The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Wit of Women, by Kate Sanborn

There was a Pretty Girl, and she had a sister who was not pretty. It seemed to me that even the sad sea waves were kinder to the Pretty Girl, such is the influence of youth and beauty. There were various men—heavy swells I should call some of them, only that that would be slang; but heavy swells were the order of the day. Then there was a benevolent old lady who believed in everything—in the music, and the Jane Moseley, and the long days, and the summer. There was another old lady of restless mind, who evidently believed in nothing, hoped for nothing, expected nothing. She tried all the lounges and all the corners, and found each one a separate disappointment. There was a fat, fair one, of friendly face, and beside her her grim guardian, a man so thin that you at once cast him for the part of Starveling in this Midsummer Day's Dream of Delusion.

We put out from shore—quite out of sight of shore, in short—and then the perfidious music ceased. To the people on land it had sung, "Come and make merry with us," but from us, trying in vain to make merry, it withheld its deceitful inspiration. For the exceeding weight of sorrow that presently settled down upon us it had no balm. When you are on a pleasure trip it is unpleasant to be miserable; so I tried hard to shake off the mild melancholy that began to steal over me. I said to myself, I will not affront the great deep with my personal woes. I am but a woman, yet perhaps on this so great occasion magnanimity of soul will be possible even to me. I will consider my neighbors and be wise. At one end of the long saloon a banquet-board was spread. Its hospitality was, like the other attractions of the Jane Moseley, a perfidious pageant. Nobody sought its soup or claimed its clams. One or two sad-eyed young men made their way in that direction from time to time—after their sea-legs, perhaps. From their gait when they came back I inferred they did not find them. The human nature in the saloon became a weariness to me. Even the gentle gambols of the dog Thaddeus, a sportive and spotted pointer in whom I had been interested, failed to soothe my perturbed spirits. De Quincey speaks somewhere of "the awful solitariness of every human soul." No wonder, then, that I should be solitary among the festive few on board the Jane Moseley—no wonder I felt myself darkly, deeply, desperately blue. I thought I would go on deck. I clung to my companion with an ardor which would have been flattering had it been voluntary. My faltering steps were guided to a seat just within the guards. I sat there thinking that I had never nursed a dear gazelle, so I could not be quite sure whether it would have died or not, but I thought it would. I mused on the changing fortunes of this unsteady world, and the ingratitude of man. I thought it would be easier going to the Promised Land if Jordan did not roll between. Rolling had long ceased to be a pleasant figure of speech with me. How frail are all things here below, how false, and yet how fair! My mind is naturally picturesque. In the midst of my sadness the force of nature compelled me to grope after an illustration. I could only think that my own foothold was frail, that the Jane Moseley was false, that the Pretty Girl was fair. A dizziness of brain resulted from this rhetorical effort. I silently confided my sorrows to the sympathizing bosom of the sea. I was soothed by the kindred melancholy of the sad sea waves. If the size of the waves were remarkable, other sighs abounded also, and other things waved—many of them.

True to my purpose of studying my fellow-beings, and learning wisdom by observation, I surveyed the Pretty Girl and her sister, who had by that time come on deck. They were surrounded by a group of audacious male creatures, who surrounded most on the side where the Pretty Girl sat. She did not look feeble. She was like the red, red rose. It was a conundrum to me why so much greater anxiety should be bestowed upon her health than upon her sister's. It needed some moral reflection to make it out; but I concluded that pretty girls were, by some law of nature, more subject to sea-sickness than plain ones; therefore, all these careful cares were quite in order. I saw the two old ladies—the benevolent one who had believed so implicitly in all things, but over whose benign visage doubt had now begun to settle like a cloud; and the other, who had hoped nothing from the first, and therefore over whom no disappointment could prevail—and, seeing, I mildly wondered whether, indeed, 'twere better to have loved and lost, or never to have loved at all.

My thoughts grew solemn. The green shores beyond the swelling flood seemed farther off than ever. The Jane Moseley had promised to land us at Newport pier at seven o'clock. It was already half-past seven; oh, perfidious Jane! Darkness had settled upon the face of the deep. We went inside. The sad-eyed young men had evidently been hunting for their sea-legs again, in the neighborhood of the banqueting-table, where nobody banqueted. Failing to find the secret of correct locomotion, they had laid themselves down to sleep, but in that sleep at sea what dreams did come, and how noisy they were! The dog Thaddeus walked by dejectedly, sniffing at the ghost of some half-forgotten joy. At last there rose a cry—Newport! The sleepers started to their feet. I started to mine, but I discreetly and quietly sat down again. Was it Newport, at last? Not at all. The harbor lights were gleaming from afar; and the cry was of the bandmaster shouting to his emissaries, arousing fiddle and flute and bassoon to their deceitful duty. They had played us out of port—they would play us in again. They had promised us that all should go merry as a marriage-bell, and—I would not be understood to complain, but it had been a sad occasion. Now the deceitful strains rose and fell again upon the salt sea wind. The many lights glowed and twinkled from the near shore. We are all at play, come and play with us, screamed the soft waltz music. It is summer, and the days are long, and trouble is not, and care is banished. If the waves sigh, it is with bliss. Our voyage is ended. It is sad that you did not sail with us, but we will invite you again to-morrow, and the band shall play, and the crowd be gay, and airs beguile, and blue skies smile, and all shall be music, music, music. But I have sailed with you, on a summer day, bland master of a faithless band; and I know how soon your pipes are dumb—I know the tricks and manners of the clouds and the wind, and the swelling sea, and Jane Moseley, the perfidious.

I must, after all, have strong local attachments, for when at last the time came to land I left the ship with lingering reluctance. My feet seemed fastened to the deck where I had made my brief home on the much rolling deep. I had grown used to pain and resigned to fate. I walked the plank unsteadily. I stood on shore amid the rain and the mist. A hackman preyed upon me. I was put into an ancient ark and trundled on through the queer, irresolute, contradictory old streets, beside the lovely bay, all aglow with the lighted yachts, as a Southern swamp is with fire-flies. A torchlight procession met and escorted me. To this hour I am at a loss to know whether this attention was a delicate tribute on the part of the city of Newport to a distinguished guest, or a parting attention from the company who sail the Jane Moseley, and advertise in the Tribune—a final subterfuge to persuade a tortured passenger, by means of this transitory glory, that the sail upon a summer sea had been a pleasure trip.—Letter to New York Tribune.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE FIRST NEEDLE.

"Have you heard the new invention, my dears,
That a man has invented?" said she.
"It's a stick with an eye
Through which you can tie
A thread so long, it acts like a thong,
And the men have such fun,
To see the thing run!
A firm, strong thread, through that eye at the head,
Is pulled over the edges most craftily,
And makes a beautiful seam to see!"

"What, instead of those wearisome thorns, my dear,
Those wearisome thorns?" cried they.
"The seam we pin
Driving them in,
But where are they by the end of the day,
With dancing, and jumping, and leaps by the sea?
For wintry weather
They won't hold together,
Seal-skins and bear-skins all dropping round
Off from our shoulders down to the ground.
The thorns, the tiresome thorns, will prick,
But none of them ever consented to stick!
Oh, won't the men let us this new thing use?
If we mend their clothes they can't refuse.
Ah, to sew up a seam for them to see—
What a treat, a delightful treat, 'twill be!"

"Yes, a nice thing, too, for the babies, my dears—
But, alas, there is but one!" cried she.
"I saw them passing it round, and then
They said it was fit for only men!
What woman would know
How to make the thing go?
There was not a man so foolish to dream
That any woman could sew up a seam!"
Oh, then there was babbling and scrabbling, my dears!
"At least they might let us do that!" cried they.
"Let them shout and fight
And kill bears all night;
We'll leave them their spears and hatchets of stone
If they'll give us this thing for our very own.
It will be like a joy above all we could scheme,
To sit up all night and sew such a seam."

"Beware! take care!" cried an aged old crone,
"Take care what you promise," said she.
"At first 'twill be fun,
But, in the long run,
You'll wish you had let the thing be.
Through this stick with an eye
I look and espy
That for ages and ages you'll sit and you'll sew,
And longer and longer the seams will grow,
And you'll wish you never had asked to sew.
But naught that I say
Can keep back the day,
For the men will return to their hunting and rowing,
And leave to the women forever the sewing."

Ah, what are the words of an aged crone?
For all have left her muttering alone;
And the needle and thread that they got with such pains,
They forever must keep as dagger and chains.

THE FUNNY STORY.

A SONNET.

Once a poet wrote a sonnet
All about a pretty bonnet,
And a critic sat upon it
(On the sonnet,
Not the bonnet),
Nothing loath.

And as if it were high treason,
He said: "Neither rhyme nor reason
Has it; and it's out of season,"
Which? the sonnet
Or the bonnet?
Maybe both.

"'Tis a feeble imitation
Of a worthier creation;
An æsthetic innovation!"
Of a sonnet
Or a bonnet?
This was hard.

Both were put together neatly,
Harmonizing very sweetly,
But the critic crushed completely
Not the bonnet,
Or the sonnet,
But the bard.

WANTED, A MINISTER.

We've a church, tho' the belfry is leaning,
They are talking I think of repair,
And the bell, oh, pray but excuse us,
'Twas talked of, but never's been there.
Now, "Wanted, a real live minister,"
And to settle the same for life,
We've an organ and some one to play it,
So we don't care a fig for his wife.

We once had a pastor (don't tell it),
But we chanced on a time to discover
That his sermons were writ long ago,
And he had preached them twice over.
How sad this mistake, tho' unmeaning,
Oh, it made such a desperate muss!
Both deacon and laymen were vexed,
And decided, "He's no man for us."

And then the "old nick" was to pay,
"Truth indeed is stranger than fiction,"
His prayers were so tedious and long,
People slept, till the benediction.
And then came another, on trial,
Who actually preached in his gloves,
His manner so awkward and queer,
That we settled him off and he moved.

And then came another so meek,
That his name really ought to 've been Moses;
We almost considered him settled,
When lo! the secret discloses,
He'd attacks of nervous disease,
That unfit him for every-day duty;
His sermons, oh, never can please,
They lack both in force and beauty.

Now, "wanted, a minister," really,
That won't preach his old sermons over,
That will make short prayers while in church,
With no fault that the ear can discover,
That is very forbearing, yes very,
That blesses wherever he moves—
Not too zealous, nor lacking for zeal,
That preaches without any gloves!

Now, "wanted, a minister," really,
"That was born ere nerves came in fashion,"
That never complains of the "headache,"
That never is roused to a passion.
He must add to the wisdom of Solomon
The unwearied patience of Job,
Must be mute in political matters,
Or doff his clerical robe.

If he pray for the present Congress,
He must speak in an undertone;
If he pray for President Johnson,
He needs 'em, why let him go on.
He must touch upon doctrines so lightly,
That no one can take an offence,
Mustn't meddle with predestination—
In short, must preach "common sense."

Now really wanted a minister,
With religion enough to sustain him,
For the salary's exceedingly small,
And faith alone must maintain him.
He must visit the sick and afflicted,
Must mourn with those that mourn,
Must preach the "funeral sermons"
With a very peculiar turn.

He must preach at the north-west school-house
On every Thursday eve,
And things too numerous to mention
He must do, and must believe.
He must be of careful demeanor,
Both graceful and eloquent too,
Must adjust his cravat "a la mode,"
Wear his beaver, decidedly, so.

Now if some one will deign to be shepherd
To this "our peculiar people,"
Will be first to subscribe for a bell,
And help us to right up the steeple,
If correct in doctrinal points
(We've a committee of investigation),
If possessed of these requisite graces,
We'll accept him perhaps on probation.

Then if two-thirds of the church can agree,
We'll settle him here for life;
Now, we advertise, "Wanted, a Minister,"
And not a minister's wife.

THE MIDDY OF 1881.

INDIGNANT POLLY WOG.

A tree-toad dressed in apple-green
Sat on a mossy log
Beside a pond, and shrilly sang,
"Come forth, my Polly Wog—
My Pol, my Ly,—my Wog,
My pretty Polly Wog,
I've something very sweet to say,
My slender Polly Wog!

"The air is moist, the moon is hid
Behind a heavy fog;
No stars are out to wink and blink
At you, my Polly Wog—
My Pol, my Ly—my Wog,
My graceful Polly Wog;
Oh, tarry not, beloved one!
My precious Polly Wog!"

Just then away went clouds, and there
A sitting on the log—
The other end I mean—the moon
Showed angry Polly Wog.

Her small eyes flashed, she swelled until
She looked almost a frog;
"How dare you, sir, call me," she asked,
"Your precious Polly Wog?

"Why, one would think you'd spent your life
In some low, muddy bog.
I'd have you know—to strange young men
My name's Miss Mary Wog."

One wild, wild laugh that tree-toad gave,
And tumbled off the log,
And on the ground he kicked and screamed,
"Oh, Mary, Mary Wog.
Oh, May! oh, Ry—oh, Wog!
Oh, proud Miss Mary Wog!
Oh, goodness gracious! what a joke!
Hurrah for Mary Wog!"

"KISS PRETTY POLL!"

THANKSGIVING-DAY (THEN AND NOW).

CONCERNING MOSQUITOES.

Skeeters have the reputation
Of continuous application
To their poisonous profession;
Never missing nightly session,
Wearing out your life's existence
By their practical persistence.

Would I had the power to veto
Bills of every mosquito;
Then I'd pass a peaceful summer,
With no small nocturnal hummer
Feasting on my circulation,
For his regular potation.

Oh, that rascally mosquito!
He's a fellow you must see to;
Which you can't do if you're napping,
But must evermore be slapping
Quite promiscuous on your features;
For you'll seldom hit the creatures.

But the thing most aggravating
Is the cool and calculating
Way in which he tunes his harpstring
To the melody of sharp sting;
Then proceeds to serenade you,
And successfully evade you.

When a skeeter gets through stealing,
He sails upward to the ceiling,
Where he sits in deep reflection
How he perched on your complexion,
Filled with solid satisfaction
At results of his extraction.

Would you know, in this connection,
How you may secure protection
For yourself and city cousins
From these bites and from these buzzin's?
Show your sense by quickly getting
For each window—skeeter netting.

THE STILTS OF GOLD.

Mrs. Mackerel sat in her little room,
Back of her husband's grocery store,
Trying to see through the evening gloom,
To finish the baby's pinafore.
She stitched away with a steady hand,
Though her heart was sore, to the very core,
To think of the troublesome little band,
(There were seven, or more),
And the trousers, frocks, and aprons they wore,
Made and mended by her alone.
"Slave, slave!" she said, in a mournful tone;
"And let us slave, and contrive, and fret,
I don't suppose we shall ever get
A little home which is all our own,
With my own front door
Apart from the store,
And the smell of fish and tallow no more."

These words to herself she sadly spoke,
Breaking the thread from the last-set stitch,
When Mackerel into her presence broke—
"Wife, we're—we're—we're, wife, we're—we're rich!"
"We rich! ha, ha! I'd like to see;
I'll pull your hair if you're fooling me."
"Oh, don't, love, don't! the letter is here—
You can read the news for yourself, my dear.
The one who sent you that white crape shawl—
There'll be no end to our gold—he's dead;
You know you always would call him stingy,
Because he didn't invite us to Injy;
And I am his only heir, 'tis said.
A million of pounds, at the very least,
And pearls and diamonds, likely, beside!"
Mrs. Mackerel's spirits rose like yeast—
"How lucky I married you, Mac," she cried.
Then the two broke forth into frantic glee.
A customer hearing the strange commotion,
Peeped into the little back-room, and he
Was seized with the very natural notion
That the Mackerel family had gone insane;
So he ran away with might and main.

Mac shook his partner by both her hands;
They dance, they giggle, they laugh, they stare;
And now on his head the grocer stands,
Dancing a jig with his feet in air—
Remarkable feat for a man of his age,
Who never had danced upon any stage
But the High-Bridge stage, when he set on top,
And whose green-room had been a green-grocer's shop.
But that Mrs. Mac should perform so well
Is not very strange, if the tales they tell
Of her youthful days have any foundation.
But let that pass with her former life—
An opera-girl may make a good wife,
If she happens to get such a nice situation.

A million pounds of solid gold
One would have thought would have crushed them dead;
But dear they bobbed, and courtesied, and rolled
Like a couple of corks to a plummet of lead.
'Twas enough the soberest fancy to tickle
To see the two Mackerels in such a pickle!
It was three o'clock when they got to bed;
Even then through Mrs. Mackerel's head
Such gorgeous dreams went whirling away,
"Like a Catherine-wheel," she declared next day,
"That her brain seemed made of sparkles of fire
Shot off in spokes, with a ruby tire."

Mrs. Mackerel had ever been
One of the upward-tending kind,
Regarded by husband and by kin
As a female of very ambitious mind.
It had fretted her long and fretted her sore
To live in the rear of the grocery-store.
And several times she was heard to say
She would sell her soul for a year and a day
To the King of Brimstone, Fire, and Pitch,
For the power and pleasure of being rich.

Now her ambition had scope to work—
Riches, they say, are a burden at best;
Her onerous burden she did not shirk,
But carried it all with commendable zest;
Leaving her husband with nothing in life
But to smoke, eat, drink, and obey his wife.
She built a house with a double front-door,
A marble house in the modern style,
With silver planks in the entry floor,
And carpets of extra-magnificent pile.
And in the hall, in the usual manner,
"A statue," she said, "of the chased Diana;
Though who it was chased her, or whether they
Caught her or not, she could, really, not say."
A carriage with curtains of yellow satin—
A coat-of-arms with these rare devices:
"A mackerel sky and the starry Pisces—"
And underneath, in the purest fish-latin,
If fishibus flyabus
They may reach the skyabus!

Yet it was not in common affairs like these
She showed her original powers of mind;
Her soul was fired, her ardor inspired,
To stand apart from the rest of mankind;
"To be A No. one," her husband said;
At which she turned very angrily red,
For she couldn't endure the remotest hint
Of the grocery-store, and the mackerels in't.
Weeks and months she plotted and planned
To raise herself from the common level;
Apart from even the few to stand
Who'd hundreds of thousands on which to revel.
Her genius, at last, spread forth its wings—
Stilts, golden stilts, are the very things—
"I'll walk on stilts," Mrs. Mackerel cried,
In the height of her overtowering pride.
Her husband timidly shook his head;
But she did not care—"For why," as she said,
"Should the owner of more than a million pounds
Be going the rounds
On the very same grounds
As those low people, she couldn't tell who,
They might keep a shop, for all she knew."

She had a pair of the articles made,
Of solid gold, gorgeously overlaid
With every color of precious stone
Which ever flashed in the Indian zone.
She privately practised many a day
Before she ventured from home at all;
She had lost her girlish skill, and they say
That she suffered many a fearful fall;
But pride is stubborn, and she was bound
On her golden stilts to go around,
Three feet, at least, from the plebeian ground.
'Twas an exquisite day,
In the month of May,
That the stilts came out for a promenade;
Their first entrée
Was made on the shilling side of Broadway;
The carmen whistled, the boys went mad,
The omnibus-drivers their horses stopped.
The chestnut-roaster his chestnuts dropped,
The popper of corn no longer popped;
The daintiest dandies deigned to stare,
And even the heads of women fair
Were turned by the vision meeting them there.
The stilts they sparkled and flashed and shone
Like the tremulous lights of the frigid zone,
Crimson and yellow and sapphire and green,
Bright as the rainbows in summer seen;
While the lady she strode along between
With a majesty too supremely serene
For anything but an American queen.
A lady with jewels superb as those,
And wearing such very expensive clothes,
Might certainly do whatever she chose!
And thus, in despite of the jeering noise,
And the frantic delight of the little boys,
The stilts were a very decided success.
The crême de la crême paid profoundest attention,
The merchants' clerks bowed in such wild excess,
When she entered their shops, that they strained their spines,
And afterward went into rapid declines.
The papers, next day, gave her flattering mention;
"The wife of our highly-esteemed fellow-citizen,
A Mackerel, of Codfish Square, in this city,
Scorning French fashions, herself has hit on one
So very piquant and stylish and pretty,
We trust our fair friends will consider it treason
Not to walk upon stilts, by the close of the season."

Mrs. Mackerel, now, was never seen
Out of her chamber, day or night,
Unless her stilts were along—her mien
Was very imposing from such a height,
It imposed upon many a dazzled wight,
Who snuffed the perfume floating down
From the rustling folds of her gorgeous gown,
But never could smell through these bouquets
The fishy odor of former days.
She went on her golden stilts to pray,
Which never became her better than then,
When her murmuring lips were heard to say,
"Thank God, I am not as my fellow-men!"
Her pastor loved as a pastor might—
His house that was built on a golden rock;
He pointed it out as a shining light
To the lesser lambs of his fleecy flock.
The stilts were a help to the church, no doubt,
They kindled its self-expiring embers,
So that before the season was out
It gained a dozen excellent members.

Mrs. Mackerel gave a superb soirée,
Standing on stilts to receive her guests;
The gas-lights mimicked the glowing day
So well, that the birds, in their flowery nests,
Almost burst their beautiful breasts,
Trilling away their musical stories
In Mrs. Mackerel's conservatories.
She received on stilts; a distant bow
Was all the loftiest could attain—
Though some of her friends she did allow
To kiss the hem of her jewelled train.
One gentleman screamed himself quite hoarse
Requesting her to dance; which, of course,
Couldn't be done on stilts, as she
Halloed down to him rather scornfully.

The fact is, when Mackerel kept a shop,
His wife was very fond of a hop,
And now, as the music swelled and rose,
She felt a tingling in her toes,
A restless, tickling, funny sensation
Which didn't agree with her exaltation.

When the maddened music was at its height,
And the waltz was wildest—behold, a sight!
The stilts began to hop and twirl
Like the saucy feet of a ballet-girl.
And their haughty owner, through the air,
Was spin, spin, spinning everywhere.
Everybody got out of the way
To give the dangerous stilts fair play.
In every corner, at every door,
With faces looking like unfilled blanks,
They watched the stilts at their airy pranks,
Giving them, unrequested, the floor.
They never had glittered so bright before;
The light it flew in flashing splinters
Away from those burning, revolving centres;
While the gems on the lady's flying skirts
Gave out their light in jets and spirts.
Poor Mackerel gazed in mute dismay
At this unprecedented display.
"Oh, stop, love, stop!" he cried at last;
But she only flew more wild and fast,
While the flutes and fiddles, bugle and drum,
Followed as if their time had come.

She went at such a bewildering pace
Nobody saw the lady's face,
But only a ring of emerald light
From the crown she wore on that fatal night.
Whether the stilts were propelling her,
Or she the stilts, none could aver.
Around and around the magnificent hall
Mrs. Mackerel danced at her own grand ball.

"As the twig is bent the tree's inclined;"
This must have been a case in kind.
"What's in the blood will sometimes show—"
'Round and around the wild stilts go.

It had been whispered many a time
That when poor Mack was in his prime
Keeping that little retail store,
He had fallen in love with a ballet-girl,
Who gave up fame's entrancing whirl
To be his own, and the world's no more.
She made him a faithful, prudent wife—
Ambitious, however, all her life.
Could it be that the soft, alluring waltz
Had carried her back to a former age,
Making her memory play her false,
Till she dreamed herself on the gaudy stage?
Her crown a tinsel crown—her guests
The pit that gazes with praise and jests?

"Pride," they say, "must have a fall—"
Mrs. Mackerel was very proud—
And now she danced at her own grand ball,
While the music swelled more fast and loud.

The gazers shuddered with mute affright,
For the stilts burned now with a bluish light,
While a glimmering, phosphorescent glow
Did out of the lady's garments flow.
And what was that very peculiar smell?
Fish, or brimstone? no one could tell.
Stronger and stronger the odor grew,
And the stilts and the lady burned more blue;
'Round and around the long saloon,
While Mackerel gazed in a partial swoon,
She approached the throng, or circled from it,
With a flaming train like the last great comet;
Till at length the crowd
All groaned aloud.
For her exit she made from her own grand ball
Out of the window, stilts and all.

None of the guests can really say
How she looked when she vanished away.
Some declare that she carried sail
On a flying fish with a lambent tail;
And some are sure she went out of the room
Riding her stilts like a witch a broom,
While a phosphorent odor followed her track:
Be this as it may, she never came back.
Since then, her friends of the gold-fish fry
Are in a state of unpleasant suspense,
Afraid, that unless they unselfishly try
To make better use of their dollars and sense
To chasten their pride, and their manners mend,
They may meet a similar shocking end.

—Cosmopolitan Art Journal.

NEW YORK TO NEWPORT.