguarded details of servants’ amours, while her mother dances away the hours so pregnant with fate to that listening child. It is such a girl, more to be pitied than blamed, whose existence is to be recognized by her thoughtless mother only, when her “coming out,” delayed till the latest possible period, forces her reluctantly to yield to a younger aspirant her own claims to admiration. This girl whose wealth, and the social position arising from it, so dazzles the eyes of proprietors of “Institutes” that they are incapable of perceiving, or unwilling to admit, her great moral and mental delinquencies; it is such a companion that a true mother has to fear for her pure-minded, simple-hearted young daughter, leaving for the first time the guarded threshold and healthful atmosphere of home.
And when after months have passed – and insufficient exercise,1 imperfect ventilation, and improper companionship, have transformed her rosy, healthy, simple-hearted child, to a pale, languid, spineless, dressy young woman, with a smattering of fashionable accomplishments, and an incurable distaste of simple, home pleasures – will it restore the bloom to her cheek, the spring to her step, the fresh innocence to her heart, to say, “but the school was fashionable and so well recommended?”
CLOSET MEDITATIONS, NOT FOUND IN JAY OR DODDRIDGE
Shall I ever be unhappy again? Six big closets with shelves and drawers! What a Godsend! You laugh! you are unable to comprehend how such joyful emotions can spring from so trivial a cause.
Trivial! Did you ever board out? Did you ever stand in the midst of your gas-lighted, damask-curtained, velvet-chaired, closetless hotel (yes —hotel) apartments, with a six-cent ink-bottle between your perplexed thumb and finger, taxing your brain, as it was never taxed before, to discover an oasis where to deposit it, when not in use?
Trivial? Did you ever live for a series of years with your head in a trunk? Did you ever see your ghost-like habiliments dangling day after day from pegs in the wall? Did you ever turn away your disgusted eyes, as the remorseless chambermaid whirled clouds of dust over their unprotected fabrics? Did you ever, as you lay in bed of a morning, exhaust your ingenuity in devising some means of relief? Did you ever, exulting in your superior acumen, rush out, and purchase at your own expense, a curtain to cover them? Did you ever jam off all your finger nails trying to drive it up? (for what woman ever yet hit a nail on the head?) Did you ever have that dusty curtain drop down on your nicely-smoothed hair, nine times out of ten when you went to it for a dress? Did you ever set fire to it with a candle, when in an abstracted state of mind?
Trivial? Did you ever implore a white-aproned waiter, with tears in your eyes, and twenty-five cents in your hand, to bring you an empty cigar-box to keep your truant slippers in? Did you ever stifle with closed windows, because if you threw them up, you would throw out your books, which were piled on the window lodge? Were you ever startled in the middle of the night, by the giving way of a solitary nail, on which were hung a bag of buttons, a bag of hooks and eyes, a child’s satchel, a child’s slate, a basket of oyster crackers, a bag of chess-men, and – your hoops?
Trivial? Did you ever partially carry out the curse which was passed on Eden’s tempter, the serpent, as, with a long-handled umbrella, you explored, for some missing shoe, the unknown regions under the bed? Did you ever sit on your best bonnet? Did you ever step into your husband’s hat? Did you ever tear a zig-zag rent in your favorite dress, and find, on looking for pieces of the same to mend it, that you had given them away to your washwoman, with other uncounted needfuls, because you had no place to keep them? Did you ever stand in dismay over your furs and woolens in spring, and your muslins, grenadines, and bareges, in autumn?
Trivial? Ah! – you never witnessed the cold-blooded indifference with which hotel-keepers, and landlords generally, shrug their shoulders, as surveying your rooms, and taking a coup d’œil your feminine effects, you pathetically exclaim, with dropped hands and intonation – “No closets!”
A FEMININE VIEW OF NAPOLEON AS A HUSBAND
It is said that writers of books seldom read many. The “Confidential Letters of Napoleon and Josephine” had not been published when that remark was made. The Napoleon-mad author, Mr. Abbot, says, in his Preface: “We are familiar with him as the warrior, the statesman, the great administrator – but here we behold him as the husband, the father, the brother, moving freely amid all the tender relations of domestic life. His heart is here revealed,” etc. I suggest to Mr. Abbot (for whom, apart from this extraordinary hallucination, I have a great respect), the following amendment of the above sentence, viz.: his want of heart is here revealed; but let that pass.
I have devoured the book at a sitting, and it has given me, as do stimulants generally, mental or otherwise, a villainous headache. With the sad fate of the peerless Josephine fresh in my mind, I read with an impatient pshaw! the burning billet-doux, addressed to her by the man who could coolly thrust her aside for his mad ambition. Hear what he once said:
“Death alone can break the union, which love, sentiment, and sympathy have formed. A thousand and a thousand kisses.”
Also,
“I hope very soon to be in your arms; I love you most passionately (à la fureur).”
Also,
“I hope in a little time to fold you in my arms, and cover you with kisses burning as the equator.”
Also, this consistent lover begs from her whom he afterward deserted,
“Love without bounds, and fidelity without limit.”
How very like a man!
Well, I turned over the pages, and read with moistened eyes, for the hundredth time, the wretched state farce enacted at the divorce; and with fresh admiration perused the magnanimous and memorable reply of the queenly Josephine, to the brilliant but cold, intellectual but selfish, imperious yet fascinating Napoleon. Ah! then I would have led away his victim, spite of herself, out of sight, sound, and hearing of this cold, cruel man, who, when it suited his whim, caprice, or convenience; who, when weary of the tame, spiritless Maria Louise, returned secretly to the intoxicating presence of the bewitching Josephine; whom, though repudiating, he yet controlled, down to the lowest menial in her household, down to the color of their jackets and hose; quite safe, in always appending, with gracious condescension, permission “to please herself,” to one whose greatest pleasure, he well knew, was to kiss his imperial shoe-tie.
My love and pity for her merge (momentarily) into contempt, when she abjectly begs for the crumbs of his favor, that fall from happier favorites; for (to quote the touching words of her who would have shared his exile had not death prevented, when the woman for whom she had been cast aside, by a retributive justice, deserted him in his extremity) “he could forget me when he was happy!” Ay, it was when pleasure palled, when friends proved false, when the star of his destiny paled, when he needed the noble Josephine, that he sought her.
And she? When pealing bells and roaring cannon announced to France that her rival had presented her husband the long-desired heir; she, upon whose quivering heart every stroke of those joyous bells must have smitten like a
Is a formal, listless walk, in a half-mile procession, to answer the purpose of
