THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES 
 
 GIFT OF
 
 TWELVE MILES FROM A LEMON. 
 
 Br GAIL HAMILTON, 
 
 AUTI10K OF 
 
 "WOMAN'S WORTH AND WORTHLESSNESS," "LITTLE FOLK LIFE," ETC. 
 
 NEW YORK: 
 
 HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS, 
 
 FRANKLIN SQUARE. 
 
 1876.
 
 BY GAIL HAMILTON. 
 
 Gail Hamilton exhibits a singular intellectual versatility, nimbly bounding from an exuberant and 
 almost rollicking play of humor to the most serioui and impressive appeals. Her gayety at timjs is a> 
 frisky and droll as that of the harlequin of the comic drama ; while in the graver, but perhaps not really 
 more earnest passages of the work, the language often rises to a calm eloquence in which reason is too 
 predominant for the display of passion. If. Y. Tribune. 
 
 WOMAN'S WORTH AND WORTHLESSNESS : the Comple 
 ment to "a New Atmosphere." I2mo, Cloth, $i 50. 
 
 LITTLE FOLK LIFE. A Book for Girls. i6mo, Cloth, 90 cents. 
 TWELVE MILES FROM A LEMON. I2mo, Cloth, $i 50. 
 
 Published by HARPER & BROTHERS, New York, 
 
 |3T~ HARPER & BROTHERS will send either of the above -works by -mail, postage 
 frepaid, to any fart t>f {fie United States, on receipt of the price. 
 
 Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1873, by 
 
 HARPER & BROTHERS, 
 
 In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.
 
 PS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 J. Ticelve Miles from a Lemon 7 
 
 II. Lemon-Drops 21 
 
 III. Hemlock Poison 33 
 
 IV. The Wonders and Wisdom of Carpentry 44 
 
 V. Science, Pure and Practical 80 
 
 VI. American Inventions 94 
 
 VII. The Pleasures of Poverty 113 
 
 VIII. To Tudiz by Railroad 124 
 
 IX. The Higher Laws of Railroads 135 
 
 X. Holidays 159 
 
 XL Conference Wrong Side Out 185 
 
 XII. Country Character 202 
 
 XIII. Autumn Voices 229 
 
 XIV. On Social Formula, and Social Freedom 240 
 
 XV. The Fashions 268 
 
 XVI. Sleep and Sickness 2J50 
 
 XVII. Dinners .. 303 
 
 11 33
 
 TWELVE MILES FROM A LEMON. 
 
 I. 
 
 TWEL VE MILES FROM A LEMON. 
 
 WHEN Sydney Smith declared merrily that bis living 
 in Yorkshire was so far out of the way, that it was act 
 ually twelve miles from a lemon, all the world laughed. * 
 But the world little knows the great, self-indulgent 
 world, that dearly loves comfort and ease and pleasure, 
 coolness in August and warmth in November what it 
 is to live twelve miles from a lemon. A lemon means 
 ice and a market, all good things in their season, and all 
 men eager to wait upon you. 
 
 You have been staying in Lemon, let us say, for 
 months, preying upon your betters. You have become 
 thoroughly demoralized by the delights of the lilies, 
 toiling not, nor spinning, and taking no thought for the 
 morrowjj But the whirligig of time has brought about 
 its revenges. Your betters, finding no other way to dis 
 embarrass themselves of you, have shut up their city 
 house and gone, and you must go too, and take thought 
 for the morrow, or be stranded on a desert island. As 
 you are borne rapidly homeward you try to return once 
 more to practical life, and make an intense mental effort
 
 8 TWELVE MILES FROM A LEJfOX. 
 
 to concentrate your thoughts, and remember what you 
 have had for breakfast the last four months. Presently 
 you chance upon a cracker-peddler. Crackers make a 
 good pedestal for your wandering gods to alight on, and 
 you buy a box. 
 
 " Do you go as far as The Old Elm ?" 
 
 " Oh yes." 
 
 " Leave this box of crackers, then, in Leicester Coun 
 ty, on the old stage road, right-hand side, low green 
 house in a hollow, on the door-step. Never mind if the 
 house seems closed. Leave them all the same." 
 
 You resume your journey with a light heart. To 
 morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. One 
 need never starve with a dozen pounds of crackers on 
 the door-step. 
 
 Another stage of roar and rush, and dust and cinders, 
 and the train leaves you at your own station. Unexpect 
 ed, you are una waited. Importunate hackmen know 
 on which side their bread is buttered, and never stroll 
 twelve miles from a lemon ; so you leave your luggage, 
 and walk, not reluctant, along the lovely path that was 
 never so lovely as now a deep, hard, straggling foot 
 path, half hidden in the rank grass, green and dense 
 under the gnarled old apple-trees. The slant sun. the 
 ruddy sky, the bright, still, rich earth, alive with color, 
 abloom with light, all the broad fields laughing with 
 ripening harvests, all the birds mad with joy, and no 
 war nor battle sound in all our borders oh, the beau 
 tiful, beloved country ! 
 
 But the pump will not go. Certainly not. A re 
 fractory and unprincipled pump from the beginning;
 
 TWELVE MILES FROM A LEMON. g 
 
 and before I have shaken from my feet the dust of 
 travel I must arise and depart again, for twelve miles 
 from a lemon means fifteen miles from a plumber. 
 
 No more will the lamps burn. In one the wick re 
 fuses to budge a hair-breadth up or down. In the oth 
 er it will go down, but not up. Of a third the chim 
 ney is broken. A fourth has lost the cement between 
 globe and pedestal, and cants alarmingly. A fifth drops 
 the wick, flame and all, down into the oil, as soon as it 
 is lighted, and scares us out of our wits. There is one 
 evening of a stray candle or two, and a horror of great 
 darkness, and then another journey for a fresh supply. 
 For ten miles from a lemon is twenty miles from a lamp. 
 
 The crackers come to time, the bread rises braveW, 
 but my soul longeth for meat. This township swarms 
 with butchers. "Malone, we will have some chickens. 
 No, a tenderloin steak. Put out the sign." The sign 
 is a crimson scarf tied around a post. "I put it out 
 this morning," says Malone, "and he did not stop." 
 ' : Put it out again to-nrorrow morning, and we will keep 
 watch besides." I wake early, gnawed by many cares. 
 I wonder if the bread has risen. Will Malone over 
 sleep, and forget it, past the proper point. If that were 
 off my mind I think I could go to sleep again. I creep 
 softly down stairs and strike a bee-line for the bread- 
 pan, and Malone, who has also crept softly down her 
 stairs for the same purpose, utters a little shriek. I 
 withdraw, but not to sleep. We must have eggs. There 
 is nothing to be done in the way of housekeeping with 
 out eggs. Perhaps Malone can get some at the milk 
 man's. I will hear her when she goes out, and tell her. 
 
 i*
 
 10 TWELVE MILES FKOX A LEMOX. 
 
 No ; I will tell her now, and then it will be off my mind, 
 and I shall go to sleep. " Malone," I call softly down 
 the stairs, "try if the milkman has any eggs; and if he 
 has, boil them for breakfast, and make a custard for 
 dinner." 
 
 It is an hour before butcher-time, and I shall have a 
 cozy nap. If I had only thought to buy some oat-meal 
 in the lemon. Twelve miles away we get no nearer to 
 it than oats. There is a rumble of wheels. It can not 
 be the butcher. If it should be, and we lose our dinner 
 to-day as we did yesterday t I may as well jump up 
 and look, as thoroughly awake myself by fretting about 
 it. It is not the butcher; but oh ! it is the good-butter 
 man ; and I must stop him, at all costs; and Malone is 
 gone for the milk; and oh! where is a wrapper? and 
 what has become of my slippers? lie is stone-deaf. 
 Would he were also stone-blind ! Here is a water-proof 
 cloak. Will he think they wear water-proof morning 
 dresses in lemons? Oh, joy! there is Malone coming. 
 Thank Heaven, she is not deaf. " Malone !" with a deaf 
 ening shriek, if any one could hear it ; but the advan 
 tage of being twelve miles from a lemon is that you can 
 do your marketing from the chamber windows and no 
 body the wiser " Malone ! stop the butter-man, and 
 engage butter for the season." Malone rushes up to 
 him like a freebooter, and I am happy. 
 
 Only casting about in my mind whether Malone put 
 the cucumber in water the cucumber which grew in 
 Quincy Market, and which I had just room for in my 
 lamp-journey to be roused by her voice again. " What 
 is it, Malone?"
 
 TWELVE MILES FROM A LEMON. H 
 
 " The milkman hadn't any eggs." Of course he had 
 not. Hens do not lay eggs in the country. Eggs are 
 laid in lemons, and you must go twelve miles to get 
 them. 
 
 " Perhaps Mr. Meiggs has some." 
 
 "No. I went there Monday and got ten all he had." 
 
 " Suppose you try the Briarses." 
 
 " I was there yesterday, and they only had a few that 
 had been sot on." 
 
 "Very well. I am going to bed, Mulone. Do the 
 best you can without them." 
 
 I have not begun to doze. I do not expect so much 
 as that only a little quiet, preparatory to the day's 
 campaign ; but there is a rattle of wheels in the dis 
 tance. It is earl}'-, but it sounds like the butcher's cart. 
 It is the butcher's cart. Intrenched again in the water 
 proof, I fling up the sash ready to pounce upon him. 
 "Butcher!" trying to soften a yell into a decorous call. 
 
 He turns neither to the right hand nor to the left. 
 This will never do. Courage. 
 
 "Butcher!" 
 
 He gives no sign. He is going by. I am desperate. 
 I fling decorum to the winds. 
 
 "Butch-E-R-R-R!" 
 
 He does not hear the word, but the prolonged shriek 
 pierces his ear. He stops. The household is aroused, 
 and not exactly comprehending the situation, but 
 each feeling a responsibility for the dinner, Babel en 
 sues. 
 
 "Have you any tenderloin?" I cry. 
 
 Malone does not hear me from her wash-tub below,
 
 12 TWELVE MILES FROM A LEMON. 
 
 but she sees the butcher, and, feeling the whole care on 
 her own shoulders; cries, in a voice to wake the dead, 
 
 "We want some tenderloin!" 
 
 Simultaneously, Spitzbergen flings up another win 
 dow, and entirely on her own account, calls vociferous 
 ly for a "steak of tenderloin!" And even Tranquilla 
 feels the necessity of action, and from the depths of the 
 bed-clothes sends forth a muffled shriek for " tenderloin!" 
 Thus suddenly, out of profound silence, the house re 
 sounds from turret to foundation-stone with the clangor 
 of tenderloin, and the bewildered butcher stares blankly 
 and can make out nothing for the hullaballoo. There 
 is a short pause of exhaustion and experiment. I infer 
 that the others have become, somehow, aware of the 
 posture of affairs, and, taking advantage of the lull, be 
 gin to put my inquiry in a decent and Christian man 
 nerto find that they have all arrived at the same con 
 clusion, and are piping forth again a chaos of tender 
 loin ; but Malone holds the key of the situation, march 
 es to the front, extricates both butcher and tenderloin, 
 and comes back brandishing her beefsteak triumphant. 
 Whereupon the house subsides into its normal silence. 
 
 City folk undoubtedly believe that early vegetables 
 spring from the soil, but we country dwellers know 
 better. We look abroad upon the earth, and see the 
 wide stretch of field and sky, and the ever-shifting pan 
 orama of the clouds, and the stately pomp of the sun 
 on his daily march, and know perfectly well that it was 
 all made to look at, and a good enough end is that. 
 But when we want any thing to eat, we take a basket 
 and go by rail twelve miles to the lemon. And it is
 
 TWEL YE MILES FROM A LEMOX. 13 
 
 not convenient. The country is perfect, if man could 
 live by bread and meat alone, but be can not. He 
 wants butter also, and fresh eggs, and early pease, and 
 beets, and, lettuce, and above all, ice the art preserva 
 tive of all arts. 
 
 If you lived in Calcutta you could have ice in galore. 
 All the ships that go sailing over the sea would fetch 
 you ice, and the carts would cart it to your door, and 
 the vendor would clench, it into your cellar, and you 
 would be cool even under the India sun of an India 
 summer through the well-kept cold of an American 
 winter. But if you lived on the shores of the Polar 
 Sea you might whistle for ice. Trade, unlike charity, 
 does not begin at home. If you will buy by the ship 
 load you shall be served, but there is no lens strong- 
 enough to make the ice-king see your one little refrig 
 erator. " We only deal by wholesale," says my lord. 
 And when you resort to some small German principal 
 ity in the ice realm, whose traffic must perforce be retail, 
 the man inquires your whereabouts and measures your 
 distances, and is afraid it is too far off for him to get 
 home in season to load, and perhaps his employer will 
 not permit it, but he will see. So he sees and comes, 
 and we are all servant of servants unto this brother of 
 ours that he be not hindered. " Malone, there is the 
 ice-man! Run quick and open the cellar doors! Spitz- 
 bergen, fetch a bucket of water to rinse the ice ! Tran- 
 quilla, is there a blueberry pie extant? Bring a knife 
 and fork quick, and a plate." And we strive to melt 
 his icy sympathy with smiles and bland words and 
 toothsome repast, that he may cut and come again,
 
 14 TWELVE MILES FROM A LEMOX. 
 
 which he does "unbeknownst" (as the good President 
 used to say) to his employer ; and we harden our hearts 
 and sear our consciences; and serve up a triangle of 
 blueberry pie every other day, and say that his relations 
 between himself and his employer are no affair of ours. 
 Every man has his price. Let every housekeeper have 
 her ice. Heaven forbid that a morsel of pie or cake or 
 custard should stand between us and comfort not to 
 say health and economy. 
 
 Till another king arises who knows not Joseph, and 
 will not even come within the sphere of our blandish 
 ments. For you can not bribe a man in open day on 
 the king's highway, saying unto him, "Smuggle a lump 
 of ice into my refrigerator three times a week, and I 
 will not only pay your master full price, but will give 
 you a lunch besides." So your fountain of ice fails, 
 and you must henceforth live from hand to mouth. 
 
 That is the difference between living in a lemon and 
 living twelve miles away from it. In the first case you 
 are besought to buy. In the second you beseech others 
 to sell. 
 
 "Why do you not raise things for yourself, and be 
 independent of butchers and bakers and butter-makers?" 
 asks the astute and inexperienced Lemonitc. 
 
 " Raise things ! What, for instance ?" 
 
 "Eggs, then, to begin with." 
 
 Because eggs are no sooner hatched than all the forces 
 of nature rise up together to destroy them. Hatched, 
 do I say ? Before they are hatched the foe comes. 
 While they are yet eggs the cats smell them out and 
 suck them. When thev have broken shell and become
 
 TWELVE MILES FROM A LEMON. 15 
 
 chickens, the first thing they do is to get lost If there 
 is a bit of late snow it shall go hard but they will roam 
 around till they find it, and then they will stand still 
 on it and shiver and die. If there is one grass-plot 
 deeper and thicker and wetter than another, they will 
 make a rush for that anywhere so they can shiver 
 and die. Then the hawks come down from the sky, 
 and the skunks come up from the swamps, and the 
 weasels come out of the woods, and the minks and the 
 foxes and the w r oodchucks from their holes among the 
 rocks, and make a dead set at the chickens. In vain 
 the mother hen clucks alarm and hate. A hawk swoops 
 down into your very door-yard and bears away a strug 
 gling chick in his talons. Now that the horse is stolen 
 we will lock the stable-door. " Tranquilla, take }-our 
 book into the piazza and keep w r atch." "A hawk! a 
 hawk!" cries Tranquilla presently, in wild excitement, 
 and we rush to the door with immense hootings and 
 howlings, but no hawk is visible. The happy hen is 
 peacefully brooding her young and gives no sign. " It 
 must have been a mistake," you say, quite out of breath. 
 " No, it was no mistake," exclaims Tranquilla. " It was 
 a hawk ; I saw him plainly; and he went 'caw ! caw !' " 
 " Oh ! Tranquilla, go into the house." Foolishness is 
 bound up in the heart of the Lemonite, and he never 
 will know a hawk from a crow, though he see it twelve 
 miles off! Now a thunder-cloud gathers. The forked 
 lightnings flash red and angry. The thunder growls. 
 The rain comes fast and furious. Of course the chjck- 
 ens are off in the far pastures gobbling grasshoppers. 
 There they come scampering home, terrified, in hot
 
 16 TWELVE MILES FROM A LE110X. 
 
 liastc. Their wet feathers are tucked away from their 
 little sticks of leg?, which look twice as long and twice 
 as slender as they beat home, frantic. And trotting 
 placidly among them come four little skunks, hand i<j- 
 nota loquor. Is this tempest, then, the beginning of the 
 end of the world, and does that quiet quartette presage 
 the millennium the lion and the lamb, the chicken 
 and the skunk, lying down together? Alas! no, un 
 less as some one says the one be inside the other. 
 When the storm is over the skunks will grow up and 
 devour the neighbors' chickens not mine, for to-mor 
 row morning I shall go out to find my chickens dead, 
 one and all, of rats; and that is why there are no eggs 
 twelve miles from a lemon. 
 
 But at least you might raise vegetables, which fox and 
 weasel do not devour, nor cats and rats break through 
 and steal. 
 
 So you might, only labor all goes to Lemons, and 
 twelve miles away seven women have to lay hold of 
 one man to get a beet-bed hoed, and then find that, in 
 the confusion of the moment, he has planted beans in 
 stead of beets, and cabbages instead of sweet-corn. But 
 there are early potatoes. Yes, and earlier oxen who 
 tear down your wall and leap into your garden, and de 
 vour what they can and trample what they can not. 
 You drive them out with much brandishing of bean 
 poles and broomsticks the beautiful patient-eyed crea 
 tures, so strong and meek and their master makes a, 
 thousand apologies, and promises that they shall not 
 trespass again ; but the black heifer from the next pas 
 ture does, and she too is repulsed in force; and then
 
 TWELVE MILES FROM A LEVOX. 17 
 
 comes a wail from Tranquilla, "Oh I the oxen are in 
 again !" and off you go, lance in rest, to find the tres 
 passing oxen have turned into neighbor Nelly's lovely 
 Alderney cow, quietly feeding in her own fields. " Tran 
 quilla ! Tranquilla! will you never have done discov 
 ering mares' nests? Is not the way hard enough, but 
 you must make mountains of mole-hills ?" But in two 
 days your own eyes discern a horned beast thrusting 
 in among your vegetables, and your blood rises. You 
 will see whether there is to be any protection to life or 
 property ! " Who is the field-driver?" 
 
 Nobody knows. I go to my friend the Forester. 
 "Who is the field-driver?" 
 
 " What's the matter? My cow got into your lot?" 
 
 " I never thought of its being your cow, but perhaps 
 it is. It's a red cow." 
 
 "No, 'tain't mine. Mine is a Jersey." 
 
 " I am glad of that. Now I am tired of driving cows 
 out of my yard. You make me pay taxes, and you 
 won't let me vote ; and the least you can do is to keep 
 the cows out of my garden." 
 
 " That's so. Can't say nothin' ngin that." 
 
 "Then who is the field-driver?" 
 
 " Well, there ain't exactly no field-driver, like. You 
 see 'tain't no great of an office, and nobody hain't much 
 hankering after it. So when they nominate 'em at town- 
 meetin' they decline. So you have to fasten on some 
 body that ain't there, and they appinted Stephen Bar 
 rows. We got him there! But Stephen, you see,. he 
 ain't took the oath, an' won't take it, and so he hain't 
 no responsibility; so we're kind of satisfied all round!"
 
 18 TWELVE MILES FltOJf A LEXOX. 
 
 "Beautiful legislation! How complicate, how won 
 derful, is man ! Meanwhile, the cow's in the meadow, 
 the sheep's in the corn, and isn't there any way to get 
 them out except with bean-poles?" 
 
 "Well, yes. You can advertise in three towns that 
 there is such a cow trespassing, and when the owner 
 gets her you can make him pay her board, reckonin' in 
 damages." 
 
 An easy way to turn a cow out of your garden ! But 
 that is why corn will not grow twelve miles from a 
 lemon. 
 
 At least I will lift up my voice in testimony. Preach 
 ing never comes amiss. "My forester," I say, gently, 
 taking a comfortable seat on the wood-pile, "I have a 
 great regard for you" 
 
 "I'm glad any body has." 
 
 "But don't you occasionally feel ashamed to think 
 you are a man ?" He rests on his hand-saw, but with 
 out uncrooking the pregnant hinges of his knee, and an 
 swers with a broad, bright smile : 
 
 " Well, now, if I'd had any hand in't it might be 
 worth while." 
 
 "Here }*ou make all the laws rising up early and 
 making them and an enterprising cow jumps over 
 them before breakfast." 
 
 " Well, there ain't nothin' perfect, you know. You 
 can't make a law so strong but what a stray critter'll 
 break it now and then." 
 
 "But now look at me, and remember all the while, 
 with a pang at the heart, that you are a man. Here is 
 Barbara Brooke working like a beaver every day of her
 
 MILES FROM A LEMOX. 19 
 
 life. By hard labor, early find late np in tbe morning 
 nt four, and in bed Heaven knows when by going 
 without butter on her bread or sugar in her tea, she has 
 managed to get together money enougR to buy a tiny 
 house. What then do you do, you men, but pounce 
 upon it? You don't wait for her to move into it; be 
 fore the door-steps are laid or made you pounce upon 
 it, and demand of her eighty cents taxes. Now, as 
 a man and a gentleman, don't you think that is 
 mean ?" 
 
 " Lud-a-massy I Don't come down on met I didn't 
 do it. I ain't selectman." 
 
 "Yes, you are selectman. All men are selectmen. 
 They select themselves out to make the laws, and that 
 is the way they do it." 
 
 " But you must have tax laws, and you can't make 
 no choice about wbo owns tbe property. Law is 
 law." 
 
 "But the law to tax property is no more inexorable 
 than the law to protect property. You are under no 
 stronger moral obligation to tax Barbara's house than 
 you are to protect my garden. But you manage mat 
 ters so that a whole herd of cows trampling through my 
 grounds are invisible to you, and I must traverse three 
 towns to be rid of them ; but the moment poor Barbara 
 has a roof over her head you turn all eyes to see, and 
 all hands to grasp. Oh ! aren't you ashamed ?" 
 
 "Well, it don't look generous like, I vum. But 
 't won't be no great, one way or the other." 
 
 Eighty cents, and that is the meanest of all. If it 
 were eightv dollars it would be worth while. The best
 
 20 TWELVE MILES FROM A LEMON. 
 
 of it is that Barbara vows she won't pny it. Here is 
 "woman's rights" with a will. 
 
 "And indeed," says Barbara, "I went up to Eob 
 Jones's and gave him such a jawin' an' scoldin' as he 
 niver had in his life. Pay in' taxes, indeed! I tould 
 him whoever came in for 'em should never go out again ! 
 I'd have the tea-kettle on the stove, and it's scalding 
 water he should get in his face for the taxes!" Arid 
 honest Barbara rocks back and forth, and makes the 
 heavens ring with merriment at the idea of any puny 
 man coming to demand her rightful money ; and Bar 
 bara's heart is strong and her arm is brawny, and I 
 think the man who troubles her is very likely to be in 
 hot water. 
 
 For if twelve miles from a lemon is twelve miles 
 from the law, why should not Barbara be a law. unto 
 herself? 
 
 My friend the forester thinks she will be, and evi 
 dently his heart is in the right place.
 
 LEMON -DROPS. 21 
 
 II. 
 LEMON- DEOPS. 
 
 IT must be confessed that the rigors of rustic exile 
 are immensely mitigated by the friendly incursions of 
 a class of men, I was about to say, but I remember 
 that women are not unknown to its ranks a class of 
 persons whose benevolent mission is to furnish us out 
 side barbarians with the appliances of civilization. In 
 the vulgate they are termed peddlers. I call them mis 
 sionaries. Like other missionaries, they are sometimes 
 harshly entreated. There are those who look upon 
 them as direct emissaries of the Evil One, roaring up and 
 down the earth, seeking whom they may devour. To 
 these, a peddler is but a burglar in disguise. He comes 
 with goods by day to spy out the land and see where he 
 may come for goods by night. Nor is the suspicion en 
 tirely unfounded. " There's odds in deacons/' the coun 
 try folk say ; how much more in peddlers. My own es 
 pecial prejudice is against the peddler who carries a lit 
 tle black glazed carpet-bag, and in favor of him who 
 comes in a large, long, high, red cart. He give hostages 
 to society. His horse and cart are a pledge of respecta 
 bility and reliability. His cart is full of curious and 
 convenient little compartments, and in these compart 
 ments are curiously bestowed all manner of treasures in 
 Britannia and tin. The top of his cart is not crowd-
 
 22 TWELVE MILES FKOV A LEMOX. 
 
 ed, but ornamented with wooden-ware, rows of brooms, 
 nests of bright blue tubs and bright yellow buckets, and 
 the regular ridges of white wash-boards, every thing 
 fresh and perfect in its kind. It is a New Curiosity- 
 shop, whose salesman is never ill-natured and never in 
 a hurry, but always ready to reveal to you his goods 
 and chattels, whether you buy or whether you forbear. 
 And the charm of it is, that you buy without money, 
 lie does not seem to care for money. lie rather prefers 
 " truck" He takes from you what is old and worn-out, 
 and, to you, worthless, and gives you a brand-new cof 
 fee-pot! Is not that Christianity ? The only shabby- 
 looking things about his establishment are the great 
 canvas bag and the tarnished tin-kettle that hang and 
 swing from the rear of his cart But they, like all the 
 res], of him, are means of grace, 
 
 "Any tin-ware to-day ?" he asks you, cheerily ; and 
 when lie has turned over his whole stock for your pleas 
 uring, and has explained to you all the mysteries of his 
 improvements and his patents, and you have selected 
 a freezer for the ice that you can not get, and a new 
 fangled egg-beater for the eggs that no hen lays, and a 
 lemon-grater for the fruit that is twelve miles off, and 
 begin to fumble around in your mind for the where 
 abouts of your purse then, up speaks this angel and 
 minister of grace, this missionary of the new dispensa 
 tion, and asks: 
 
 "Any rags or pnper to dispose of?" 
 
 Of course you have. What else do you take the 
 Boston Daily for, and the Conyregationalist, and the New 
 York Nation, and the Weekly Post, and the Woman's
 
 ROrS. 23 
 
 Journal? All the picture-papers we save alive; and 
 from the ladies' magazines we cut the gay-colored prints, 
 and pile them in great piles in the garret, for the amuse 
 ment of the little ones, who love nothing better than 
 foraging in these unfrequented places. All the rest 
 newspapers, magazines, pamphlets, learned reports, sta 
 tistics, catalogues, Fourth of July orations, and oh, tell 
 it not in Gath ! sermons; all the torn letters and used- 
 up envelopes of the waste-basket we bring forth from 
 their hiding-places in barrel and box, and cast into that 
 huge tin-kettle, and sell it for three, five yes, and when 
 for so long a time all was quiet on the Potomac, it went 
 as high as seven and eight cents a pound. And here 
 is the bag of white rags, all sorted the bag is a little 
 gnawed by mice, so you may take it bag and all, and if 
 the mouse be within, let him stay and weigh ; and the 
 bag of colored rags little worth, but worth that little. 
 
 "No old iron?" 
 
 Certainly; a box of rusty nails, and the Franklin 
 stove, and a stove door that is well wedged into the 
 barn floor you will have to wrench it hard to get it 
 out, my peddler and a cracked tea-kettle, and an iron 
 tray, and I suppose this old bit of lead is not good for 
 any thing? 
 
 " Oh yes ; we pay five cents a pound for lead !" 
 
 Bless me, we shall make our fortunes! There is 
 nothing in the shape of metal which a tin-peddler will 
 not buy, except hoop-skirts, and a hoop-skirt seems to 
 be the one thing on earth for which there is no second 
 ary use, no future life, except in Mr. Edward PJverett 
 llule's "Skeleton in the Closet," where sundry superan-
 
 24 TWEL VE MILES FROM A LEMOX. 
 
 nuated hoop-skirts prove the ruin of the Confederate 
 navy, army, ordnance, and treasury, and, ultimately, the 
 capture of Jefferson Davis ; but, I must say, I strongly 
 suspect, notwithstanding Mr. Hale's well-known char 
 acter for veracity, that those hoop-skirts were manu 
 factured out of the whole cloth ! 
 
 But all else is fish that comes to the tin-peddler's 
 net. And it gives you such a comfortable feeling. It 
 is not only that you have made a general clearance of 
 rubbish, but you are in the line of Divine Providence. 
 You are working in the Divine way. Nature wastes 
 nothing, either in material or process. Man can not de 
 stroy material, but he may waste work. Your rusty 
 nails are not only useless, but unsightly, and black with 
 impending lock-jaw. In the tin-peddler's hands they 
 are on the road to a new life of usefulness. The paper 
 which you cram into }-our fire and fancy out of the way 
 is out of the way. It will, indeed, presently become 
 paper again, but it is by the roundabout road of smoke 
 and ashes, and corn and cotton. Whereas, in the tin- 
 peddler's hands it is next door to pulp, and comes back 
 to paper by a short cut. You are Providence in so 
 far as you have saved Providence several intermediate 
 stages, which is the same thing as having accomplished 
 them yourself. To all of which the tin-peddler assents, 
 though in a dazed way, and I am not sure, after all, that 
 the connection between himself and Providence is quite 
 clear in his own mind. But he is a cheerful man, dis 
 posed to chat, and to amiable views of life; and, when I 
 half-deprecate the trash which I have piled up beneath 
 his steelyard?, and am afraid he will think I am not a
 
 23 
 
 good housekeeper, be replies, comfortably, that people 
 always have a heap of things to pick up when it comes 
 spring (thou good, consoling creature, it is midsum 
 mer!) and his wife always finds odds and ends accu 
 mulate in winter, especially as she is not well. She, 
 last winter, only went from kitchen to bedroom. I hope 
 that he takes good care of her. He does, indeed. She 
 wanted him to give her a sleigh-ride, but he told her he 
 would give her a sleigh-ride when it came wheeling. 
 lie should certainly take good care of her, for it is too 
 much expense to get another. Here it is my turn to 
 open my eyes and meditate on Divine Providence. 
 " Yes," he adds, " there is not only the expense of bury 
 ing one wife, but there is always a good deal of expense 
 in getting another. Then, the second wife never quite 
 makes good the first." I am somewhat appeased, and 
 put my head out of the shell again, and ask if he has 
 any children. 
 
 Yes, he has five. If they were all living there would 
 be a dozen of them. What do I think of that? 
 
 Unutterable things, but I hope they are all good. 
 
 "Well, there's worse children than mine. There's 
 children that gives their parents more trouble than 
 mine. My oldest boy, he's twenty. He's loafing to 
 day. The boss wanted him to stay yesterday (Sunday), 
 so he's loafing to-day. Do you know you must excuse 
 me for taking such a liberty but you remind me very 
 strongly of my wedding-day." 
 
 "Do I? Why?" 
 
 "You're just about the build of my wife, and she 
 wore a dress exactly that color. I could almost swear 
 
 o
 
 26 TWEL VE MILES FROM A LEMOX. 
 
 it was the same. A little way off I should think it was 
 she. You must excuse me." 
 
 Excuse you ! Oh cunning peddler ! Why, it is a 
 compliment. I suppose your wife never looked hand 
 somer to you than she did then. 
 
 "Well, I don't know about that. I think she looks 
 handsomer to me to-day than she ever did." 
 
 That is better still. Have I unwittingly struck my 
 pick into a placer? 
 
 "I can say this the longer I Jive with her the better 
 I like her." 
 
 "And how long is that?" 
 
 "Twenty-two years. I saw her first in November, 
 at church. That was in the Old Country. I went to 
 hear what we called a reformed fox-hunter. He was a 
 drinking, gambling fellow; but he was a gentleman's 
 son. His father said it would ruin him to have him 
 turn Methodist ; but he saved him twenty thousand dol 
 lars a year by it." 
 
 So I have not only rid myself of my rags, and en 
 riched myself with coffee-pots and egg-beaters and for 
 ty-four cents hard money that is, currency, the hardest 
 money going but I have also found in this gay red 
 cart a fine old English church, ivy-hung and fair to look 
 upon ; and within a fresh young English girl, ruddy 
 and winsome, and a stalwart English lad, with honest 
 eyes and manly face, who seeks heaven under the gypsy 
 hat rather than on the fox-hunting lips; and finds it the 
 sooner, perhaps. For over the hills and far away, across 
 the sea, and into the wide, foreign land, the fresh young 
 English girl follows her English lad-lover and husband
 
 LEMOX-DROrS. 27 
 
 in one now these twenty years. Little ones come and 
 go, alas! for wisdom lingers; but happiness lingers, 
 too ; and the English lad, now a sturdy, handsome man, 
 in middle life, wears a face of content and repose; and I 
 know the little lass, albeit taking somewhat less kindly 
 to our alien climate, and grown, perhaps, a thought too 
 pale and thin, is yet a gentle and happy woman, wearing 
 her matronly charms with no less winning a grace than 
 she wore her maiden freshness in the ivied church of 
 Merrie England. 
 
 See, now, what comes from putting yourself in the 
 line of Providence, and selling your old rags! 
 
 Of another sort, O Lemonians! are those represent 
 atives whom you send us with the little black glazed 
 carpet-bags ; and we spew them out of our mouths. 
 Non tali auxilio! Better bereft of lemon-drops forever 
 than moisten thirsty lips with bitter draughts. For 
 what is in those uncanny carpet-bags? Needles and 
 thread and sewing -silk and pins and brooches, they 
 say; but we know it is burglars' tools jimmies and 
 false keys, and all things which do not make for peace. 
 We will none of them. If your shops overflow with 
 wares, and your streets are grass-grown for lack of buy 
 ers, go West and fell trees and make wildernesses blos 
 som ; but do not send your emissaries twelve miles into 
 our wilderness to profane it with cotton lace and dollar 
 jewelry, and possible picking of postern locks. Such 
 evil-minded folk march boldly up to the door, do not 
 wait to be bidden in, scarcely even to ring or knock, 
 but entering unwelcome, with impudent eyes roving 
 around your room, ask if you want a new kind of glass-
 
 28 TWEL VE MILES FROX A LEXOX, 
 
 cs, concavo-convex, double lens, Heaven knows what, 
 that will enable you to see around a corner with the 
 back of your head. And though you assure the in 
 quirer that your eyes are perfect, and that you would 
 not look around a corner if you could, the creature is 
 hardly persuaded, but continues to unfold his brazen 
 glasses with brazen fingers, till the unwearying monot 
 ony of your No makes an impression even upon his 
 brazen brain. Does he then depart in peace? Do not 
 flatter yourself. He steps quickly enough down the 
 gravel walk; but if you do not hear the gate click duly, 
 go around through the dining-room, and you will find 
 his wicked nose flattened against the east parlor win 
 dow. There rage supplies you with courage, and you 
 fling the front-door wide open and order him off the 
 premises, which order he obeys with much gibbering 
 and gesticulating, that may be deprecation or defiance 
 you can not tell. Thus he goes through the village, 
 stirring up sedition, and reporting at each house that 
 lie has sold a pair of glasses to each resident in all the 
 preceding houses. And when you tell your thrilling 
 tale to Hassan the Turk, with intent to rouse him to re 
 prisals, at least to the extent of having this budding vil 
 lain well watched out of town, he only saj's, with stolid 
 indifference, "A cat may look upon a king. Is there 
 any thing in your parlor too good to be seen?" 
 
 Infinitely better than these, though inferior to Hones- 
 tus of the red cart, is he who comes with a pack on his 
 back. These have diminished in numbers of late years, 
 but they used to be frequent callers, and their coming 
 was a pleasant exhilaration. Almost always German?,
 
 29 
 
 small of stature, why, strong, and pleasant- voiced, 
 shrewd and careful, they deposit their packs on the 
 kitchen floor, and unfold rich parcels of silk and linen 
 that might tempt even a connoisseur. How they can 
 travel under such a weight is astonishing; and how 
 they can recompense themselves among us plain coun 
 try folk, who call a family council and make a pilgrim 
 age to Mecca whenever we buy a silk gown, is inex 
 plicable; but travel they do, or did, revolving in their 
 orbits as regularly as the planets, till we came to have 
 a friendly familiarity with their friendly faces. So, no 
 doubt, they found their account in it; and many of 
 them, I dare say, have by this time invested the money 
 they made in our village, thrown down the pack, opened 
 shop, become merchant princes, and been murdered in 
 New York an encouragement to all poor and industri 
 ous boys not to despise the day of small things. 
 
 Next to the glazed carpet-bags do we hate and abhor 
 the tall clerical-looking men who accost us with a jaun 
 ty air, and ask us to accept a box of soap as a present ! 
 We suspect these Greeks in any case, but, bearing gifts, 
 we know there is a cat under the meal. And when 
 they ape the clergy, Heavens! how we ache to choke 
 them with their white chokers! O Lemonians, keep 
 such trash in your own borders! To us it is rank, and 
 smells to heaven. 
 
 And look well, Lemonia, w r e country folk pray you, 
 to the ways of the agents whom you send down upon 
 us like frogs and lice and locusts for multitude. Send 
 us women, if you like, or send us men, but let them be 
 ignorant. A little learning is such a dangerous thin<r.
 
 30 TWEL VE MILES FROM A LE310X. 
 
 The people who come around -with apple-parers and 
 pencil-sharpeners, dress-making systems and new-fash 
 ioned larnp-chimneys, are well enough. We do not ob 
 ject to being reminded by such tokens that we are 
 within twelve miles of the Lemon; but when the re 
 ligious newspaper -agents bore into your house like 
 worms of the dust as they are, and ask your house 
 keeper about your way of life and j-our personal his 
 tory, why, you would like to grill them over a slow fire. 
 They have just intelligence enough to be curious, but 
 not enough to be decent; and decency should be well 
 burned into them. The apple-corers are modest and 
 professional ; but these literary frogs and toads evident 
 ly believe, with Job's sorry set of friends, that they are 
 the people, and wisdom shall die with them. You are 
 not helped by instructing your door-tender to give to 
 all a bland but blank refusal, for that only keeps out 
 the good ones. The pachydermata, the articulata, the 
 vermes, will still worm themselves through to their own 
 destruction. 
 
 We know that we are outside barbarians, far off from 
 ice and lemons and green pease; but we are often 
 moved, Lemonia ! to exclaim with Sidney, thy ne 
 cessity is greater than ours. When I see a poor man 
 traveling up hill and down across our country-side, ex 
 pecting to earn his bread-and-butter by the commission 
 he is to receive on the sale of his books, and think of 
 the sparse farm-houses where he is to sell them, the 
 farmers mowing the marshes knee-deep in salt-water, 
 and the women rising at midnight to cook their sup 
 pers. I am just not moved to tears. Surely the lines
 
 LEMOX-DROrS. 31 
 
 liave fallen to you in stony places. Is there no corn 
 in Egypt that you must come up to Canaan to gather 
 these scanty gleanings? The minister may generally 
 be counted on as secure prey, and sometimes a freak 
 -will take a farmer or two of us, to the peddler's advan 
 tage. 
 
 " These Bibles are cheap and well got up," says the 
 Bible-vender, who understands how to mingle religion 
 and trade in a shrewd composite. 
 
 Yes, you answer; but you have Bibles enough al 
 ready. 
 
 "But so has your neighbor over yonder," says the 
 Bible-man. " He said he had Bibles enough, but he 
 had just as lief leave part of his property in Bibles as 
 any thing else; and he bought three." 
 
 If the agents who have somewhat to give in return 
 for our well-fingered currency find us a hard row to 
 hoe, -how rocky must be the field to those gentlemen 
 who come intent on begging, " pure and simple !" They 
 seldom go from house to house, but take to the pulpit. 
 Rapidly and statistically they unfold the origin and 
 operation of their plans, and cheerfully we listen, quite 
 well knowing we are masters of the situation, and shall 
 present a firm front to the foe, but perfectly willing to 
 hear what he has to say, and glad our own minister has 
 a, breathing-place thrown in. The American Board and 
 the Home Missionaries we look after regularly, under 
 the lead of our own shepherd; the few "town poor" 
 we maintain in a style that dazzles the neighboring- 
 nabobs; but when it comes to Sailors' Aid Societies, we 
 query how many of our greenbacks would get into the
 
 32 TWELVE MILES FROM A LEMOX. 
 
 sailors' pockets. As for the converted Jews, we rather 
 think we like them best the natural way. And really 
 it is a pretty joke, you Western colleges stretching out 
 your hands from your waving wheat-fields, your inland 
 seas white with commerce, your cities running riot with 
 riches, and claiming tribute from our stern and rock- 
 bound coast! Still, if it pleases you to come to us in 
 appeal, come. You little know the invincibility and 
 the invisibility of our defenses; but come. We will 
 feast you as long as you stay, for we have a saving 
 faith in bread-and-butter, pies, and preserves. We will 
 listen to you with decorum ; and if a ten-cent scrip or a 
 ragged quarter will serve your purpose, we will drop it 
 in, rather than the contribution-box should go by us 
 without stopping. 
 
 "But if them fellers want more larnin/' says Uncle 
 'Miah, having placidly sat the sermon out, and speaking 
 now the wisdom of his eighty toiling years " if them 
 fellers want more larnin, let 'em come down here and 
 go a term to Esther, and carry on my farm to halves." 
 
 And all the people shall say, Amen ! So, Messieurs 
 mes fibres, come down and present your "cause" to us 
 as often as you like.
 
 HEMLOCK 
 
 III. 
 
 HEML CK POISON. 
 
 No one can suspect bow much trouble it would Lave 
 been to make the world, until he has tried his own hand 
 at world-making. 
 
 Once we wanted a hill where nature had spread a 
 plain. We undertook to raise one. A hill looks easy 
 enough. For days, for weeks, men and horses and carts 
 were digging, hauling, loading, and tipping, and it was 
 not much of a hill after all. We came to the conclusion 
 that it is easier to make a very large hole than a very 
 small bill. When you have floundered in the dirt many 
 days, when drags have crisscrossed your grounds in all 
 directions, and harrows have scratched, and rollers have 
 smoothed, and yet you need a magnifying glass to see. 
 where your hill is, you are prepared to read with new 
 admiration, "He spake, and it was done; he command 
 ed, and it stood fast." 
 
 Nevertheless, the spring-world ever calls you afresh. 
 When the snow melts, when the brooks are unbound, 
 and the skies grow tender, and the brown buds swell, 
 the still small voice of the coming summer woos you 
 into loving alliance with Nature* fashioning the Earth 
 to beautj-. 
 
 I suppose we are the proprietors of the poorest tract 
 of land on the North American Continent; and the
 
 34 TWELVE MILES FROM A LEMOX. 
 
 worst cultivated. Something is sure to be planted that 
 we do not want, and something to be left out that we 
 do want. What with cabbages and cows, and white 
 beans hanging forgotten, brown and shriveled, to the 
 shuddering vines for a mildew and a blight, till the 
 snows drift over them, Hassan the Turk says there are 
 three crops in which we excel : those which are planted 
 and do not come up, those which come up and are not 
 gathered, and those we do not plant at all. 
 
 But we like farming so much that we can not with 
 draw our hand. We would rather fail in that than suc 
 ceed in any thing else. So we go on every spring, dig 
 ging a little wildly, perhaps, but digging, harrowing our 
 fields and our friendly farmers' feelings, no doubt, at 
 one fell swoop, and trying to save money enough in 
 other ways to keep our agricultural extravagance from 
 presently bringing us upon the town. 
 
 But it did not seem extravagant to attempt to raise 
 a few pines and hemlocks. Having tried every thing 
 else in vain, we turned with humility to these hardy 
 plants, and remembered that the destruction of trees is 
 supposed to be the cause of our long and severe droughts, 
 and hoped to deserve well of the republic, besides sit 
 ting under our own shadows with great delight. Has 
 san the Turk said our soil was so much like the soil 
 to which pines are native that he- did not believe they 
 would detect a change. We might steal a march on 
 them, as it were, and they would begin growing before 
 they discovered it was our land, and then it would be 
 too late to stop. 
 
 Oh ! the pleasure of the work ! The smell of the
 
 HEMLOCK roisox. 35 
 
 damp, upturned earth, the loveliness of the fragrant, 
 dark, dewy woods where you go to see how the Lord 
 God sets his pines because you wish yours to look just 
 like them! Alas! how soon you find that you follow 
 Nature as little lulus did his father, with unequal steps. 
 The trees of the Lord spring up untrained, in careless 
 places, in graceful and exuberant confusion, while your 
 groves are bent on assuming stiff geometrical figures. 
 Downing is it, who recommends you to fling a handful 
 of potatoes into the air and set your trees where they 
 come down ? We darkened the air with flying and fall 
 ing potatoes, and they alighted in. one heap. Having 
 spent a whole morning in a strenuous, and we hoped, not 
 unsuccessful endeavor to reproduce the charming irreg 
 ularity of nature, our withdrawing footsteps are arrested 
 by the anxious voice of a conscientious workman, "I 
 don't know as you care but seems to me them trees 
 ain't in a straight line!" 
 
 And so your forests are set a- waving, and the beauty 
 of it is that you have no weary waiting, for they are a 
 joy from the first moment of their arrival. A hemlock 
 grows larger, but it is never more symmetrical or inter 
 esting than when it is first set. A pine is as tall at its 
 transplanting as a rose-bush in its old age. Yesterday 
 a waste of pebbly hill-side, a level stretch of green- 
 to-day the morning breeze on tree-tops, flickering shad 
 ows on the grass, the poise of robins on the branches, 
 blue-birds flashing in and out, and the whir of hum 
 ming-birds on their way to hone} T suckles. 
 
 But sweet Nature is cruel. No sooner is my little 
 venture made than the stars in their courses fight
 
 36 TWELVE MILES FROM A LEMON. 
 
 against me. My trees fairly rooted, and such a drought 
 comes as lias not been known in Israel these years. The 
 trees that were to be transplanted with so much of their 
 mother earth around them that they were expected nev 
 er to find it out, began to show signs of homesickness. 
 We water them, but what are a dozen watering-pots 
 among so many? We build our hopes on anniversarj'- 
 week, but the heavens have forgotten the Tract Society, 
 and their clergy give but dry disquisitions. My green 
 ery makes a brave fight. It has nothing but a little 
 mulch to encourage it, yet it smiles on me and clings to 
 life. But a saint could not hold out forever against the 
 raging, pitiless sun, this dry, parching, dust-fraught wind, 
 and the tassels of the pines must droop, and the stocky, 
 sturdy hemlocks put on an ominous yellow. 
 
 " Oh, Hassan !" cries the voice of dism?vy, " what shall 
 I do if my hemlocks die?" 
 
 "You have something still left to live for," answers, 
 cheerfully, Hassan the Turk. But the iron has not en 
 tered his soul. 
 
 "Do you think they will die?" 
 
 "Guess so. I set out a hedge of hemlocks once. 
 Paid sixty dollars for it. . They all died." 
 
 "Oh ! why did you not tell me sooner?" 
 
 " So you will fall foul of me ! Well, hemlocks always 
 were a dangerous plaything. Socrates got the first lick, 
 and I shall bring up the rear in good company." 
 
 I strongly object to the word lick, but that is what he 
 said. I only answered : 
 
 "It is really sad to hear you speak with such levity 
 in the presence of so great a trouble."
 
 HEMLOCK roisoy. 37 
 
 "Trouble? You have nothing on earth to trouble 
 you but four dead hemlocks on one side of your gate, 
 and five live ones on the other. Do you want me to 
 put on a weed for that?" 
 
 "But tell me what to do. Perhaps something might 
 still save them." 
 
 " Well, my advice is, that you immediately take a 
 fresh cry over your hemlocks, then pull them all up, 
 and write an account of it for The Neiv England Farmer, 
 and make him pay for them, dead or alive, two prices 
 if dead, and hurry up, or they will live yet, and you will 
 be too late." 
 
 A man of ability who is willing to give his mind to 
 a subject is a very useful person ; but when he ap 
 proaches a topic with unseemly frivolity, he is a great 
 deal worse than nobody. 
 
 Yet, in spite of Turks and Tract Societies, the trees 
 lived. A very few went desperately on to yellow death, 
 but we cut them down darkly at dead of night, as they 
 buried Sir John Moore, 
 
 "By the straggling moonbeam's misty light, 
 And the lanterns dimly burning," 
 
 and the neighbors never missed them. Ever is it easier 
 to bear our misfortunes than the comments of our friends 
 upon them, as Lacon saith. A few hemlocks also gave 
 up their beautiful ghosts, but. we luckily had an out 
 lying surplus plantation wherewithal to fill the breach; 
 so, with flying banners, we went on gayly, till St. Johns- 
 wort flauntecl on the hills, and golden-rod rose by every 
 way-side, and we knew that Autumn was holding out 
 her sceptre for the world's encouragement.
 
 38 TWELVE MILES FROM A LE3IOX. 
 
 Then again anguish pierced my heart, for again blight 
 seemed to settle on the pines. Their green spikes re- 
 assumed that baleful yellow, only, unlike the past, their 
 tips staid green. I scorned to ask questions that might 
 seem to be begging for re-assurance, but said to my 
 friend the forester, in an indifferent sort of way, "I am 
 afraid I am going to lose my trees. They seem to be 
 turning." I cherished a faint hope he would say they 
 always did so. 
 
 "Yes," said he, promptly, "I thinks likely you won't 
 have more'n three or four left by spring!" 
 
 After the first spasm of disgust, I excused him by re 
 flecting that he made no pretense to science, but con 
 tented himself with doing with his might whatever his 
 hand found to do. But my friend the President is a 
 man who can speak of trees, from the cedar-tree that is 
 in Lebanon even unto the hyssop that springeth out of 
 the wall. So I said to him, with the same nonchalant 
 air, "By-the-way, my trees are going to die. They arc 
 all turned yellow." 
 
 "Are they? Oh! pity, pity!" he exclaimed, with a 
 sympathy almost better than pines. 
 
 Mark now. A few days afterward I was driving in 
 the woods, and, behold ! the trees of the good God were 
 all turning yellow, just like mine ! 
 
 It was no dying at all. It was just as I had vague 
 ly hoped the way of a pine-tree in the autumn ; and 
 neither the practical man of the axe nor the theoretical 
 man of science knew any thing about it. Lucifer, 
 Son of the Morning, how much of thy reputation is 
 founded in the ignorance of thy followers!
 
 HEMLOCK POISOX. 39 
 
 The cold days came, and we left our pines and hem 
 locks to their winter work and their winter rest, flour 
 ishing like a green bay -tree. We thought they had 
 stood the crucial test, and might 
 
 " Fear no more the heat o' the sun, 
 Nor the furious winters rages." 
 
 We talked lovingly of their beauty, and wondered how 
 much they would have grown by the time we and the 
 summer should have returned to them. The dreadful, 
 the relentless, the irresistible winter came came and 
 staid. The slow, chilled spring followed, laggard and 
 lame. But life was full of warmth and brightness and 
 color, and I feared no evil. In common with all the 
 world, we pitied Peshtigo and bewailed Chicago, though 
 I may whisper in an aside that the largest and loveli 
 est diamonds I ever saw were hanging upon large and 
 lovely Chicago sufferers! We watched with anxious 
 eagerness the perils and privations of snow -blocked 
 travelers journeying " from the land of the Sunrise to 
 ward the Sunrising," or fleeing the ice-fields of Maine 
 for the mild rigors of Lake Wenham, and never dream 
 ed that we had any thing at stake in the thermometer. 
 But, alas! as soon as the country was thawed out, omi 
 nous messages began to trickle through. John Baptist 
 cried first in the wilderness : 
 
 "I am afraid winter has slain many of your ever 
 greens. My own hemlocks have half their tops win 
 ter-killed, and many of my pines are dead. The little 
 shelter afforded by the old fence and those venerable 
 apple-trees which you were prevailed on to spare for 
 my sake (I had resisted his passionate entreaties to cut
 
 40 TWELVE MILES FROM A LEMOX. 
 
 them down ! Never while a bluebird lives, or a thrush 
 sings, or an oriole flames, never while a home-born po 
 tato is problematical and no amount of horticulture will 
 let us have pease, will I lay the axe at the root of any 
 tree. Shall I, who can not raise so much as a bush, 
 presume to raze a tree?) may probably have saved your 
 hedge. The line between life and death is very thin. 
 The heavy wind at zero seemed to cut the poor trees 
 to the heart. Your hill would also help yours." 
 
 In a world like this it does seem useless to anticipate 
 trouble, and I only answered tartly, " Do you mean that 
 all your hemlocks are half dead, or half your hemlocks 
 are all dead?" It was a mere quibble, and flippant 
 enough, but it turned aside the poisoned dart for a 
 time. 
 
 Presently came another messenger malign. 
 
 " Your pines are turning yellow. Ask your scientific 
 President if that is a good sign." 
 
 I did not heed the covert sneer, but my heart mis 
 gave me for yellow pines in spring. Botany is silent, 
 and analogy can not bear false witness against its neigh 
 bor. Nor am I called to fight a foreboding, but a 
 fact. 
 
 Practical Common Sense anon took up the parable, 
 and piped. 
 
 "More than half your hemlocks in the incipient 
 hedge are dead at.least look dead, but may yet spring 
 up from the. roots." 
 
 Thanks for the intended consolation; but as we sel 
 dom expect a large crop of apples from hemlocks, and 
 the look is all there is of them, I would rather they
 
 HEMLOCK roisox. 41 
 
 should be dead and look alive, than be alive and look 
 dead. 
 
 Artless Innocence, in letter number four, prattled 
 simply, but stinging! y, 
 
 "About all your little trees that you planted are 
 dead." 
 
 Then Job arose and said, ' : Of course they are dead. 
 What inducement had they to. live? Hear what the 
 newspaper saith : ' The destruction of evergreens was 
 general over New England. Mr. M., the nurseryman, 
 lost over five thousand dollars by damage to his nurs 
 ery-bed of evergreens.' And again : ' The pines and 
 cedars everywhere, even in the parks about New York, 
 and the rhododendrons and the strawberries, are badly 
 hurt,' And yet again: 'All the young evergreens in 
 New York and Massachusetts are dead. The warm 
 weather of February started the sap, and the cold weath 
 er of March froze them. It is a severe blow to thou 
 sands of nurserymen who gained a livelihood by raising 
 evergreens for market. It will take years to replace 
 them. In Central Park, New York, one would be led 
 to think fire had run through it, as not a green tree is 
 spared.' " 
 
 Of course I never undertook to stem such a tide as 
 this. I planted my pines in good faith, trusting to the 
 promise of the rainbow. Nothing that money or mulch 
 could do was spared, but I never took a contract to 
 thaw out the North Pole. When lovely Nature stoops 
 to folly of this stupendous sort, the only thing left for 
 any respectable hemlock is to wring his bosom, and to 
 die. Surely 'Wisdom is justified of her children.
 
 42 TWELVE MILES FROM A LEMON. 
 
 But why should Nature be so churlish? When I 
 am trying in my small way to beautify the world, why 
 does she hinder? I have no Titanic ambition to grati 
 fy. I do not aim to rival her Californian Big Trees, 
 or to outshine and outshade her Amazonian forests. I 
 only seek to transfer the unappropriated beauty of her 
 wildernesses to my own door-yard. I will not rob her 
 of a tithe of her charm. I will but gather a little of it 
 to my heart. If she will not help, can she not at least 
 let rne alone? She sees me scratching the earth with 
 feeble fingers for a few forlorn bushes. From he'r mul 
 titudinous and magnitudinous tree-tops, from her wild, 
 wide, trackless forests, she might well laugh me to scorn. 
 But is it noble, is it magnanimous in her to rise up and 
 send down upon us the coldest winter we have had for 
 twenty-five years just to freeze me out? Would I have 
 treated Caius Cassius so? 
 
 Meanwhile, what pleasure can be derived from three 
 hundred feet of hemlock skeletons filing past the front 
 door, that pleasure I enjoy. 
 
 " Far or forgot to me is near ; 
 
 Shadow and sunlight are the same ; 
 The vanished gods to me appear ; 
 And one to me are shame and fame." 
 
 And Hassan the Turk immediately added with dis. 
 tinguishing emphasis, 
 
 " The strong gods Pine for my abode, 
 And Pine in vain the sacred Seven/' 
 
 A romantic visitor, fresh from our charming neigh 
 bor's Brier Hill, tried to continue the spell by naming 
 us "Pine Lodge." We smiled and simpered, but did
 
 HEMLOCK POISON. 43 
 
 not deny the soft impeachment. It has a manorial 
 sound. One could almost imagine himself an English 
 country gentleman, untitled, but of ancient blood, while 
 dating his letter from Pine Lodge. But the pines will 
 not lodge. Their end is to be burned, and that swiftly. 
 Thus passes away the glory of our name. We can not^ 
 by an appellative, constantly renew our unspeakable 
 griefs. Hassan the Turk suggests that we re-christen 
 ourselves The Pinery. That, he says, with grim jocu 
 larity, will never be a misnomer !
 
 44 TWELVE MILES FROM A LEMON. 
 
 IV. 
 
 THE WONDERS AND WISDOM OF CAR 
 PENTRY. 
 
 THIS is an interesting world, whether you have helped 
 re-make it, or whether you take it as it is. You live 
 and live and live so long that you can not remember 
 a time that you were not alive. You learn the look 
 of things, and the name of things, and you fancy you 
 know the things themselves. But one day, some er 
 rand, perhaps some caprice, calls you. You open a gate 
 which has stood in its place ever since the foundation 
 of the world. It was a commonplace enough gate. It 
 never elicited your curiosity scarcely even your atten 
 tion. If you thought of it at all, you thought only that 
 it led into a pasture-ground beyond. But you open it, 
 you pass through, and behold you are in a new world ! 
 
 Then you perceive that hitherto the gate-way was no 
 entrance, but a barricade. You saw only the outside 
 and were content with a name. 
 
 From generation to generation, men have built, and 
 repaired, and destroyed houses, but until you have done 
 it yourself, carpentry is but a lost art, a voice, and noth 
 ing more. "Knowledge by suffering entereth," says 
 the poet. Yes, and knowledge by doing, entereth also. 
 
 I suppose it will not be denied that change itself is 
 pleasure. When a fit of weariness overtakes you, real
 
 THE \YOXDERS AXD WISDOM OF CASPESTRY. 45 
 
 rest and refreshment are to be found in pushing the 
 bureau back into the corner, wheeling the sofa up to 
 the fire-place, and bearing the what-not over to the 
 south-west. You bring the satisfaction of foreign trav 
 el into your own room. When you can change not 
 only the furnishing of your apartment, but the apart 
 ment itself, when the spirit of diversion enters into your 
 partitions, when your doors begin to slip around cor 
 ners, and your stair-ways dance across the entry, and the 
 entry strikes out into the world ; when blank walls sud 
 denly open fair outlooks upon field and sky, and pine- 
 trees breathe welcome, and birds sing in the pines, and 
 humming-birds hover over the honeysuckle where be 
 fore the silence and stupidity of room-paper were wont 
 to reign; life becomes new every morning, and fresh 
 every evening. 
 
 You have a mind to " introduce water into the house." 
 Our ancestors must have had a sort of hydrophobia. A 
 house without water, is like a body without blood ; but 
 twelve miles from a lemon most houses are thus blood 
 less. People think themselves fortunate who have a 
 well in the door-yard, and must bring their water pain 
 fully in hand-buckets. There is a notion that bath 
 rooms and water-pipes pertain only to cities, and must 
 be sustained by corporations, and supplied by lakes, and 
 appear in hose and hydrants, and quarterly bills. 
 
 But we, in a moment of inspiration, became convinced 
 that a house may have water- works even if you have 
 no river to turn on. We, meditated a bath-room. It 
 should be in the middle of the house for warmth in win 
 ter. But we had no middle-house to spare. There nev-
 
 46 TWELVE MILES FROM A LEMQX. 
 
 er is any room to spare. The only available spot is the 
 back entry. Of course, then, there is but one thing to do 
 build on more house. 
 
 There you have the problem solved central bath 
 room, and no space sacrificed. 
 
 It may be considered a cumbrous and costly solution, 
 and in some cases it might be. But our land is good 
 for nothing. The only crop you can raise on it is house. 
 
 Nature is stubborn, and will not yield to all our coax 
 ings. Let us see if architecture is equally strong to 
 prevail against us. 
 
 "We thought it over and talked it over in twilight 
 hours, and I fear we did not keep it wholly out of our 
 minds on Sunday. In dreams our plans rounded out 
 staunch and stately, but it did not seem possible that they 
 would ever be any thing but plans not even when a 
 bevy of foreign workmen, rough and ragged, flocked 
 across our grounds and thrust their spades into the 
 greensward ; scarcely more so when the trim and shrewd 
 American workmen came in like a flood and bestrewed 
 our hill with bricks and boards. But time went on, 
 beams defined the cellar, rafters dropped into place, 
 planks spanned abysses, chimneys sprang aloft, rooms 
 and windows and door-ways began to develop them 
 selves, and lo! our thought, our remote, shadowy, in 
 tangible, and then our exact and elaborate thought, stood 
 out in wood and plaster, and brick and marble, before 
 our very eyes! 
 
 I must admit that I felt a hearty enthusiasm for my 
 self. "Is not this great Babylon which /have built?" 
 This is not necessarily arrogance. It mny be akin to
 
 THE WONDERS AND WISDOJf OF CARPENTRY. 47 
 
 worship. To be sure, I had not lifted a finger. So 
 much the more in our small human way had we follow 
 ed His method whose 
 
 "Eternal thought mores on 
 His undisturbed affairs." 
 
 We had spoken, and it was done. We commanded, and 
 it stands fast. 
 
 And yet the best part of the whole is that, thanks to 
 the limitations of human nature, it was not done at our 
 simple speaking. The doing was a process, and the 
 process was a constant joy. 
 
 But people are awry. They have fallen into confu 
 sion as to what constitutes good and evil. " Well, I 
 am sure it is a great job," they would say with a heavy 
 sigh. And so it would have been had we lifted the 
 beams, and sawed the boards, and driven the nails our 
 selves; but it is no job at all to sit in the sunshine and 
 see other people hammering. And that is really all 
 that building a house amounts to. The fact is that we 
 are scared by imagination. Real things do not so much 
 trouble us. It is phantoms of things evoked from our 
 brains. It is no trouble at all to make a bath-room. 
 The trouble is in the fancy of what bath-room building 
 may be. 
 
 But the disorder of house-repairing! There it is 
 again. The mischievous error that .order is Heaven's 
 first law, is the heresy of many otherwise excellent 
 women. Order is not Heaven's first law. It is disor 
 der. Order comes second. I have Pope against me, 
 but Moses and the Prophets are on my side. "In the 
 besnnniner God created the heavens and the earth."
 
 "48 T\VL VE MILES FROM A LEMOX. 
 
 "And the earth was without form and void." 
 
 Can disorder be more deftly expressed? 
 
 We speak of the turtle as if his tribe were the only 
 one that carries its house on its head. But in fact we 
 are but the turtle's elder brethren, and carry our houses 
 on our heads and in our hearts as well. It is impossi 
 ble to tell or even to know what a care a house is till 
 you throw it off. The delight of having no " fall cltan- 
 ing!" The happiness of seeing every thing at six's 
 and seven's, and knowing that is just where it ought to 
 be ! All the closets are bestrewn upon tables, and noth 
 ing need be touched for six weeks! It is camping out 
 in your own house. Away with tidiness, and punctual 
 ity, and regularity, and civilization! Come chaos, and 
 freedom, living from hand to mouth, fleetncss of foot, 
 and no responsibility for any thing! 
 
 And by the time you are beginning to grow tired of 
 it, and thinking of quiet and comfort it is all over. 
 Tranquillity returns of itself. The doors and windows 
 have become stable, and you resume your routine with 
 n, heartiness and appreciation to which you had hitherto 
 been a stranger. 
 
 Nothing in our houses becomes us like the leaving 
 them sometimes to themselves. Order is no spontane 
 ous generation, but is the fair daughter of a fairer moth 
 er, disorder, Thus we learn the proportions and rela 
 tions of things. 
 
 Carpentry is next door to high art, if indeed it be 
 not itself high art. Of mechanical work we often think 
 lightly; any thing done mechanically seems to be done 
 by rule and routine, without spirit or love. But the
 
 THE WONDERS AND WISDOJf OF CARPENTRY. 49 
 
 mechanics of the carpenter implies a steadfast soul, a 
 quick imagination, a keen eye, a fine, firm band. The 
 higher grade of carpentry we recognize as art, and call 
 it architecture ; and its designer an architect. The ca 
 thedrals and palaces of the Old World are pictures and 
 poems in stones. Not only were inexhaustible patience 
 and boundless wealth built into them, but it was genius 
 that conceived them, and in the brain of the artist they 
 had their first life. 
 
 The carpenter who builds your house is no Michael 
 Angelo for a pope's patronage, and his name may never 
 be heard beyond his own countiy. But he is also no 
 dullard, blank of design as the wood on which he works. 
 Somebody, or perhaps many bodies many minds 
 have brought this modest household service to such a 
 pass, that the skillful carpenter must be a man of mind. 
 I suppose any dunce can drive a nail and saw a board, 
 and if a man is content to be a hewer of wood all his 
 life, and to live under authority, he can be a clumsy 
 carpenter. But the master of his trade lays hold of 
 mathematics, understands the science of proportion, 
 foresees the statue in the marble. 
 
 Your new house, let us say, is to be built in the coun 
 try, and fastened trig and firm to the old one. It is 
 also not to look as if it were an after -thought, and 
 patched on, but as if it grew there in the beginning. 
 This is the problem. Thus it is solved : 
 
 The carpenter comes down from the city, browses 
 around for an hour or two, up stairs, down stairs, and in 
 my lady's chamber, with a two-foot rule, takes the next 
 train home, and builds your house in New York ! All 
 
 3
 
 50 TWEL YE MILES FROM A LEMON. 
 
 he does afterward is to bring it down and put it up. 
 That is incredible, only that I have seen it done. Your 
 house appears under the guise of loads of wood cut into 
 numerous shapes and sizes, abounding in little grooves 
 and niches for tongues to slip in, and little tongues to 
 slip in them, and they all slip in ! That is the marvel. 
 Every thing fits into its place. There is no taking in 
 of seams for the doors, or letting down of tucks for the 
 windows. Every frame sits in the hole made for it, and 
 every thing stays where it is put. Whatever was fore 
 ordained comes to pass. 
 
 Oh ! but they take it all so easily. It is no work at 
 all. It is a lazy life. I have sat in the sunshine and 
 watched them for hours, and I know what I am talking 
 about. They swing on a staging with an apronful of 
 nails, and hammer leisurely through the bright October 
 morning. They lift a beam on one end, and it falls of 
 its own weight. They set a board upright, and then 
 walk oif and look at it. They never seem to be doing 
 any thing in particular, only things somehow get done. 
 I look at my neighbor Barbara, hurrying with might and 
 main from wash-tub to well -curb, from well -curb to 
 cooking-stove, from cooking-stove to ironing-board all 
 day long all week, and month, and year long, and 
 think how much harder a woman works than a man. 
 Barbara seems alwaj's to be springing at the top of her 
 strength. These carpenters seem scarcely to bring their 
 strength into play, and I suppose for their happy-go- 
 easy life they are paid ten times as much as poor Bar 
 bara for her eager and lavish outlay. 
 
 A blind man misrht sec that the moral is that woman
 
 THE WONDERS AND WISDOM OF CARPENTRY. 51 
 
 ought not to work. It is the mission of man, and for 
 him it is easy and lucrative. It is foreign to woman, 
 and bruises her head, while she can only bruise its heel. 
 I have discovered, also, that one reason why men are 
 so successful in the world is, that they are so lawless. 
 Women are constantly hampered by little scruples of 
 conscience, or propriety, or economy. A man seems to 
 think that every thing was made for the purpose to 
 which he chooses to turn it. I have no reason to suppose 
 that my carpenters w r ere not scrupulously honest, but 
 if we had been in a state of declared warfare they could 
 not have confiscated my property with more remorse 
 less readiness. If they wanted any thing, they took it. 
 Did they desire to mix mortar? they made a raid on 
 the wash-tub. Depict the emotions of the female breast 
 at seeing a range of tubs carried out of the cellar, 
 knocked around the well, and bedaubed with mud I 
 Think of finding your chopping-bowl under the garret- 
 caves doing duty as a nail-box. If a woman wanted a 
 piece of cloth to protect water-pipes from abrasion, she 
 would come and ask you for it. A man looks around 
 and takes the first thing he lavs his eyes on. unconscious 
 
 O i/ J 
 
 and uncaring whether it is a passe dish-cloth or a silk 
 gown. A woman is naturally economical, and before 
 she puts any thing to a use not strictly germane to its 
 purpose, she puts herself through a course of question 
 ing as to whether she may not want it for something 
 else more than she wants it for this, or whether some 
 thing else of less value may not serve her equally well 
 here. A man is naturally extravagant, and saj's: 
 "After rnc the delude." I must admit that there is a
 
 52 TWELVE MILES FROX A Li'MOX. 
 
 certain charm in this recklessness. . One gets tired of 
 forever balancing exigencies, practicing economies, ex 
 orcising prudence, and it is actually refreshing to see 
 u being so made that he intrinsically does what he 
 chooses, without stopping to consider whether it is the 
 best thing to do. Men also are so much more accus 
 tomed than women to large outlay, large income, large 
 dealing, that they are impatient of minor considerations, 
 and never think of permitting any penny-wise prudence 
 to stand in the way of their convenience or gratification. 
 The Divine mind is the only one that can equally well 
 grapple with outline and detail. Finite minds, if they 
 would compass generals, must often consent to sacrifice 
 particulars. There are some things in this life which 
 we can dispense with, and some which are indispensa 
 ble. They are wise who wisely discriminate, and do not 
 lose the best in trying to hold all. There are women 
 who never get on, because they do not know where to 
 let go. They can do the sewing, the house -cleaning, 
 the cooking, better than any woman they can hire; so 
 they yield to the temptation and do it all, till they are 
 broken in health, and spirits, and temper. They do not 
 see that, though the hired help is a careless seamstress, 
 an extravagant cook, and an untidy washer-woman, she 
 would be a still worse home-maker; that, little as she 
 contributes to the family comfort, she w r ould contribute 
 to the family happiness still less. It is not absolutely 
 essential that the silver be polished every week, that all 
 the carpets be beaten every full. It is essential that 
 health should be fine, and heart cheerful, and temper 
 tranquil. Constituted as society i?, women, to effect
 
 THE WONDERS AND WISDOM OF CARPENTRY. 53 
 
 this, must learn what things it will do to let go, and 
 what must be held fast. If we could have all the house 
 work done in its proper time and manner, it would be 
 very charming; but what we must have is a bright, 
 warm, wooing atmosphere in the home. 
 
 Thus I mused, sitting on the new garret stairs and 
 observing that an antiquated but stocky beaver hat, 
 from which I had mentally constructed a pair of moc 
 casins, had been pressed into service by my brigands 
 as a chisel, screw, and hammer-holder. 
 
 It is a serious objection to most useful occupations 
 that they conflict with personal neatness. You can not 
 sweep without becoming dusty, or cook without con 
 tracting grease spots. The farmer must grow dirty in 
 his potato-field, and the engineer smutty on his engine. 
 It may not be unwholesome, but it is certainly not at 
 tractive. It does not affect character, and is therefore 
 not injurious; and what we should do if some persons 
 were not willing to surmount their repugnance and till 
 the soil and drive the engines for us, it is not easy to 
 conjecture. Certainly, speaking after the manner of 
 Sunday-schools, we ought to be very grateful to them; 
 but I, for one, can blame nobody for not liking or choos 
 ing employments which soil clothes and faces and hands. 
 Carpentry is free from all this. The artificer in wood 
 may be as immaculate at the day's close as he was at 
 its commencement. He works in a. clean, sweet, fra 
 grant substance, fresh and pure as the sunshine which 
 gave it life. All the debris of his work are odorous 
 chips, lithe and graceful shavings, sawdust which is 
 dust only by courtesy. As a result, it is not surpris-
 
 54 TWELVE MILES FROM A LEMOX. 
 
 ing that the carpenter is a man of gentleness, grace, and 
 refinement his voice is melodious, his language cor 
 rect, his manners quiet, his disposition obliging. My 
 carpenters kept house for me, as you may say, three 
 months; yet so considerate, delicate, and intelligent 
 were they, that their presence seemed not so much in 
 trusive as protective and beneficent, and we felt quite 
 forsaken when they packed their chests and rode oft'. 
 It is rather pleasant and sociable to hear a little tapping 
 on the wall, like a woodpecker pecking his hollow oak- 
 tree, and when you look up, lo ! a friendly face knock 
 ing through the partition. It is exhilarating to let in 
 water on } 7 our new tank just to see if you can, and half- 
 drowri a man curled up in the bottom of it soldering 
 something. Never did I by any chance hear or over 
 hear a single profane, indecorous, or coarse word only 
 once, when the carpenters and plumbers, from their dis 
 tant homes, were all ready to join forces, and a part 
 of the important machinery had foiled to come, and- 
 thus, of course, set their plans at naught. Then did 
 I, through the closed blind and the open window, hear 
 from the sweet-voiced, brown -haired, deep-eyed car 
 penter on the barn-steps the impatient ejaculation, 
 
 "Darn it all!" 
 
 But, under the circumstances, that was not very bad. 
 Surely the accusing angel who flew up to Heaven's 
 chancery with the oath blushed as he gave it in, and 
 the recording angel, and so forth. "Darn it all." No 
 doubt there are ruffled states of mind which this simple, 
 somewhat inconsequent and inexplicable, yet vehement 
 exclamation may serve to soothe; and if, hurting no
 
 THE WONDERS AND WISDOM OF CARPENTRY. 55 
 
 one, it does calm mental or nervous perturbation, it is 
 not one of those idle words of which we must give ac 
 count in the day of judgment, but a most useful and 
 salubrious word, which shall smell sweet and blossom 
 in the dust. 
 
 And carpenters are like Toodles's coffin, so handy to 
 have in the house. They not only do what you bid 
 them, but scores of things that you did not think of 
 yourself. They see all the available little nooks for 
 hooks and spaces for shelves, which, once up, you won 
 der how you ever got on without. They fasten little 
 wheels to all your wells, till children cry for the privi 
 lege of drawing water. You go away in the morning 
 leaving your cellar an uproar of rubbish. You return 
 at night to find a place for' every thing and every thing 
 in its place. Shall I ever forget the gloom of a descent 
 into that Avernus after a week's absence, when chill 
 November's surly blasts made a furnace fire necessarj*. 
 and there were only Anglo-Saxon hands to build it? 
 No heavier lay ^Etna on tortured Enceladus than lay 
 the clinkers and ashes of that cold, uncompromising 
 furnace on my soul. Shivering hands hold the feeble 
 lamp, desperate hands grasp the huge iron wrench, and 
 down comes not the expected horrid fluff of ashes, but 
 a cheerful, tiny curl of shaving! Ha! what is this? 
 We gaze into each other's eyes ! It can not be ! We 
 tear open the furnace door. It is! It is! Those an 
 gels have shaken out every relic of the late departed 
 fire, have put in paper and shavings, and wood and coal, 
 so that all we have to do is to touch a taper underneath, 
 and immediately warmth and light, and heart and hope,
 
 56 TWELVE MILES FROM A LEMON. 
 
 love and gratitude, human brotherhood, the unity of 
 the race, and the solidarity of the peoples, are roaring 
 through every pipe and funnel and chirnne\', till the 
 whole house is aglow. 
 
 But you pay them for it. Of course you pay them 
 for it, after a fashion. You hire them to do your work 
 at so much a day or so much "a job." But they do 
 not contract to give you beauty for ashes. Bartering 
 the oil of joy for mourning is no part of the carpenter's 
 trade. Your garment of praise will not be set down in. 
 the bill. And even before } r ou reach their work of 
 supererogation, the money you pay them is no equiva 
 lent for the service they render you. What you furnish 
 them is a few soiled and flimsy rags, neither pleasant to 
 the eye, nor good for food, nor to be desired to make 
 one warm. What they furnish you is shelter, conven 
 ience, comfort, beauty, grace. Your bank-bills might lie 
 in your purse till the world's end and you be none the 
 better for them ; but what the carpenters have done for 
 you rests before your eyes new every morning, fresh 
 every evening a thing of beauty and a joy forever. 
 
 I hear it said sometimes that such a man is a great 
 benefactor. He gives work to so many people. Not 
 a bit of it they give work to him. What he gives 
 them is money. What they give him is woven cloths 
 for raw cotton and wool stately houses for unsightly 
 heaps of brick and stone winding ways, graveled 
 paths, solid fences, fertile fields form to substance, or 
 der out of chaos. 
 
 What keeps me in heart toward my carpenters is that 
 rny money, after all, represents to them precisely what
 
 THE WONDERS AND WISDOM 'OF CARTEXTRY. 57 
 
 their work represents to me. The reason why the mas 
 ter-manufacturer, the large land-holder, is not the hope 
 less beneficiary of his hired hands, is because the money 
 which he pays does them the same good turn that their 
 skill and industry do him. There is, strictly speaking, 
 no call and no place for gratitude on either side. When 
 my carpenter goes out of his line to build my fire, I am 
 immeasurably thankful, but I am not thankful that he 
 finishes my roofs and walls according to contract. At 
 least I try hard not to be. That is his business. If I 
 lend him an umbrella to go home in the rain, he may 
 thank me if he can when it is blue cotton, and broken 
 in the ribs, and torn at the top, and turns wrong side 
 out on the slightest provocation ; but he owes me no 
 thanks for employing him. I did that for my own 
 gratification, and he accepted the employment for his. 
 All this seems very simple, yet there is much misappre 
 hension. "I thank Mr. Smith for the work he has given 
 me," I hear a laboring man sa}', " but I don't thank him 
 for his money, for I have earned that." Why, then, 
 you are not to thank him for the work. If 3*011 have 
 really earned the money, you are quits. If he chose 
 you because you were the best workman, or the most 
 accessible, that is no occasion for gratitude. If he did 
 it because you were poor, unable to get work, or to live 
 without it, you may be thankful ; but that is very sel 
 dom the case. Men usually employ the best workmen 
 they can get, without making any draft upon benevo 
 lence. 
 
 On the other hand, says another, "I have worked for 
 
 Mr. Smith all my life. I have been faithful, industri 
 es
 
 58 TWELVE MILES FROM A LEJfOX, 
 
 ous, and prompt;" as if that established some claim on 
 Mr. Smith's gratitude. But has he not paid you with 
 equal promptness and constancy? Did you work for 
 him because you loved him? If somebody else would 
 have secured you twice the pay for the same work, 
 would you not have gone to somebody else? If you 
 could have been sure that by setting up in business 
 yourself you could have earned more money with no 
 more labor, trouble, or risk, would you not have done 
 it, quite regardless of Mr. Smith? It is true that Mr. 
 Smith has used your muscle freely, and would have 
 clone very ill without it; and when he sets up to be 
 your benefactor, I withstand him to the face, and tell 
 him that he is no more your benefactor than he is your 
 beneficiary; But you also have freely used his capital, 
 sagacity, and credit, and have, in a commercial sense, 
 no claim on him beyond what is mentioned in the bond. 
 
 " Ten years ago," says my friend the gas-pipe-maker, 
 " a young man worked for me who never could have 
 made a mechanic ; but he found he could buy and sell, 
 and he went into the business of selling leather. Re 
 port has it that he made ten thousand dollars last year. 
 I don't believe that a single man that worked at making 
 that leather made a thousand dollars. During the ten 
 years I have worked steadily, adding to the wealth of 
 the world, and haven't been able to accumulate a thou 
 sand dollars in all that time Skill in trading, in 
 
 taking advantage of others, is the road to success.'' 
 
 This is undoubtedly a fair statement, except, perhaps, 
 the implied identity of "trading and taking advantage 
 of others ;" but what then ?
 
 THE WONDERS AND WISDOM OF CARPENTRY. 59 
 
 "Why, then," says my friend, intensifying his hard 
 ships by repetition, "I think I am as intelligent a man 
 as he. I know that I have got as much education, and 
 I know I am a first-rate workman at my trade ; yet he 
 makes ten thousand a year, and I with difficulty get a 
 respectable living." 
 
 That may be, but whose fault is it? How shall we 
 induce him to assume your difficulty and relinquish to 
 you his income? 
 
 " There is no remedy," says my friend, with the en 
 ergy of despair. "The Creator of the world when he 
 made it established this law. The strong shall consume 
 the weak, and the strong have been robbers and thieves 
 from that time to this. The poor and weak don't like 
 it, and I can see but one way of escape : that is, become 
 strong themselves, become robbers and thieves, for that 
 is what it amounts to." 
 
 Now here, under a rough shell, lies a kernel of truth, 
 nnd of ultimate truth. Not by complaint, petition, or 
 declamation can the weak escape the penalties of weak 
 ness, but by becoming strong. Strength is not plunder, 
 but it is power. The weak are not necessarily victims, 
 but they often are sufferers. Who is the robber when 
 the trader gets ten thousand a year and the workman 
 barely one ? The young man confessedly could not be 
 a mechanic, and could buy and sell. Was he wrong, or 
 did he wrong any one, when he ceased trying to do 
 what he could not do, and began doing what he could 
 do? One man is as good a workman as another is a 
 trader; but which demands the most or the highest 
 skill? The workman works on dead matter, however
 
 60 TWELVE MILES FROM A LEMON. 
 
 skillful lie is works by routine. The laws of wood 
 and water, and metal and fire, are well known and un 
 changeable. The work to be done to-morrow is the 
 same that was done yesterday. But the trader deals 
 with what are to human vision uncertainties. He must 
 look the world over. He makes ten thousand this year, 
 but he may lose twenty thousand next year. The am 
 bition of a foreign emperor, nay, the advent of a little 
 caterpillar, may overthrow his plans and baffle his cal 
 culations. His mental faculties must be perpetually on 
 the alert. A single error of judgment may precipitate 
 fatal disaster. The workman may go on if he choose 
 thinking of nothing, noting nothing, but the material 
 that lies before him. Is it robbery, is it unjust, that the 
 strain and s4ress of all the powers should receive a larger 
 remuneration than the partial employment of a few? 
 that the absorption of mental faculties should be counted 
 a thing of far greater value than the occupation of phys 
 ical faculties ? When the trader loses ten thousand a 
 year, does the workman complain that he loses nothing, 
 or that his loss is as small as his profit in proportion to 
 his employer's ? 
 
 And, again, if the young trader makes ten thousand 
 to the workman's one, why does not the workman turn 
 trader? The trading thief or robber can not prevent 
 him. If he choose to leave his bench and set up a 
 counting-room, the world is all before him where to 
 choose. The successful trader began on as small a cap 
 ital as the unsuccessful workman. He has no power to 
 force men to buy or sell. He may, of course, lie ; doubt 
 less he often does lie ; but it is not an inherent part of
 
 THE WONDERS AND WISDOM OF CARPENTRY. 61 
 
 the business. Trading is not necessarily taking advan 
 tage of others, any more than it is taking advantage of 
 yourself, unless it means that every thing ought to stay 
 where it is forever. The trader may be just as much a 
 benefactor as the workman. If a poor widow kills her 
 cow, or loses it by accident, she is far better off to have 
 the leather-dealer's money than she is to retain the 
 cow's hide. lie does not rob her by buying it. He 
 does not even take advantage of her any more than he 
 gives advantage to her. He may, owing to her igno 
 rance, put her off with half price ; but that is cheating, 
 not trading. So the shoe-maker puts cheap leather in 
 one shoe and good leather in the other; but that is not 
 a part of shoe-making, it is cheating. When the leather- 
 dealer sells his leather, he is not the benefactor or the 
 beneficiary of his purchaser. In fact, I can not see why 
 the leather-dealer is not adding as much to the wealth 
 of the world as the leather-maker. Leather laid up on 
 the shelf is not wealth ; it is leather in circulation that 
 is wealth. Take away leather-selling, and leather-mak 
 ing would, quickly follow. Take away leather-sellers, 
 and leather-makers would have a far harder time than 
 they have now. It is because long trial has established 
 the fact that, on the whole, it is better for producers to 
 appoint some person to carry their produce to market 
 than it is for each producer to leave his work and go to 
 market himself, that these middle-men exist. It is be 
 cause, on the whole, good middle-men are more rare 
 than good workmen, that middle-men are paid so much 
 more than workmen. That workmen do not ostensibly 
 appoint traders, does not affect the case. The supply
 
 62 TWELVE MILES FROM A LEMON. 
 
 of trade comes at the demand of work. One workman 
 is 'just as free to leave his bench and turn trader as 
 another. If he can not do it if he does not like it, or 
 does not feel able to succeed in it it is no fault of the 
 trader. It is a matter that lies between him and his 
 Maker. A man may just as well complain of being 
 robbed of his just rights because he has not the strength 
 of a horse, the buoyancy of a bird, the swiftness of the 
 wind, as because he has not the breadth of vision, the 
 keenness of perception, the rapidity and correctness of 
 judgment, necessary to constitute a successful trader. 
 If these are to be compassed by his own efforts, it is his 
 own fault that he has them not. If they depend upon 
 the Creative Will, who is to blame for the deficiency? 
 
 In our country loose thinking upon matters of polit 
 ical economy has not yet been largely disastrous ; but 
 over the sea the battle is fought with blood and fire and 
 vapor of smoke. My friend who talks of traders as rob 
 bers and thieves is apparently not far from the position 
 of those Red Republicans of London who avowed to the 
 world, one Easter Sunday, "that the accumulation of 
 property was robbery, and that those who accumulated 
 it were not only thieves, but murderers." My friend'.-? 
 reason is th*at himself, a good workman, makes but hard 
 ly a respectable living, while the trader a man of no 
 more intelligence or education than himself makes a 
 fortune. To this it may, indeed, be said, " You, if you 
 could do what the trader does, would receive the same 
 returns ;" but there are so many points which ought to 
 enter into the comparison that one must be chary in ac 
 cepting his conclusions. The money which a man ac-
 
 THE WONDERS AND WISDOM OF CARPENTRY. 63 
 
 cumulates depends not only upon what lie earns, but 
 upon what he spends, and upon how he spends it. Two 
 men will work side by side in the same shop upon equal 
 wages. One buys cigars and wine, frequents balls and 
 billiards, hires horses and carriages, procures fine clothes 
 for himself and his family, takes frequent holidays, and 
 finds himself at the end of ten years no richer than at 
 the beginning. Another abstains from all sensual in- 
 
 O D 
 
 diligence, finds amusement in the society of his fam 
 ily, carefully invests his small surplusage every month, 
 and at the end of ten years, without speculation, or any 
 means except industry and prudent investment, is the 
 owner of ten thousand dollars, and has besides lived a 
 life as happy, and reared a family as comfortable, as re 
 spectable, as well educated, as his neighbor who has 
 spent his all. Of course sickness or inevitable disaster 
 may make a man's effort unsuccessful, but that is not 
 robbery or thieving; and I know for I have seen it 
 again and again that a good workman, by steady ad 
 herence to his trade, by forethought, economy, and a 
 wise disposition of his money, may not only earn a com 
 fortable living, but may lay up resources for his old age, 
 and leave a sufficient legacy to his children. Let me 
 see how a man and his wife manage their earnings be 
 fore I pronounce robbery and plunder to be the cause 
 of their impecuniosity. 
 
 The self-denial, the rigid economy, the wise fore 
 thought, which many rich men practiced before they be 
 came rich, and which was a part of the system whereby 
 they became rich, is more than many poor people prac 
 tice all their lives. To walk when you can not ride is
 
 64: TWELVE MILES FROM A LEMON. 
 
 not self-denial. Self-denial is to walk when you can 
 ride, and thrift is to take tbe money for investment. 
 Expenditure is not extravagance. The poor are often 
 more extravagant than the rich. Improvidence does 
 worse for the former than ostentation for the latter. 
 
 It is true that the intelligence of the workman may 
 be greater than that of the trader. A man ignorant and 
 almost stupid in literary, scientific, or aesthetic matters 
 may be successful as a trader ; but he is always skillful. 
 He is keenly intelligent as to the state of the market, as 
 to what will be a good object to take hold of, as to the 
 comparative value of stocks; and it is this keenness, 
 this special intelligence, which is so handsomely re 
 warded. If the workman will become similarly and 
 equally intelligent, he, too, will be equally rewarded. 
 But to stand with lowering brow and arms akimbo, and 
 mutter "thief" and "robber," is neither here nor there. 
 He may, like his brother of France, become a Eed Re 
 publican, without the excuse which his brother of 
 France can plead; but when he has accomplished his 
 end, and property is redistributed, and trader and work 
 man receive by law the same wage, it is a question 
 whether he will, on the whole, find life easier. 
 
 "Cultivated people," continues my friend, "live on 
 the industry of others. Cultivated people, you say, are 
 what the country needs. We don't need them in this 
 part of it, at any rate, for and vicinity are over 
 flowing with them, and a more selfish or meaner class 
 of people don't exist." 
 
 Practicing on this sound and salutary principle, it is 
 to be hoped, good friend, you are doing all you can to
 
 THE WONDERS AND WISDOM OF CARPENTRY. 65 
 
 discountenance and annihilate tin's mean, selfish, idle 
 class, and to strengthen and honor your country by 
 preaching and practicing the gospel of non-cultivation. 
 You must never go to church, for the clergy are noto 
 riously mean, selfish, and cultivated, lazily lounging in 
 wealth which they have extorted from the pains of their 
 people, riotously living on the industry of others. You 
 must never attend concerts, for the concert is made by 
 persons who have cultivated their voices to the last de 
 gree by unintermitting indolence. You must hear no 
 lectures, for the lecturer, unless he is a very poor one, 
 never added so much as a gas -pipe to the world's 
 wealth. You must not buy books or magazines or 
 newspapers, illustrated or otherwise, for you are thereby 
 countenancing the droning swarm of writers and artists 
 who have drifted through college, and sauntered through 
 apprenticeship, and have now fastened upon the hard 
 working mechanic, the pure and virtuous gas-piper, 
 who has been really doing something for the world, and 
 force him to the book-stall to buy a Harper's Bazar for 
 ten cents, while they themselves do nothing but scratch 
 a wooden block or make black marks on white paper, 
 which nobody can eat, drink, or wear. You must not 
 send your children to school, for you are thereby not 
 only pampering those bloated aristocrats who live on 
 the industry of others, the mean, cultivated, and selfish 
 school-teachers, but you are directly re-enforcing their 
 ranks by turning your own children into "cultivated 
 people;" nor must you have them taught at home, for 
 in so doing you will only change the place and keep 
 the pain. You must denude your house of carpets and
 
 66 TWELVE MILES FROM A LEMON. 
 
 curtains, and pictures and looking-glasses, and paint 
 and paper, for they are all means of grace and " cultiva 
 tion." Nay, I do not know on what principle you can 
 retain your gas-pipes, for we can be just as healthy, and 
 some say healthier, without them. People lived con 
 tented and died in peace before gas-pipes were thought 
 of. They do not add to the world's wealth, except that 
 mineral wrought into gas-pipes brings more money than 
 mineral in the rough. But, just so, words wrought by 
 those cultivated villains, the newspaper writers, into 
 editorials, or by selfish, idle, cultivated novelists into 
 stories, bring more money than words lying around 
 loose in the dictionary ; and it is what cultivated peo 
 ple have done that makes your gas-pipes worth while. 
 When you have sent out of your house every thing 
 which cultivated people have sent into it, you will have 
 very little use for gas. Whether, then, we look at the 
 amount of vital force you put in your work, at the act 
 ual necessity of your work to the world, or at the hap 
 piness which your work brings to the world, we see no 
 reason why you, as well as the writer, the preacher, the 
 orator, the singer, the trader, should not be reckoned in 
 the ranks of those who live upon the industry of others. 
 It is only when you have steadfastly set your face and 
 your children's faces toward the huts, nuts, and naked 
 ness of the noble savages from whom you descended, 
 that you are living up to your principles, and advan 
 cing your -country in the path of true glory. 
 
 When the relation between employer and employed 
 is further complicated by a relation between man and 
 woman, our confusion becomes worse confounded. It is
 
 THE WONDERS AND WISDOM OF CARPENTRY. 67 
 
 difficult to keep the mercantile and the sentimental sep 
 arate. 
 
 One of our stock stories, to illustrate the wickedness 
 of the existing relations between man and woman, tells 
 of a young woman who sought employment in a store. 
 The owner offered her a certain sum per week. " That," 
 said she, "will just pay my board, but what shall I do 
 for clothes?" He made an insulting reply. Such is the 
 total depravity of male employers. 
 
 But why did the young woman lay herself open to 
 insult? The man, was a villain, but as long as she kept 
 on proper ground he staid there too. When he had 
 named his terms, it was for her to accept or decline, not 
 to argue. It was no affair of his what she did with her 
 money, or how she got her clothes. All that concerned 
 him was the value to him of her services. When she 
 began to consult him about her wardrobe, she at once 
 abandoned commercial and assumed confidential rela 
 tions with him, and, as he was a bad man, he answered 
 her according to his badness. There is nothing to show 
 that the cloven-foot revealed itself till she furnished the 
 opportunity. 
 
 Men are worse than women. There can be little 
 doubt of that; but sometimes I think their badness 
 would be more smothered out of sight if women were 
 more discreet shall we say, more high-minded and 
 unapproachable ? 
 
 It is sincerely to be-wished that the relations between 
 employer and employed were more friendly; that each 
 should see that their interests are not antagonistic. As 
 men are not mere machines, but reasoning and cmo-
 
 68 TWELVE MILES FROM A LEMOX. 
 
 tional animals, it is a pity that the fact should not be 
 taken advantage of, and that those who are bound to 
 gether by ties of business should not also be bound by 
 hearty good-fellowship. But there is no basis for good- 
 fellowship without a thorough understanding on both 
 sides of the justice of the case. So long, however, as 
 there is misapprehension, irritation, and ignorance, the 
 most enlightened and the most noble should be the 
 most patient and conciliatory. Not only Christianity, 
 but national existence, seems to require this. 
 
 There are times when the east seems reddening with 
 the dawn of the perfect day. Its coming sunshine stirs 
 our hearts. The air is soft with its warmth, sweet with 
 its balms, stimulating with its breezes. It is pleasant to 
 live, it is easy to be tolerant; the whole earth is grate 
 ful. But gray grows the auroral, sky gather again 
 the leaden clouds; and the sharp winds tell us, and the 
 bare hills repeat, that the perfect day is yet far off; and 
 no man can tell its coming. 
 
 If it were ever lawful or possible to be disheartened, 
 one might be disheartened by a certain baleful exulta 
 tion over the Chicago fire. Nothing ever more truly 
 showed the brotherhood of man, the oneness of human 
 ity, than the spontaneous uprising of the world to help 
 the smitten city. But along with it all there was an 
 evil portent. It was the undisguised rejoicing of some 
 of the poor over the destruction and ruin. The first 
 fire, they said, was the poor man's fire. This is the rich 
 man's fire. Now we shall all be poor together. Let 
 them see how good it is. 
 
 It is not the ignorance of politico 1 economy displayed
 
 THE WONDERS AND WISDOM OF CARPENTRY. 69 
 
 in this rejoicing not the entire unconsciousness that 
 the loss of the rich is doubly the loss of the poor, which 
 makes it lamentable ; but the class feeling revealed. It 
 shows us that the poor are arrayed against the rich. 
 They feel not that we are all citizens of one country, 
 members of one family, but classes, hostile in purpose, 
 divided in interest, antagonistic in sentiment. 
 
 It matters not how baseless such a feeling may be, 
 though baseless it is to every right-minded person. So 
 ciety could hardly exist in which the conditions of life 
 should be more equal, more equitable than in ours. 
 The obstacles presented by law, by government, to in 
 dividual growth, are well-nigh imperceptible. Personal 
 freedom is practically unbounded. Nature alone pre 
 scribes limitations. A man is poor because he lacks 
 ability to be rich, not because he lacks opportunity. 
 A man is ignorant because he has not the desire or the 
 will to learn, not because he has no chance to learn. A 
 few arc born to squalor and degradation ; but it is the 
 fault of their parents, not of national institutions. They 
 are so in spite of, not in consequence of, law and cus 
 tom. In our country the man of principle, industry, 
 thrift, intelligence, skill, is morally certain to be success 
 ful in business and respected in society. 
 
 Bat that the class which rejoices over destruction is 
 an unintelligent, unthrifty class, is not pertinent. The 
 danger lies in the fact that such a class exists. It is no 
 matter that their hostility is groundless. The point is 
 to do away with the hostility. It behooves the rich, 
 the well-to-do, the independent, not only to help the 
 weak to be strong, but to inspire them with friendliness
 
 * 
 70 TWELVE MILES FROM A LEMOX. 
 
 \vhile they are weak. The task is no easy one. The 
 ignorant classes in our country are, I suppose, chiefly 
 foreigners. Probably, of all the family servants in Chi 
 cago who turned upon their mistresses after the fire with 
 impertinence and insubordination, not one was a native- 
 born American. With these foreigners all the tradi 
 tions of the past are so different from ours, the blood of 
 their generations has made them so unlike us, that it 
 is difficult to come into the circle of their sympathies. 
 Difficult, but not impossible. 
 
 In this matter the wisest political economy is at one 
 with the highest religious principle. Religion no more 
 strenuously enjoins Christian brotherhood, than the safe 
 ty of the State demands social brotherhood. Caste is not 
 only unscriptural, but unsafe. He who throws down a 
 single barrier between rich and poor, he who originates 
 or cultivates between them sympathy of taste or feeling, 
 serves the State no less than humanity. The good work 
 is not to be wrought by sowing false principles and 
 pleasing fancies. Law is inexorable. You may tell the 
 suffering thousands of great cities that the accumulation 
 of property is a crime; that the bequeathing of proper 
 ty is a monstrosity ; that all property should be equal 
 ly divided among the population once in seven years. 
 You may send a ray of hope, a thrill of jo} r , into their 
 heavy hearts; but the darkness will shut down again. 
 For, first, your property is not going to be divided once 
 in seven years; and, secondly, if it were, there would 
 speedily be no property to be divided, and the last state 
 of these people would be worse than the first. Yet 
 there arc men who are reckoned friends of the poor,
 
 THE WONDERS AND WISDOM OF CARPENTRY. 71 
 
 and held in honor by the poor, on no stronger grounds 
 than this. "With idle fancies they lure on their victims 
 in the same evil path which has already led them into 
 sore distress. 
 
 Yet there are many ways in which, without trenching 
 on the great laws of social economy, a pleasant senti 
 ment can be engendered, and real benefit conferred. In 
 nature there is no grace. In revelation there is found 
 room for grace. We are not of nature, but of grace. 
 A great deal of our life is logic, but there is still some 
 thing left for speculation. Prompt wages, contracts ful 
 filled, supply the demands of justice ; but above and be 
 yond this lies the beautiful domain of human sympa 
 thy and unity. 
 
 A waste of ungainly gravel, standing between two 
 city buildings in Lemonia, had been changed into a 
 lovely garden-plot, bordered with turf, blooming with 
 flowers. I watched it with delight for many days, nev 
 er going past without receiving its smile of colors, its 
 breath of spices. But one morning my garden-spot 
 went back into the wilderness. A high board fence, 
 impassable, impenetrable, shut me out from my lilies 
 and roses shut out, along with me, the old woman with 
 the orange basket, the strawberry-man, the hand-organ 
 bands, the school children, all the little and big barefoot 
 boys and girls, all wanderers and wayfarers. I did not 
 murmur. But who is the gainer? Do the roses open 
 any wider, or are the buds any sweeter for their seclu 
 sion ? True, the owner can come out among his odors 
 and blossoms unseen of men, as he surely has the right 
 to do. But woe is me for the scores of weary feet that
 
 72 TWELVE MILES FJiOM A LEMON. 
 
 linger no more, and the wistful eyes that know not to 
 complain. I bethink me of a rich man who built him 
 self a stately house, and laid out spacious grounds, plant 
 ing them with trees, adorning them with shrubbery, en 
 livening them with fountains; but by no hedge nor 
 fence other than a slight and almost imperceptible 
 boundary-line would he be circumscribed withal. " I 
 don't want to be shut in," he would exclaim. "I want 
 to look out upon the world, and I \vant the world to 
 look in upon me. I want the workmen, going to their 
 morning work, the shop-girls and the office-boys, to see 
 iny grass and my trees, my fountains playing and my 
 birds singing. That is what I had them for." So the 
 city goes thronging by, and the milliner and mantua- 
 muker partake the dew and freshness of his morning; 
 and all the people own the beautiful hill, without 
 thought or care. 
 
 When the owner of the factory has paid wages to 
 the men, women, and children whom he employs, his 
 technical obligation to them ceases. Strictly speaking, 
 they are mere working machines; he is an employing 
 or paying machine. How they spend their time out of 
 his mills is, no affair of his. Whether they live com 
 fortably, respectably, virtuously whether they slave 
 or starve he has no responsibilitj'. The employed has 
 no right to look to the employer for any thing but the 
 money which he agreed to pay. 
 
 The reason why a strict adherence to the letter of this 
 law does not always work well in practice is that you 
 never can count on men as machines. Calculations al- 
 wavs fail unless men are reckoned as human, sensitive,
 
 THE WONDERS AXD WISDOM OF CARPENTRY. 7& 
 
 intellectual beings. Whether they be rich or poor, 
 learned or ignorant, they are all tuned to the same 
 key. The girl in the kitchen is very unlike her mis 
 tress in the parlor, but also very like her. Upon her 
 presses the same hunger for society, for mental activity, 
 for moral sympathy the same love of beauty, the same 
 affection for kindred, the same religious sentiment. As 
 in water face answereth to face, so the heart of man to 
 man, and woman to woman. 
 
 It is ignorance of this fact, or misapprehension of its 
 bearings, which goes far to prevent the kindly relations 
 which should exist between employer and employed 
 between persons of a common nature and common in 
 terests. If the untutored Irishwoman who exults over 
 the destruction of her mistress's house and properly 
 should see herself, in consequence, at once turned out 
 of house and home, and reduced to beggary, she would 
 exult no more. She would see that her mistress's loss 
 was her own. Society has become so compact and com 
 plicated that the loss is too minutely subdivided to at 
 tract Bridget's notice ; but it is none the less there, and 
 is just as truly hers as if she bore the whole brunt of it 
 on her broad shoulders. When the workman earns his 
 two, three, and four dollars a day, and sees his proprie 
 tor gathering in his tens and perhaps thousands a year, 
 it seems to him an unequal and impartial distribution 
 of awards. If the workman could suddenly be set in 
 the proprietor's place ; if he could see by what painful 
 steps the latter had toiled to his present elevation ; if he 
 could see what wide horizons had to be scanned, what 
 multitudinous features comprehended, remembered, re- 
 
 4
 
 74 TWELVE JULES FROM A LEMON. 
 
 produced; if he could feel the tumult of anxieties, the 
 magnitude of issues, the perplexity of agencies, the bit 
 terness of mistakes, the responsibility of losses, he would 
 see that the carriages and carpets of the proprietor are 
 but a very small part of his establishment. There is a 
 reverse side. 
 
 It is impossible for the subordinate to see things as 
 the principal sees them. If he could do so, he would be 
 the principal. But he can certainly be made to feel 
 that he is to his proprietor, as well as to himself, some 
 thing more than a machine. There are factory masters 
 who are not only the employers, but the personal friends 
 of their operatives. Without trenching upon their in 
 dependence or their personal dignity, the proprietor 
 does occupy toward them something of the attitude of 
 a patriarch, a sovereign. He provides commodious and 
 tasteful dwelling-houses. He beautifies his grounds, and 
 even his factories. He opens a reading-room and libra 
 ry, procures lecturers, visits schools, encourages con 
 certs, tableaux, and dramas. His family live in no re 
 mote sphere, apart and unapproachable, but they, as 
 well as he, dwell among their own people. They cast 
 in their lot with the daily toilers. His wife and daugh 
 ters know the community, their circumstances, their 
 character, their children. Not with condescension, but 
 with sympathy, they are always ready for advice, for 
 aid, for the right word in the right place. There is on 
 the other side no malice, no envy of superior position, 
 for it is seen to be only a source and centre of grace. 
 And of all that proprietor's investments in stocks and 
 lands, in roads and ships, none, I venture to say, bring
 
 THE WOSDERS AND WISDOM OF CARPEXTRT. 75 
 
 him in larger returns of happiness than the money and 
 time and thought he expends in enlarging and illustra 
 ting the lives of his workmen, over and above the wages 
 he has contracted to pay them. It is not a hard duty. 
 I might almost say it is no duty at all. It is a pleasure. 
 It makes life agreeable and interesting every day. 
 
 And all the while it is doing this for the individuals 
 immediately concerned, it is'helping to solve the great 
 problem of capital and labor ; it is helping to heal the 
 old feud between rich and poor. It is not only patri 
 otic, but cosmopolitan work; for no nation is alone con 
 cerned,. but the whole world. 
 
 So the unambitious and humble woman who makes 
 of her maid-of-all-work a friend is not only securing 
 good service, but is fighting her country's battles with 
 weapons of'peace. We hear in all directions the clash 
 of the conflict. Workmen and workwomen are strik 
 ing everywhere for higher wages and less work, with 
 what success it is impossible to say. Because a class of 
 mechanics wrest from their employers ten hours' wages 
 for eight hours' work, they are by no means successful. 
 Because an employer secures for two dollars work 
 which is worth thr.ee, he has not necessarily come off 
 conqueror. The laws of trade are as uncontrollable as 
 the laws of the sea. If either employer or employed 
 make an unnatural advantage in one direction, trade 
 will restore the balance by a corresponding disadvan 
 tage in another place. Only the philosopher may dis 
 cern the relation of cause and effect ; but every shoe 
 maker on his bench feels the effect, though he may call 
 it by another name.
 
 76 TWELVE MILES FROM A LEMON. 
 
 But he who has planted his fortune on the good-will 
 of his people has built his house upon a rock. Fire 
 and flood may rage around him, but he has property 
 which neither fire nor flood can sweep away. It is not 
 always an easy thing to overcome prejudice, to disarm 
 hostility, even to convince of friendliness ; but the work 
 is good work, missionary work, whatever event attend 
 it. It is a Christian service to be the benefactor of your 
 rough, ignorant servant, even if she remain to her life's 
 end unthankful and unholy. It is a good thing to pro 
 vide opportunities for reading to a community of young 
 men, even though they attribute it to nothing but self- 
 interest on your part I know no precept of the Bi 
 ble that says, Do good to them that appreciate it, and 
 benefit those who will thank you for it. But, as a 
 general thing, such services are in a degree appreciated. 
 Among our own American-born people they are intel 
 ligently and gratefully appreciated. A wise and gen 
 erous man at the head of a manufacturing people 
 holds a position which a prince might envy. More 
 over, I suppose that to God is a man responsible not 
 only for what he does, but for all that he might do. 
 Not only for his achievements, but his opportunities, 
 shall a man give account in the Day of Judgment. We 
 are answerable for all those with whom we are brought 
 in contact, and exactly in proportion to the closeness of 
 the contact. Of this each must be his own judge. No 
 rule can be laid down. It is only to feel human broth 
 erhood. 
 
 I remember, in a gay company, an amusing story was 
 tuld of a man, unfamiliar with the usages of society,
 
 THE WONDERS AND WISDOM OF CARPENTRY. 77 
 
 who mistook the finger-bowls for goblets. It was no 
 violent or stupid error. There is nothing in the ap 
 pearance of either to reveal its mission to the unin 
 spired mind. But one gentleman, the gayest of the 
 gay, exclaimed quickly and sincerely, " Oh ! that was 
 too bad; because some time he will find it out, and be 
 extremely mortified." 
 
 The quickness of apprehension and generosity of feel 
 ing which enable you on the instant to " put yourself 
 in his place" are the surest guides to wise and kindly 
 action toward others. It is for the rich, the learned, the 
 great, not to isolate themselves in their wealth, their 
 enjoyment, even their cares; but to live an open and 
 bountiful life ; to hold themselves in harmony and sym 
 pathy with their kind ; to soothe sensitiveness, and al 
 lay suspicion, and disarm hostility, even though all may 
 be unreasonable; to disseminate light to the darkened 
 and rest to the heavy-laden ; to use their superiority, 
 of whatever sort, for the emolument of the less favored, 
 and not simply for their own upbuilding; to bring 
 with their money and their power peace on earth, good 
 will to men. 
 
 Nobody has a right to forbid the proprietor of real 
 estate to erect a fence as high as Hainan's gallows. He 
 earned his money, or he inherited it; he, at least, owns 
 it, and he shall appropriate it as he chooses. If he will 
 to seclude himself from his kind, there is none to say 
 hirn nay. This is logical ; but, behind the logic, how 
 came he by the qualities that accumulate fortune? He 
 is thrifty, but whence came his thrift? He practiced 
 wise and wide self-denial when his now poverty-stricken
 
 78 TWELVE MILES FROM A 
 
 neighbor was indulging in riotous and ruinous prodi 
 gality. But bow came he by that lofty power of self- 
 denial ? Where did he get those eyes, which saw the 
 end from the beginning? Whence those high traits 
 independence, self-reliance, moderation in all things, 
 quick perception, ready judgment which have made 
 him a master among men, while his neighbor walks 
 wavering and feeble, a servant of servants unto his 
 brethren ? These are questions which no man can an 
 swer. He inherited his characteristics from his ances 
 tors, but did he choose his ancestors? A man carves 
 his own fortunes, as he proudly asserts, but the fine eye 
 for form and the clever hand for skill these he did not 
 make. At most, these he only trained. I do not say 
 that, legally, he owes aught to his weaker brethren ; 
 but will he not gladly, as an instinctive thank-offering, 
 bestow upon them as much as possible of all that his 
 powers have brought him? He had somewhat call 
 it talent, genius, perseverance, self-control, sagacity 
 which enabled him to watch and work and wait, which 
 has brought him at length fame and fortune. To bid 
 him now divide his goods among the people is to lay 
 the axe at the root of all healthy trees. But if he, thank 
 ful for his great endowments, and filled with love to his 
 kind, shall long to have all men rejoice in his light ; if 
 he seek that his prosperity shall be the good luck of 
 all; if he fervently desire that they shall share in his 
 rewards who could not share in his toil ; if his love 
 shall wisely dispense what his wisdom concentrated; if 
 his great question be, not how shall he segregate, but 
 how communicate himself- why, then, I say, happy is
 
 THE WONDERS AND WISDOM OF CARPENTRY. 79 
 
 that man. He is a radiating centre of life and joy. He 
 is rich, but be binds to himself the poor by indissoluble 
 bonds. So far as he is known and comprehended, he 
 is beloved. All his character and influence are given, 
 unconsciously perhaps, but effectively, to the healing of 
 the great feud between high and low. lie does not 
 waste time in sickly patronage, in sentimental charity, 
 in namby-pamby attitudinizing; but is his hearty, hon 
 est, cheery self, and desires every man to be the same. 
 He strengthens like the sun by his own free and natural 
 shining. lie strengthens not so much by supplying 
 outward prop as inward power. It is not what he be 
 stows in charity, but what he stimulates by sympathy 
 and sustains by inspiration. It is not hard for this rich 
 man to enter the kingdom of Heaven. He is there al 
 ready, for -the kingdom of God is within him. And of 
 such is that kingdom.
 
 80 TWELVE MILES FROM A LEMON. 
 
 V. 
 
 SCIENCE, PURE AND PRACTICAL. 
 
 THERE is one class of men to whom every one seems 
 inclined to give whatever they ask, and that is the men 
 of pure science. Every one is aware that Professor 
 Pierce stands at the head of all living mathematics It 
 is not necessary to know what he is up to. Probably 
 not a dozen people in the world do know. But no one 
 has any doubt that mathematics is a thoroughly inno 
 cent calling. You open his book which represents the 
 last results that his science has yet reached, and you see 
 a manuscript volnme that looks very much like the ei- 
 phering-books which the boys and girls used to make 
 in the village schools. You learn to your astonishment 
 that the product of two factorially homogeneous ex 
 pressions which does not vanish, is itself factorialiy 
 homogeneous, and its faciend name is the same with 
 that of its facient, while its facient name is the same 
 with that of its faciend. You arc, of course, startled by 
 this assertion, but you are somewhat soothed at seeing 
 it followed up only by common-looking "sums" in sim 
 ple addition, agreeably diversified by the childish game 
 of " tit-tat-tay," or an occasional inoffensive equation. 
 As you turn leaf after leaf, and reflect that the Presi 
 dent and all his Cabinet, that the General Court of Mas 
 sachusetts, that not even Caleb Gushing knows enough
 
 SCIENCE, PURE AXD PRACTICAL. SI 
 
 I do not say to write such a book, but so much as 
 to read it after it is written you can only exclaim, 
 Allah il Allah! The glory of a nation which can pro 
 duce a man who can produce a book that nobody can 
 read ! Now, when such a man says to Congress, " I 
 wish to ascertain what the results will be if K 2 = ; 
 Give me an appropriation for that purpose," all that 
 Congress need reply is, " How large an appropriation ?" 
 
 " Fifty thousand dollars," says my mathematician, for 
 instance; and is he riot worthy of it? When Professor 
 Agassiz says, " In the centre of the South American 
 wilderness, far up the Amazon, I suspect there is a fish 
 an eighth of a millionth of an inch long, which I have 
 never seen, and which, if he is the beast I take him to 
 be, will -fill the gap that yawns in my ichthyological 
 chain ; will you please send me thither in a squadron?" 
 we would have him sent instantly, horse, foot, and dra 
 goons. To be sure, most of us would not know that 
 fish-bone from any plebeian trout's anatomy, and can 
 not see in the least of what consequence it is whether 
 K 3 equals or not; but that is the beauty of it. In a 
 country so bent as ours on material, tangible products, 
 it is a wholesome corrective to have here and there a 
 man who loves a fish for the fish's own sake, and not 
 for its weight at the fish-flakes or its profits at the pro 
 vision stores. We shall never pre-empt the North Pole 
 if we find it, but it is pleasant to know that there is a 
 North Pole. Commerce can serve itself very little of 
 the North-west Passage, but much is gained when we 
 have learned that we can not use it. 
 
 And, after all, the uselessness of scientific research is
 
 82 TWELVE MILES FROM A LEMON. 
 
 but a pleasing dream. In fact, the results of science 
 seem to be the basis of art. You may scorn Professor 
 Agassiz's fishes, but they will be sure to rise up in judg 
 ment against you. You may give the cold shoulder to 
 Professor Pierce's K 3 and O's, but it is an algebraical 
 .romance. Stars rise and set, suns fire and fade, accord 
 ing to those inflexible little letters. Of no consequence 
 whether K" does or does not equal O ! Why, if K" 
 were greater than O, yonder madcap of a comet, that is 
 content now to give us a frisky flirt with his tail, would 
 let drive at us head first, and shoot through us like a 
 bullet, sending the wounded earth staggering up against 
 Mars, which, in -its turn, would fall into Jupiter, which 
 would at once break up the rings of Saturn, like any 
 honest Internal Kevenue Commissioner; or perhaps the 
 earth would shatter into ten thousand little pocket 
 earths, scampering around among the dignified planets 
 like snow-flakes in a whirlwind; and then what be 
 comes of your appropriation bills? No, my country 
 men, unless you want the whole solar system to go to 
 pieces, you will do well to give Professor Pierce, and 
 nil other wise men, ample room and verge enough to 
 cipher out their O K's in peace and quietness. 
 
 They say that men. of science have their little tiffs 
 like men of nescience. It is difficult to believe it. Im 
 agine the provocation that could cause hot blood over a 
 factorially homogeneous idemfaciend, vanishing at that! 
 Fancy a falling out between the jaw of an ichthyosaurus 
 and the thigh-bone of a megatherium ! And how un 
 wise to let your angry passions rise over the proprietor 
 ship of any discovery, when your Great Falls hiero-
 
 SCIENCE, PURE AXD PRACTICAL. gg 
 
 glyphs were photographed off a shingle in Philadelphia, 
 and your Cardiff Giant was buried between two days! 
 Surely science does not tend to petty disputations. She 
 goes off on a false scent sometimes, but her search is al 
 ways for truth. She deals with realities. She explores 
 the eternal records. All things of to-day are flitting 
 compared with the ages whose trace she seeks with un 
 tiring eye. Nothing is unimportant, for the little as 
 well as the great has left its foot-prints in the rocks. 
 The vestiges of creation are the patter of the rain-drops 
 as well as the tread of leviathan. Selfishness and small- 
 ness are lost in this noble pursuit of the great, the van 
 ished, the silent unknown. 
 
 And yet when Paul so heartily counsels Timothy to 
 avoid profane and vain babblings, and oppositions of 
 science falsely so called, the unregenerate heart within 
 us thrills responsive in spite of our loyalty to Professor 
 Pierce. Remembering how much we have painfully 
 learned, only to be required painfully to unlearn, what 
 would be left, we dubiously ask, if out of our science 
 should be taken all that which is falsely so called. 
 
 "Why does the bill hit upon ninety-five millions?" 
 asked one Representative of his neighbor, when Con 
 gress was discussing a bill for the Extension of the Cur 
 rency. 
 
 " I don't know," was the reply, " unless because the 
 earth is ninety -five millions of miles from the sun dol 
 lar a mile." 
 
 Is not a great deal of our scientific lore similarly val 
 uable? The ocean, say the wise men, grows denser and 
 denser the deeper you dive, till it upbears every burden,
 
 84 TWELVE MILES FROM A LEXON. 
 
 and the lost ships and the dead men sink no more, but 
 lie unresting on its unquiet bosom. And when you 
 have assimilated and survived the horror of this awful 
 sepulchre, another prophet arises, and proclaims and 
 proves that as the ocean grows more dense, compressed 
 are all things cast into its depths. So the ships go down 
 to the bottom of the sea, and the dead men lie tranquil 
 ly in coral caverns and grottoes more beautiful than art 
 can sculpture, and there He giveth his beloved sleep. 
 Under the lead of the wise men, we have peopled all 
 the whirling worlds. We have aimed at the moon with 
 our telescopes we have even measured out to the 
 moon-men the size of the smallest tower we would con 
 descend to look at, and have told them where to place 
 it if they wish us to see it. And now, lo! the moon- 
 men have the laugh on us, for, say the astronomers, they 
 struck their tents ages ago as silently as Washington 
 stole away from Long Island, and left only a scarred, 
 sullen, deserted, irreparable ruin, which we have all this 
 time been staring at as the happy home of our nearest 
 neighbors ! 
 
 But perhaps the astronomers of the next age will 
 bring them back again ! 
 
 In the warm and pleasant weather, lingering under 
 the apple-trees, that have busily and cheerfully repaired 
 the ravages of the canker-worm ; lounging on the thick 
 and verdant turf, which in mid-August is green with the 
 greenness of June; watching between the leaves, scarce 
 astir, the deep blue sky from which the swift, incessant 
 lightning has burned every speck of vapor, every trace 
 of impurity, we are easily won over to a fierce and sav-
 
 SCIENCE, fUJtE AND PRACTICAL. 85 
 
 age summer. But fierce and savage some summers are, 
 though on this sunny noonday it roars us so gently 
 that we forget how angrily storms may thunder along 
 the months, rumbling, rattling, crashing, day and night. 
 Who can unfold the trouble in the skies ? If a change 
 is accomplishing in the surface of the sun, do the sun- 
 dwellers know it? How much alteration can the spheres 
 stand without suffering? We have been all our lifetime 
 subject to bondage, through fear of the comets that were 
 careering through the heavens ; and now, it seems, we 
 have been hit a thousand times, and never knew it ! A 
 saucy comet whioks its tail in our faces, and we do not 
 so much as wince. It dashes head foremost against the 
 steady-going earth, and we only say, " What a lovely 
 haze of Helvellyn veils the hills to-day !" Nay, the poor 
 comet, the wild water-sprite, the nnsouled Undine of the 
 skies, fails and falters and falls to pieces, and we feel no 
 shudder. The comet that was expected does not ap 
 pear, a few little meteors flash, a red-hot stone or two 
 drops upon our globe that is all we know. Have a 
 thousand such comets fallen into the fiery envelope of 
 the sun ? Have any wandering worlds finally given up 
 searching far their lost way, and dropped exhausted into 
 the photosphere, adding to the flame that warms our 
 world? Certainly something has stirred the solar fire. 
 We know it, if the sun-folk are not aware. If that cen 
 tral orb be indeed the heaven of heavens, its happy 
 denizens feel no disturbance. But even if it be, like 
 ours, the residence of a race that is as yet in an early 
 stage of development, perhaps they dw'ell securely on 
 that black inner sun which peeps here and there through
 
 86 TWELVE MILES F120JT A LEMOX. 
 
 the radiance, and which we call sun-spots. Does the 
 photosphere turn to them its shady side, or are they so 
 organized as to bask in the photosphere just as we do, 
 only a little farther off? We love their sunshine nine 
 ty-five millions of miles away. Perhaps they take their 
 sun-baths at arms-length. 
 
 But we may add in an aside, they must be more easi 
 ly suited than we. For years that part of the heavenly 
 system which is called New England has suffered from 
 drought. When the celestial influences interfere with 
 my butter-box, I know it. Long time the cry has been : 
 ''Can't make much butter this year. Pastures so dry, 
 cows all dry up." Yesterday, in the drenching rain, 
 came the familiar chant : " Can't make much butter this 
 year" (I pricked up my ears). "So much wet, can't 
 get no cream on the milk !" 
 
 Heave your magnificent and magnesian billows, oh! 
 tumultuous and wrathful sun; fire us up to scorching 
 point, cool us with sheets of rain, purify us with your 
 lightnings, and deafen us with your thunders; but do 
 not flatter yourself that you can conciliate a bold yeo 
 manry, our country's pride. We have cut our eye- 
 teeth, and are not to be cajoled by a thunder-shower. 
 Nevertheless, I observe that, while the earth remaineth, 
 whatever becomes of seed-time and harvest, whether the 
 bow be set in the cloud or whether there's no rain left 
 in heaven, so sure as Aurora scatters the humid shad 
 ows from the skies, and Saturday rises with the first 
 Eous, so sure comes my butter, yellow and sweet and 
 undiminished. 
 
 But the thunder-showers are terrific. If we were liv-
 
 SCIENCE, PUKE AXD PRACTICAL. 87 
 
 ing in Central America, we should expect lizards, and 
 centipedes, and tornadoes, and all Central American 
 ways and weathers. In the temperate zone we count 
 on temperance, and have not schooled ourselves for such 
 license of the heavens. A moderate and reasonable tem 
 pest, corning on a sultry afternoon, sending its compli 
 ments seasonably, and clearing into a splendid sunset 
 and a starry evening this we make up our minds to, 
 and encounter with fortitude ; but to have a cloud drop 
 down plump on your apple-trees, stay there for hours, 
 go pop, pop, pop, like a Brobdignagian pistol, the 
 whole time, then disentangle itself, make as if it would 
 sail away, and so lure you to sleep, only in an hour to 
 be awakened by a rumble and a grumble, and find that 
 rogue of. a cloud back again in your apple-trees, pop, 
 pop, popping his pistol, and setting your room alight 
 with red-and-blue fire for a week at a time why, that 
 is another thing! 
 
 It is all very easy to take a spectroscope and tell what 
 the universe is made of, which nobody can deny. You 
 may speak great swelling words of progress, and ex 
 pound the thunder-storms in sesquipedalian dialect, dis 
 turb the photosphere, and throw up oceans of magne 
 sium around the sun, to account for our thermometer 
 gone mad. You may announce as authoritatively as 
 you please that the smallest spot on the. sun is fifty bill 
 ions of miles in diameter, or that Neptune consists chief 
 ly of hydrocianic acid, and I can only make great eyes 
 at you, and get my living by day's work all the same, 
 while you go up and down in the newspapers for a sa- 
 tj become an honorary member of all the learned
 
 88 TWELVE MILES FROM A LEMOX. 
 
 societies, and wag a tail to your name twenty letters 
 long. But when it comes to practical availability, it is 
 your turn to make great eyes. When leaving the stars 
 and the gases, central fires anil supreme ether, we de 
 scend into the region of human life and observation, sci 
 ence shows a frightful tendency to wabble. If she can not 
 invent a lightning-rod strong enough to keep us from 
 being thunderstruck, and if we are to have our houses 
 burned over our heads in broad daylight by the unkno\vu 
 incendiaries of the spheres, what has she to boast of? 
 
 The main fact we all know. Lightning will follow 
 the path of least resistance. It is a lazy fellow, for all 
 its wild ways. It is no pioneer, and never goes off in 
 a tangent unless obliged to do so. If, then, you will 
 make for it a highway from the waters which are above 
 the firmament to the waters which are under the fir 
 mament, you may -reckon on its peaceful transit. But 
 practically there are so many toll-gates on this turnpike 
 that it amounts to a closed road. If the iron track 
 stops short of the nether waters, you are but drawing 
 the lightning on your own head. Nay, even a fulling 
 leaf, they tell us, lodged against the rod, will throw the 
 electric train from the track, to scatter ruin through the 
 house. So it stands: 
 
 1. A perfect lightning-rod is a perfect safeguard. 
 
 2. A perfect.lightning-rod is next to an impossibility. 
 
 3. An imperfect lightning-rod invites the fluid. Oh ! 
 where shall rest be found? 
 
 In the meeting-house, says the man of science; but 
 ho is also a clergyman, and his testimony is without 
 weight, because under bias. He says that churches are
 
 SCIENCE, PURE AND PRACTICAL. 89 
 
 never struck; and, when accused of "shop," explains 
 that the spires act as conductors, and that high houses 
 in thickly-settled cities are always exempt. I question 
 his premises; but the world is wide, and I can not at 
 this moment disprove his negative. I know there was 
 once a village set on a rock, and the professor of science 
 made allegation that it never had been, and never could, 
 would, or should be thunderstruck, by reason of its 
 position ; and before the young summer was old, down 
 came a thunder-bolt and shivered his theory to atoms. 
 
 Let the lightning play its fantastic tricks, says an ig 
 norant but devout believer; we shall yet discover its 
 secret. The world long suspected itself to be going 
 round. It was left for our later days to prove it by the 
 greater wear of the eastern rail on all railroads running 
 north and south. As the earth is constantly whirling 
 from west to -east, of course it throws the train more 
 heavily on the eastern rail, and Wisdom is justified of 
 her children. 
 
 But meanwhile the unwearied lightning gleams on, 
 just as fresh each day as if it were then flashing its 
 first fury. And the violently fearsome betake them 
 selves to feather-beds, and fall ill with irresistible ter 
 ror ; and the less affected lie on sofas, and try to read ; 
 and even the dreadnaughts sit quietly and count one, 
 two, three between the flash and the report; and, just 
 as you begin to think the worst is over, and Faint-heart 
 ventures to leave the feather-bed and gaze wistfully 
 from the window for light in the west, flash go the skies 
 again, crack goes the pistol, and back darts the deer to 
 her trusted covert.
 
 90 TWELVE MILES FROM A LEMON. 
 
 I Lave a chimney which I would fain convert into a 
 cistern, and I call in vain upon the learned, far and 
 near, to answer rne the simple question : How many 
 cisterns of water can there be in a box as big as a brick 
 chimney torn down ? Response is none, for the ques 
 tion is a practical one. You can measure the sun, hit 
 or miss. A few millions of miles, more or less, will 
 never be detected; but if my water-works run dry, ruin 
 and disgrace impend. You do well not to commit 
 yourself. 
 
 So, as the farmer said to his boys, I will even try it 
 myself. We boast of our educational facilities in Amer 
 ica, nor need we fear the bigot's rule while near the 
 church spire stands the school, and all that. I am an 
 American citizen, and surely 1 ought to be able to ci 
 pher out a cistern with the bricks before me. I wanted 
 it eight feet long, eight feet wide, and six feet deep. 
 But then came a drought, and I deepened it two feet. 
 Then, as the drought grew sore, I extended my cistern 
 in my mind's eye, Horatio, two feet in all directions, 
 and then the man came and said he made them round 
 after the similitude of a pot. Very well. In our en 
 lightened age and free country, we ought not to find it 
 impossible to put a round man in a square place, and 
 the problem was to make a round cistern big enough to 
 hold ten feet long, ten feet wide, and ten feet deep. 
 Come up, now, common schools, free institutions, man 
 hood suffrage, and tell me how big it must be. I take 
 down Greenleaf's arithmetic. Seventeen hundred and 
 twenty-eight inches make one foot. Plain sailing. Is 
 there any thing anywhere that tells how many gallons
 
 SCIENCE, PURE AND PRACTICAL. 91 
 
 to a foot? Yes, ale gallon, two hundred and eighty- 
 two; wine gallon, two hundred and thirty-one. But 
 my cistern is not to hold ale, and I am no Duke of 
 Clarence to drown myself in Malmsey wine. What I 
 want to know is how many gallons of water can I get 
 into my round cistern ten feet square, and Greenleaf 
 does not know; and as for making a globe out of a 
 cube, Greenleaf stares at it precisely as Sam Weller 
 stared at his father in the court-room that is, he looks 
 the other way. You would think he never heard of a 
 cube or a globe. 
 
 The ages of hapless infancy that we have all lavished 
 on arithmetic might well draw tears such as angels 
 weep, and the very first time in my life that arithmetic 
 had an opportunity to be of use to me, it all dropped 
 apart. It is an ingenious enough science to torment 
 innocent and helpless children with, but it can not build 
 a cistern. I must toss my mathematics aside, lay off 
 my garland and singing robes, go down meekly to my 
 waiting workmen, and, instead of the scientific formula 
 with which I had intended to awe them, say like a 
 dullard, " Keep digging till you have made a hole big 
 enough to put all the bricks in out of the chimney, 
 which is a hundred and fifty years old, and large in 
 proportion." 
 
 And I have a beautiful cistern, no thanks to science, 
 but there is nobody in the heavens above, or the earth 
 beneath, or the waters under the earth, not even the 
 men that made it, who can tell how large it is. With 
 Universities, and Smithsonians, and Polytechnic Insti 
 tutes in full blast, the only way to measure off your cis-
 
 92 TWELVE MILES FROM A LEMOX. 
 
 tern is to build a cbimne} 7 ", and then knock it down and 
 count the bricks. And we prate of Science ! 
 
 But Paul and I add under our breath, " Falsely so 
 called." 
 
 I should like- to know, too, if there is any person 
 within the memory of men still living who has not 
 supped full of the horrors resulting from using lead 
 pipes. If we are to believe the books, Eve's apple was 
 an innocent and harmless thing compared with a bit of 
 lead pipe. Disease dwelt in the outer darkness till she 
 was conducted into our world through a lead pipe. 
 Science can not build me a cistern, but she can poison 
 all the pleasure to be derived from it. Long ago we 
 heard and received into devout and believing hearts all 
 the scaring stories, and rejoiced in our old-fashioned but 
 wooden pump, and ascribed our vigor and health to 
 pure, fresh water, till one day the pump was taken up 
 to be mended, and lo, like Milton's Sin, it was no wood 
 en pump at all, but only seemed wooden to the floor 
 and fair, but ended foul, in a lead pipe ! 
 
 So then, after ascertaining that in spite of years of 
 poisoning we still lived, the old pump was thrown aside 
 and a new one bought, with galvanized iron pipe, de 
 vised, commended, and recommended by wise men of 
 the East as safe and salubrious. Ko rust could corrode 
 it nor poison distill from it, and we drank that our souls 
 might live. Now comes up Science again with a som 
 ersault, as cheery as if she had never missed the mark, 
 and warns us if there is any one thing more deleteri 
 ous and deadly than anpther it is galvanized iron, for 
 whereas ordinarily the poison is an incident to the pipe,
 
 SCIENCE, PUJIE AND PRACTICAL. 93 
 
 this pipe sets to work with double forces to make poi 
 son. Go to. We be all dead men. 
 
 "But oh I" mouths Science, with no accession of mod 
 esty, " we have discovered something altogether won 
 derful. Lead is fatal and galvanized iron deadly, but 
 if you will fill lead pipes with the warm, concentrated 
 solution of sulphide of sodium till it forms an insoluble 
 sulphide of lead, they will be perfectly harmless." 
 
 They will, will they? For how long? By day after 
 to-morrow you would set us all digging out the insolu 
 ble sulphide of lead as the" arch-poison of the whole 
 solar and human system. Away with your pipes and 
 your poisons, and let us go back to the old oaken 
 bucket that has no nonsense about it. I suppose one 
 can swallow a rope if he likes and nobody hurt. Or 
 will you tell us presently that the combination of the 
 hempenate of oakum with the hydrogen of water forms 
 a hyper-hempehj'drate utterly destructive to the cere 
 bral tissues, the cordic ganglia, and the body politic gen 
 erally ? 
 
 When Science knows her own mind, it will be time 
 enough for her to des-matize about our bodies. Until 
 
 o o 
 
 then, we of the Ignorami may as well rest assured that 
 men have died and worms have eaten them, but not for 
 lead, and cultivate the cheerful spirit of that incredulous 
 mother in a certain rural Israel, who, when condoled 
 with for a supposed liver complaint, replied heartily, 
 " I don't know but my liver and my lights is both gone ; 
 but if they be I don't know it!"
 
 94 TWELVE MILES FROM A LEMOX. 
 
 VI. 
 
 AMERICAN INVENTION'S. 
 
 THERE lives a man, swollen with spiritual pride, who 
 has traveled along my water-pipes deep down into the 
 valley of humiliation. From the beginning he looked 
 with the calm, exasperating eye of supercilious scorn 
 upon plans and accomplishments. " Water-works are 
 vanity and vexation of spirit," was the burden of his 
 song. "A house with modern improvements is the 
 Tantalus of civilization. You bought a bread-kneader 
 once, and it took longer to clean, the thing, after you 
 had used it, than it did to knead and bake the bread." 
 
 "No, Hassan, I only looked at it and wanted to buy 
 it, but did not, because }*ou ridiculed it so." 
 
 "You will find that it will cost about as much, in 
 care and money, to keep }-our hydraulics going as it 
 will to keep a horse. There will always be something 
 bursting, or something clogged, or something running 
 over, or something giving out. You will have to watch 
 it as closely as a two-year old baby ; and your attempt 
 to fetch water out of thtft rock into this house will be 
 like running two miles to catch a horse to ride one. I 
 am not surprised at your determination to ruin your 
 self, but I am surprised that you show no originality in 
 the mode. You are simply ruining yourself, precisely 
 as thousands have done before vou."
 
 AMERICAN INVENTIONS. 95 
 
 " What a throng of many words, my friend Hassan, 
 drunk with beer, hast thou spoken," says Beowalf, in 
 the old Saxon poem. 
 
 But when the work was done, when this unhappy 
 man was bidden to mark how wisely I had guarded 
 against frost and famine, against surplus and check, 
 how winsomely Undine was to be my nimble hand 
 maiden, and how deftly fire and water had been pressed 
 into my service oh! then did not he hang back and 
 seek to change the subject, and look over his shoulder 
 for something to create a diversion? A man does so 
 hate to give in ! And when the sharp winter came 
 upon us like a strong man armed, and I rose in the 
 morning to find an icicle protruding from every little 
 silver pipe,- 1 confess I had misgivings myself; but as 
 siduous nursing, with flannels and hot water, soon re 
 moved the difficulty, and care and sagacity prevented 
 its recurrence ; and Hassan the Turk is ready to gnaw 
 his heart out with remorse, because nothing has occurred 
 to justify his gloomy forebodings, or to make my sj's- 
 tem of irrigation any thing but an unmitigated and, 
 after the first outlay, an inexpensive blessing. Let no 
 body be deterred from bringing water into his house 
 by fears of failure and perplexity. You might just 
 as well stop the circulation of blood in the body be 
 cause it is subject to derangement, as to refuse the circu 
 lation of water in the house because now and then a pipe 
 overflows, and your frescoes are ruined. Good work 
 men will prevent such accident; but if they can not, 
 give up your frescoes; do not give up your life-blood. 
 When I see the farm-houses, the dairies, the kitchens,
 
 96 TWELVE MILES FROM A LEMOX. 
 
 whose only source of supply is the well in the yard or 
 the hogshead at the backdoor, and think how life would 
 be lengthened and sweetened if all this heavy, and hard, 
 and slow water-bringing could be supplanted by the 
 turn of a screw, I wonder that we do not manage 
 to introduce it somehow into our marriage contracts. 
 What an increase of vital force would ensue ; what a 
 diminished demand for divorce; what a strengthening 
 and upbuilding of the family baud, if a girl should 
 refuse to marry until there was an inexhaustible sup 
 ply of water, at least in the kitchen. A house without 
 water- works ought to be considered as incomplete as a 
 house without doors, and as incomplete in the country 
 as in the city. 
 
 It is said that women can not invent, even in matters 
 that concern themselves. Not only the cotton-gin, but 
 the sewing-machine is the device of the masculine brain. 
 Man has to plan the very tools with which women does 
 her work. Very likely. And after he has planned 
 them, he ought to use them. The very fact that a man 
 invented the flat-iron is prima facie evidence that he 
 ought to do the ironing. " Labor," Mr. Wendell Phillips 
 is reported to have said, "is entitled to all it creates;" 
 let labor, then, run its own sewing-machines and turn 
 its own mangles. Influence is greater than invention; 
 and in in3uence women are as strong as men. Thus I 
 admire the inventions of men on the nil admirari prin 
 ciple. It is a good thing for a man to do, but it does 
 not bring him up to the level of a woman. Having in 
 vented all, he is but an unprofitable servant, and has 
 not done half that which it is his duty to do. Still I
 
 AMERICAN INVENTION'S. 97 
 
 am glad he has done something. And when skill and 
 ingenuity are united with modesty, they form a com 
 bination, and produce a result which the highest need 
 not scorn. 
 
 "I have got something at home I should like to put 
 up in your kitchen, before your carpenters are through," 
 said my friend the Churchman. I smiled benignly, not 
 having the smallest premonition that I was entertaining 
 an angel unawares. But it was even so. The "some 
 thing" proved to be an apotheosized clothes-horse, "the 
 Dryad, "as it has been christened by Hassan the Turk. 
 Every one knows the old-time clothes-horse that stood 
 by the kitchen stove, cumbrous, and always in the way. 
 The Dryad consists of three long poles, an assortment 
 of wheels and pulleys, a cord and tassels, a porcelain 
 knob, a gold ring, and a bracket or two. The greater 
 part of it is at the ceiling. When it is not in use, it is 
 all at the ceiling, except the knob, and ring, and cord, 
 and tassels, which cheerfully ornament the window. 
 When the clothes are ready to be placed upon it, the 
 ring is slipped from the knob, and the Dryad glides 
 .gracefully down within reach. A little pull on the 
 cords, and she glides gracefully back to her native 
 skies, bearing her snowy blossoms. There they bloom 
 on high till they are ready to be plucked for the bu 
 reau drawers, and in the warm air of those upper re 
 gions their dampness is won away or ever you are 
 aware, and they can be removed so speedily that there 
 is small chance of spot, or stain, or smoke ; nor can the 
 frisking kitten, by never so great leaps, pull the clear 
 starched muslin?, for playthings, to the floor; nor do 
 
 5
 
 98 TWELVE MILES FROM A LEMON. 
 
 your Turks ever run against them in the dark; and 
 moreover, it is always there ready to your hand. As 
 its value gradually dawned upon me, I wondered I had 
 never seen one before, and that all the kitchens of the 
 world were not supplied with what no gentleman's 
 library should be without. While I was musing, the 
 fire burned, and I summoned the Churchman, and ask 
 ed him, 
 
 " Where did you get that Dryad?" 
 
 Why, it was one he had at home. 
 
 " But where did you get it ? Where did you buy it? 
 Who made it? Where does the sun arise on such an 
 other?" 
 
 Well, the man hesitated, and coughed, and finally 
 owned to having invented it himself! 
 
 The trouble with my town is its modest}*. We are 
 brimful of talent, but we hide it under a bushel. Gov 
 ernors come down here, and by quietly using their eyes, 
 learn how to govern. The world has hitherto dragged 
 its stones on a drag. We elevate our drag, depending 
 it from a pair of old wheels in front, and resting it on 
 trucks behind, and save great stores of power; but we 
 do not say any thing about it. We simply do it, and 
 men who have been parading their scientific mechanics 
 all their life look at us and are astonished. When our 
 fellow-countrymen entreat us to serve them in public 
 offices, we leave our Happy Valley, take up the cross and 
 go, but we do not run around electioneering. When 
 a new-comer, unaware of our delicacies and dignities, 
 and eager to secure us for the country, and perhaps, 
 also, to evince his own zeal and friendliness, once
 
 AMERICAN INVENTIONS. 99 
 
 brought down from the great city its city ways, and 
 posted at night, by the moon's pale beams, a score of 
 gigantic handbills, and under the rising sun all the 
 trees blossomed in frantic adjurations 
 
 " VOTE FOR MR. BBOWN 
 
 For Secretary of State ; 
 
 VOTE FOR MR. JOXES 
 
 For Secretary of the Treasury," 
 
 the consternation of Messrs. Brown and Jones was ex 
 treme. Ask people to vote for us! Never! We will 
 be the people's spontaneous choice, or we will not be 
 the people's at all! and down came the offending hand 
 bills from the unconscious trees as swiftly and as stealth 
 ily as if they had been the proofs of a forgery. Wo 
 thank you for your friendliness, sweet friends, but do 
 not compromise our dignity. 
 
 And here comes another gen i as, cheating the world 
 by his miserable modest}'. lie has devised a machine 
 which every one admires, but he has no agent, never 
 advertises it, takes no measure whatever to introduce it 
 to a v/aiting world. If I insist upon having one for a 
 friend, he thinks there is a man in Boston who had one 
 in his shop some years ago, and he may have it on hand 
 yet. The man in Boston blithely brings out various 
 machines, from a clothes-line to a hat -rack, and pro 
 nounces each one, successively, to be the Dryad. He 
 does not even remember how the creature looks, but is 
 ready to take oath to any thing for the sake of selling 
 off his stock. But, happily, I have seen a Dryad, and 
 can not be deceived into accepting a dust-brush. The
 
 100 TWL'LVE MILES FROM A LEMOX. 
 
 Churchman, under strong pressure, finally thinks lie 
 may have separate pieces enough in his barn to con 
 struct a whole machine, so I succeed in exporting one; 
 and the family are so pleased with it that they are cur 
 rently reported to hang the cat and kittens on it when 
 they have been out in the rain. But an ordinary per 
 son, with such an invention, would make a fortune, 
 build houses, be elected mayor of the metropolis, and 
 become a candidate for States' Prison in six months. 
 
 In building a house, in founding a home, there are 
 two things wherein it is not well to economize light 
 and heat It is not how little you can be comfortable 
 with, but how much } r ou can secure. You may argue 
 that you occupy but one or two rooms, and these alone 
 need be lighted. But immediately you want a book, a 
 picture, a bit of work that is in some dark and distant 
 apartment, and the genial current of your soul is frozen. 
 lie who reasons is lost. There is no safety but in hav 
 ing your whole house alight and aglow. The evening 
 radiance shall be as pervading as the broad and lavish 
 sunshine. It has its own charm. Under its mild and 
 mellow spell you feel yourself a point of light in a dark 
 world a tiny, fixed star, self-luminous and illumina 
 ting. The faces on the wall grow more benign and 
 sympathetic. They are no longer pictures, but souls, 
 astir with love and memory. All familiar colors of the 
 day blend deep and rich in the new lights and shadows. 
 Even hard outlines soften into grace. Friendliness be 
 comes more suave and free. There is a breath of dream 
 land in the air, and far off and impossible things become 
 near and real. Is it only gas, after all ?
 
 AMERICAN INVENTIONS 101 
 
 But in the country we have spermaceti and kerosene 
 for all our inspiration ; yet we ask not your pity, oh 
 friend from the city; for while we recognize the ease 
 and convenience of your gaseous inventions, we recog 
 nize also their disadvantages disadvantage of leaky 
 pipes, and noxious smells, and tainted air; of failures 
 and sudden darkness, and flare of gas-jets most trying 
 to mortal eyes. We look at the bright and steady 
 gleam of our honest, if cumbrous lamps, and thank 
 Heaven that the lines have fallen to us in pleasant 
 places. 
 
 The fame of the German Student Lamp was noised 
 abroad through the rural districts till the unsophisti 
 cated mind could but infer that it was, on the whole, 
 rather an improvement on the sun, cheaper and more 
 congenial to the eye. Whereupon the unsophisticated 
 mind arose and \vent to the city on a tour of investiga 
 tion, and discovered that inexhaustible American genius 
 had gilded the refined gold and painted the lily by an 
 invention of its own, called the American Student Lamp. 
 The German was good, but the American was better. 
 It was lacquer-work, and would never tarnish. It was 
 various other things that would never become apples 
 of Sodom in your grasp. Could the unsophisticated 
 mind hesitate? Between German and American, can 
 the patriot's choice be doubtful ? We are not on Tre- 
 mont Eow or Dock Square; we are on Winter Street, 
 that rendezvous of respectability and reliability. Caesar 
 is above suspicion, and his wife never appears behind 
 the counter. AYe buy the American lamp; we are fur 
 nished with a pamphlet library of literature bearing on
 
 102 TW9LVE MILES FROM A LEMON. 
 
 its mechanism and manipulation. We go home and 
 prepare to illuminate. 
 
 We have come to the conclusion that a complete 
 mastery of the American Student Lamp is equal to a 
 four years' course of study at the Institute of Technol- 
 ogj\ We have been diligently investigating it for 
 eighteen months, with short and infrequent vacations, 
 and have apparently come no nearer the secret place 
 where its soul abideth than we were at the beginning. 
 It is spherical trigonometry carried to the highest pow 
 er, and then merged in total depravity. It is a com 
 bination of globes and chimneys and cylinders and 
 cork-screws, appalling to the natural man. It is one of 
 those things that no fellow can find out. There is a 
 siphon and a tank, and a respirator, and an aqueduct, 
 and a series of tubes more incomprehensible than the 
 wheel in the middle of a wheel which the prophet saw 
 in a vision, and, like that, they turned not when they 
 went, and, unlike that, they went not when they turned. 
 It is a' a muddle. The only way to tell when the lamp 
 is full is to pour till it runs over. The entire Faculty 
 of one of our best colleges have been engaged, from 
 time to time, in putting in the wick, and the clergy 
 have done every thing but pray over it. In vain. We 
 took the lamp and the family, and went to town. The 
 lamp was set on the counter, the family stationed around 
 it, the proprietor summoned and bidden to "put that 
 wick into that lamp." His knees smote together, but 
 he said he would. It was just as easy, he said. Just 
 slip the wick on this cylinder and wind a silk thread 
 around it, so; and then slip the silk thread and wick
 
 AMERICAN INVENTIONS. 103 
 
 and cylinder into another cylinder, so; and there was a 
 hook in this cylinder and a groove in that one, so; and 
 the hook would catch, and the projection would go into 
 the groove, so; and every thing would move spirally and 
 smoothly, so only the wick would not go into the cyl 
 inder, and the projection would not go into the groove, 
 and the hook would not catch, and things would not 
 move at all, and the man's fingers trembled, and he 
 wound and unwound, and screwed and unscrewed, and 
 jammed and pulled with nervous haste, white we stood 
 around gazing in grim silence. Nemesis had her turn. 
 By-and-by the wick really seemed to go where it be 
 longed. At least it did not go anywhere else, and the 
 unhappy man took out his bandanna and wiped the 
 beaded agony from his brow; but not even the tor 
 ture he had undergone could extort from him the con 
 fession that there was any other or more scientific way 
 of putting on the wick than the one he had just ex 
 hibited. It was as direct as the Chinese way of roast 
 ing pig by burning the sty ; but we were forced to be 
 content, and went home rejoicing that life might be 
 pleasant while that wick lasted, which he said would be 
 six weeks or two months. 
 
 It is now eighteen months, and the wick has never 
 been changed. There is no reason why it ever should 
 be. Who buys the American Student Lamp may be 
 sure not to waste his substance in wicks, for there is no 
 process known to natural history by which the lamp 
 can be made to burn. You might as well have an 
 American student in the room for all the light you get. 
 We cnllcd friends and neighbors to rejoice with us in
 
 104 TWELVE MILES FROM A LEMOX. 
 
 this new flame, and when it was finally kindled we 
 went into the street to see the illumination, and the 
 lamp was out before we were. We had meant to grat 
 ify our vanity with the splendor of the spectacle, and it 
 was necessary to fetch a candle to find where the spec 
 tacle was. 
 
 "And while the lamp holds out to bun), 
 The vilest sinner may return," 
 
 gives no hope to us. It is but a delusive way of say 
 ing that he shall never return. We appealed to the 
 seller. He exchanged it, but change of lamp is not 
 change of mind; and still from those flames no light, 
 but rather darkness, visible. He proffered still further 
 exchange ; but where is the use of a stream of lamps 
 going and coming from the shopman's counter to a 
 country house like a chain-pump? We appealed to the 
 manufacturer, whose name purported to be Carleton. 
 But there was no response. I do not believe Mr. Carle- 
 ton made it I do not believe there is any Mr. Carleton. 
 The Prince of Darkness invented this lamp of his own 
 free-will, to entangle the souls of men, and a respecta 
 ble New England firm is ready to abet him. 
 
 Then the lamp began to leak, and the library table 
 was ruined. Then we found it was not a fatuitous, but 
 a fore-ordained leak. An aqueduct is diabolically con 
 trived to lead the oil from the globe where it is sup 
 posed to burn, but will not, into a tank beneath, where 
 it can not do any thing but drip upon the table. If 
 time be taken by the forelock, this submarine tank can 
 be unscrewed and emptied; but as contemporary history 
 had failed to make mention of this feature of the ma-
 
 AMERICAN INVENTIONS. 105 
 
 chine, the tank had overflowed, and scattered evil odors, 
 discoloration, and ruin. As, however, even if the lamp 
 does not burn, all the oil will, after a while, leak out, 
 this little peculiarity presently ceases to be trouble 
 some. 
 
 "We love the American Student Lamp. If any per 
 son is fired with a desire to let his light shine in adversi 
 ty, we have an adversity ready to his hand. Whoever 
 wants a lamp of excellent manufacture of the highest 
 price, bright and burnished, and warranted not to burn, 
 may be safely recommended to the American Student 
 Lamp. As a safety-lamp it is unparalleled. Nothing 
 short of nitro-glycerine could make it explode. As a, 
 testimonial of affection, it is more economical than the 
 Ball and Black cases which inclose dollar jewelry for 
 wedding presents. At every Christmas and birthday 
 festival we make somebody a present of that lamp. It 
 has been carried to donation-parties. It has figured at 
 Calico Balls. It has been sent to the Chicago sufferers. 
 It has just not been dropped into the contribution-box. 
 And still, 
 
 "In that house of misery, 
 A Lady with a Lamp I see 
 Pass through the glimmering gloom, 
 And flit from room to room." 
 
 Finally, we sent it back to the seller. He notified us 
 that it stood on his counter burning all day. We never 
 tried it in the day-time. As a general thing, the rural 
 districts want lamps that bum at night. For the day 
 and the counter, doubtless the American Student Lamp 
 is invaluable; but for the evening and the home, we 
 
 K*
 
 TWELVE MILES FROM A LElfOX. 
 
 have gone back to candles and the ancient lamp, and 
 the broad, benignant moon, as 
 
 "Full she flared it, lamping Samniata." 
 
 Sitting iii the twilight, we muse over the shortcom 
 ings of our country, and lament the hurry, the super 
 ficiality, the lack of thoroughness, the high-sounding 
 pretensions, the small and mean achievements which 
 disfigure our life. 
 
 " "We pride ourselves upon our ingenuity," says one, 
 'and we devise many things. But you can depend 
 upon nothing. Shop-keepers mock at women for pre 
 ferring English and French goods to those of Ameri 
 can manufacture, and call it fashion and snobbery, and 
 tell tales of foreign labels on American goods, and 
 American women satisfied in consequence. But the 
 truth is, the foreign fabrics are of better quality than 
 our home products. Patriotic people will even pay a 
 higher price for an American lamp than a German lamp, 
 but patriotism itself would not be willing to spend the 
 remainder of its natural life in darkness for the sake of 
 encouraging home manufacture. The Germans are a 
 slow, heavy, plodding race, and perhaps do not turn out 
 so many lamps a day as we. But when their lamps are 
 turned out, they burn." 
 
 "But it so happens," says Hassan the Turk, "that 
 many of the so-called German lamps are made in Amer 
 ica. What then ?" 
 
 "Probably they are the German lamps that catcli 
 fire and are thrown into the street. I have known of 
 such. Probably they are the lamps that explode and 
 kill their owners. I have read of such."
 
 AMERICAN INYEXTIOXH. 107 
 
 'But what have you to offer in proof that exploding 
 lamps are of American manufacture, and the non-ex 
 ploding of foreign ?'' 
 
 " Nothing except our American silks, which look so 
 stout and wear so shabby, and spot with water." 
 
 " But when you buy a foreign silk you take your life 
 in your hands. It may be rep and lustrous and stocky, 
 yet break and be nearly worthless. It is only of free 
 grace that you get even a good Bonnet silk." 
 
 "And the Chicago pig " I bethink me with apparent 
 inconsequence but real logical connection. Chicago 
 having burned up the greater part of her confident 
 boasting, had nothing to show the Grand Duke but her 
 way of killing pigs. Alexis watched the process, so 
 they say, with the imperturbability which doth hedge 
 a king. At its conclusion, instead of going into rap 
 tures over the growth of Chicago and the great Amer 
 ican Eepublic, he quietly asked, "Can you take a live 
 hog and turn him. into sausage in ten minutes?" 
 
 "No, we don't think we can do that," said smiling 
 Chicago, falling blandly into the royal trap. 
 
 "They do in Copenhagen, "said his Imperial High 
 ness, the Grand Duke Alexis. 
 
 Poor Chicago! To be burned by fire and snubbed 
 by princes ! She has six thousand new, first-class houses, 
 four thousand begun, and two thousand under contract; 
 but what doth it avail her so long as this Mordecai sit- 
 teth at the king's gate making sausages faster than she? 
 Poor pig-packing Chicago, to have even her crown of 
 pork plucked from her scorched young brow! No 
 doubt, as she thinks of the stalwart duke, she swears
 
 108 TWELVE MILES FROM A LEMOK 
 
 eternal hate to monarchical institutions, and wishes that 
 many more might 
 
 "Sleep 
 
 Full many a fathom deep, 
 By thy wild and stormy steep, 
 Elsinore ! " 
 
 With the morning light came once a dreadful revela 
 tion. The dining-room carpet, the new Brussels car 
 pet that had had but two days' wear and one gentle 
 sweeping, was developing little groups of scars, little 
 tufts of wool, little outbursts of rags, as if some one had 
 taken a pair of scissors and pulled up the threads, or as 
 if rough hob-nailed boots had trodden and torn it. We 
 watched and waited in consternation two days, and the 
 little constellation thickened, till the firmament of our 
 floor was studded with these baleful stars. 
 
 " Moths !" said the white lips of dismay, and we wrote 
 at once to the sellers. 
 
 Those carpet-knights made answer that it could not 
 be moths, and must be hob-nailed boots, or the playful 
 gambols of lap-dogs or sharp -clawed kittens. Yain 
 conjecture, when there were neither dogs, cats, nor hob 
 nailed men about the house. We summoned workmen 
 cunning in carpets. They said the little ruffled rags and 
 raveled yarn-ends were owing to a defect in the man 
 ufacture ; that it was called " sprouting ;" that carpets 
 were sometimes thus defective, but that no manufac 
 turer of repute would ever let such carpets go into the 
 market. 
 
 "You may depend upon it," said a loving but mis 
 trustful patriot, "that carpet never saw an English
 
 AMERICAN INVENTIONS. 100 
 
 loom. It is the work of some shoddy American manu 
 facturer, palmed off upon us for English. He shall be 
 brought to grief. I will inquire of the sellers the name 
 of the English manufacturers. You will see that they 
 will evade, and will not give it." 
 
 Prompt as the morning came the answer, "Hum 
 phreys, Kidderminster, England !" 
 
 " That looks like business," said Hassan the Turk. 
 
 But we determined to go to the root of the matter. 
 A protocol was immediately prepared for these dishon 
 ored subjects of her majesty. 
 
 " We regret to be obliged to say," was the language 
 of the joint High Commissioners, "that, much as we 
 love our country, we are not surprised at any imper 
 fection in her manufactures, but we did think that En 
 glish was a synonym for thorough. In our circle, when 
 we have procured English goods, we account ourselves 
 to have acquired the best of its kind. But if England 
 gives out, where shall patience look for perfect work? 
 What is the good of your not fighting Prussia if you 
 are going to send shabby, shoddy carpets into the lit 
 tle rural dining-rooms of America? What is the use 
 of earls and lords sailing around the world to settle 
 Alabama claims, if the great manufacturers persist in 
 sowing the seeds of discord under our feet? Messrs. 
 Merchants offer to exchange our carpet, but how shall 
 we know that another carpet will not also develop 
 vegetarian tendencies? And what shall compensate 
 us for the trouble, perplexity, and general disturbance 
 of our household gods, to say nothing of our broken 
 faith in English fabric? Be sure your sprouting car-
 
 1 10 TWEL VE MILES FROM A LEMON. 
 
 pets will grow a more fatal harvest than the dragon's 
 teeth !" 
 
 The most casual reader will see that there is a high 
 moral tone about this appeal calculated to strike the 
 woolen mind with awe. Humphreys, Kidderminster, 
 were evidently impressed. They replied that they 
 would come over in November and look into it. In 
 November they reported themselves in Boston. Did 
 they expect a free American citizen to put his carpet 
 in his pocket and go to Boston? Because he did not, 
 they slipped back to Kidderminster. Justice was not 
 to be thus baffled, and again stretched her hand across 
 the briny deep, collared Humphreys, Kidderminster, 
 and bade them rise and explain ! They made some 
 lame excuse, and said they would come again in July 
 and thoroughly investigate. Perhaps they will; but 
 meanwhile it remains that an old English house of es 
 tablished reputation sends into the market, and is not 
 careful to reclaim, goods that would do discredit to the 
 "smartest" and swiftest and shoddiest firm in America. 
 Why, then, should we monopolize a reputation for un 
 substantial fabrics? We are a country of magnificent 
 distances, and comparatively small and sparse popula 
 tion. Our haste and superficiality are born not of our 
 character, but of our necessities. True, that way danger 
 lies, but the encouraging symptom is that we bear our 
 standard high. We are gradually learning to do well 
 what at first we felt compelled to do quickly. The 
 Cheneys are never content with a piece of silk, but are 
 ever meditating on the next, and give the mulberry - 
 worni no rest. Doubtless, the whole pork-compelling
 
 AMERICAN IXVESTIOXS. Ill 
 
 mind of Chicago, since the visit of his Imperial High 
 ness, lias been directed to facilitating, by a few mo 
 ments, the transmigrations of the hog. We drive along 
 the white, hard roads between the hedge-rows of En 
 gland, and think of the rough and rugged cart-tracks, 
 slimy, muddy, dusty, and dented with treacherous pits, 
 that are sometimes a bond and sometimes a barrier be 
 tween our own towns ; but our roads are already abreast 
 \vith our other victories. It is no small thing to estab 
 lish even an imperfect connection between the shores 
 of a continent. It would be Quixotic and extravagant, 
 it would be frivolous and pottering, to attempt to unite 
 our remote cities, our straggling villages, by such high 
 ways as England can not afford to miss. When wealth 
 and leisure and social life have reached a certain point, 
 they overflow in Central Park drives and suburban 
 Boston roads that match the finish of merrie England. 
 But England herself would be but a Central Park set 
 down in the midst of our vast American territory. 
 
 In small things and great, the same good word can 
 be spoken. The gay-flowering cretonnes which adorn 
 our rooms and disfigure their occupants have an hon 
 orable tale to tell of American ambition. Some native 
 genius, we were told, was experimenting, but refused to 
 put any goods upon the market until he had wrested 
 the secret of skill, and satisfied himself of their excel 
 lence. Suddenly cretonnes which had been procurable 
 only at a dollar and twenty-five cents were abundant in 
 graceful figures and soft, agreeable colors for seventy- 
 five and eighty-seven cents, and we knew our Ameri 
 can genius had succeeded. Look at California blank-
 
 112 TWELVE MILES FROM A LEMON. 
 
 ets, heavy yet light, worth almost their weight in gold, 
 white and fine and fleecy like the clouds, pure as the 
 driven snow, and imprisoning the very soul of warmth, 
 and know that, though America has yet much to learn, 
 and though the noble mind counts nothing done while 
 any thing remains undone, still we have a country 
 which, even in its manufactures, ncedeth not to be 
 ashamed.
 
 THE PLEASURES OF POVERTY. H3 
 
 VII. 
 
 THE PLEA S URES OF PO VER TY. 
 
 ONE of the most gratifying developments of modern 
 science is the possibilities of poverty. Mind, I say the 
 possibilities, not the possibility of poverty. The world 
 has always known that it might be poor, but it was re 
 served for our own day to learn how much it could be 
 and do and enjoy in poverty. Science has investigated 
 so loyally, art has showed itself so democratic, that it 
 really seems to make little difference nowadays wheth 
 er you are rich or poor. It is only a, choice of effects 
 where all effects are pleasing. If you are rich, you fin 
 ish your room with polished woods, much inlaid work, 
 frescoing, and gilding. You pile heavy carpets on your 
 floors, hang heavy curtains at your windows, lead in the 
 sunshine through w r ondrous films of gossamer, forget 
 your walls in the pictured pride and beauty and brav 
 ery of the Old World, and fill your rooms with mem 
 ories of palaces, with devices of genius, with the luxu 
 ries of all lands. The effect is soothing, sensuous, de 
 lightful. The confusion and clamor of our manifold ac 
 tivities are hushed into a harmonious lullab}^. Life is 
 a dream, a reminiscence, a prophecy, an ecstasy. 
 
 But you are poor. Yes, and sarcenet and muslin 
 and straw matting have their victories no less renown 
 ed than plush. Heaviness, solidity, majesty come with
 
 1U TWELVE MILES FROM A LEMON. 
 
 money, but lightness, airiness, grace come without it. 
 Sunshine itself will almost furnish a house, and there is 
 a mental exhilaration in the conversion of an old mus 
 lin gown into a new toilet-table which hired upholstery 
 can never confer. This domestic transmigration of 
 souls gives a sort of creative consciousness which is 
 akin though perhaps remotely to the artistic sense. 
 You will never make a picture, but out of four walls 
 and a few rags, boards, and pennies, you have made a 
 home light, cheerful, gay. It does not lure you to re 
 poseno ; but it tones you to action. It wiles you into 
 no dream of past grandeur, but it rouses you to per 
 formance and achievement. It thrills you with the ea 
 gerness of spring-time and the promise of summer. 
 
 Nor is poverty hopeless even of pictures. " The first 
 thing to do," says my art-critic, "if 3-011 would cultivate 
 a love of true art, is to throw your chromos out of the 
 window." Throw your own chromos out if you like, 
 but lay a finger on mine at your peril ! The art-critic 
 is a useful and superior person. Let us not despise him 
 from the heights of our ignorance and self-satisfaction. 
 We will study art assiduously ; and when we have be 
 come so fine and discriminating that our chromos give 
 us no pleasure, we will dispense with them, but we will 
 not do so at any man's dictum, since how can we learn 
 art by staring at a blank wall? 
 
 In the cit}'-, neighbor to right of me who struck oil, 
 neighbor to left of me who had an army contract, neigh 
 bor in front of me who plumbed the new court-house, 
 have 
 
 " Kitchen, parlor, dining-room, 
 And chamber all complete' 1
 
 THE PLEASURES OF POVERTY. 115 
 
 in butternut and oak and satin-wood and walnut, black, 
 French, and American, polished, varied, and admirable, 
 while I have only feathered my country nest with white 
 pine. It is a cheap and common substance, says Midas, 
 who uprooted all his ancestral pines for these richer 
 and costlier woods, and bids me do the same. Never ! 
 What was good enough for my fathers is good enough 
 for me. I will not destroy the moldings and the wain 
 scots and the cornices which they set with painstaking 
 and fidelity. The same walls shall echo back my voice 
 that echoed theirs. But here comes the painter to the 
 rescue, with his art that is only not high art, and, instead 
 of. the cold and somewhat monotonous whiteness, fills 
 my atmosphere with his lovely tints and shades. The 
 soft brown and gold, and the shimmering haze of Octo 
 ber, make a perpetual Indian summer in my autumn 
 room. I do not wish to say any thing derogatory to 
 nature, but it certainly seerns to me that the black wal 
 nut of man's device is prettier than nature's own handi 
 work. I look at the two side by side, and my paint 
 er's is surely finer, deeper, more wavy and graceful. 
 "Graining!" exclaims my neighbor the plumber, and 
 his master the artist, and all is over with me. Grain 
 ing is to them an abomination, an imitation, a cheat. 
 It is trying to palm off painted pine for a costlier wood. 
 It is nothing of the sort. It is loving nature so truly 
 that you seek to reproduce her traits where you are 
 forbidden to introduce herself. I can not command the 
 fabric of oak, but I so love the stately tree that I will 
 copy as well as I can in pine his exquisite soft tints and 
 clouded shells and billowy lines. What saith the Scrip-
 
 116 TWELVE MILES FROM A LEMOX. 
 
 tures ? "And the Lord said unto Moses, they shall make 
 an ark of shittim-wood, and thou shalt overlay it with 
 pure gold, within and without shalt thou overlay it, and 
 thou shalt make staves of shittim-wood, and overlay 
 them with gold. Thou shalt also make a table of shit 
 tim-wood, and thou shalt overlay it with pure gold." 
 Graining is only this, and nothing more. Why must 
 we be wise above what is written? "When I look at 
 rny painters, when I see how skillfully they have de 
 vised instruments wherewithal to imitate the results, 
 while absolutely shut off from the processes of nature, 
 I think them, indeed, but little lower than the angels. 
 Looking at man with all his limitations, it seems more 
 wonderful that he should imitate black walnut so suc 
 cessfully, than that his Creator should be able to make 
 it in the first place. That is, it appears to require less 
 creative ingenuity to make fine wood at first-hand than 
 to make a man capable of making something that looks 
 so much like it. Sham indeed ! The whole question 
 of Divine Sovereignty and Man's Free Agency rises 
 before me when I look at my grained and glorified 
 doors. 
 
 Sham and cant are hard words, and mean hard things ; 
 but there is sometimes as much cant in the denuncia 
 tion of cant, and as much sham in the avoidance of 
 sham, as in the cultivation of both. My plumber's 
 wainscots are real walnut, and mine are simulated; but 
 my delight in my shams is more real than his in his 
 truths. I love their beauty, their flowing lines, their 
 soft graduations of color. He loves them for their cost 
 liness, for the tribute they pay his pride. How do I
 
 THE PLEASURES OF POVERTY. 117 
 
 know ? A little, because he did not select with his own 
 eye, but gave orders for the handsomest and highest 
 which is not love's way ; a good deal, also, because he 
 walks through his beautiful rooms, not admiring, not 
 kindly and mellow and hospitable, but arrogant and os 
 tentatious, rude to wife, cold to children, tyrannical to 
 dependents, unjust to tradesmen. His carved mantel 
 is real, but his cheap pine soul is not even grained. 
 
 My lovely neighbor over the way will hang no pic 
 ture on her walls because she can not yet afford oil- 
 paintings, and she calls that being thorough-bred. She 
 looks at her rich carpets, her cumbrous chairs, her 
 smooth, bare walls finished to the last degree of art, 
 and joyfully reflects that no engraving, no chromo, no 
 cheap adornment of any kind disfigures her splendid 
 drawing-room. She is quite frank in avowing her lim 
 itations. So far as it goes, every thing is what it pre 
 tends to be. 
 
 But, dear madam, the greatest pretense of all sits at 
 this moment presiding over this room. The pretense 
 is in a pair of eyes dark under their drooping lids, in 
 the broad high forehead and shining hair, and sensitive 
 mouth and gracious smile, and languid, reposeful atti 
 tude. All sensibility and susceptibility are there, ro 
 mance and passion, delight in beautiful forms and sweet 
 sounds, if those features speak the truth. But I am 
 chngrined to find that a flaming circus "poster" on the 
 polished walls would be no more incongruous than the 
 sharpness with which those liquid eyes look after the 
 main chance, and the decided twang with which those 
 curved and gracious lips utter their dreary common-
 
 118 TWELVE MILES FROM A LEMON. 
 
 place. T]dngs here are what they seem, but the woman 
 is a fine Florentine frame holding a coarse and com 
 mon wood-cut, out of which no soul speaks, from which 
 no inspiration springs. 
 
 All in the soft spring morning I stand in my new 
 kitchen, empty, swept, and garnished, and survey the 
 wonders which the hand of man hath wrought. The 
 old kitchen was admirable in its day equally an ad 
 vance on its predecessors but the new embraces all 
 improvements, and I may say inventions, up to date. 
 And how pleasant it is, and how convenient! The 
 wainscots, the soft, gray ceilings, are warm and bright 
 with the morning sun, yet the buff window-shades would 
 make a sunshine in a shady place. The ancestral stove 
 has gone down into Plutonic regions to do extraordi 
 nary service in emergencies, and a new stove, bright 
 and black, interlaced with water-pipes, and honey 
 combed with dampers and registers and ash-holes and 
 air-chambers, reigns in its stead. A copper boiler, tall, 
 round, and red, rises in its appropriate niche, stately as 
 a Greek column, and fraught with warmth and comfort 
 and cheer that Grecian column never knew, because its 
 inmost heart was only the cold, dead marble, while my 
 ruddy pillar throbs with the very pulse of the machine. 
 Brazen faucets gleam on its curved surface, and water- 
 pipes branch out from it in all directions. Yonder 
 stands the force-pump, brave with polished brass and 
 shining steel. The closets are broad and ample, with 
 drawers and shelves and nooks and hooks for every 
 device of man's fertile brain. Through the eastern 
 window comes the first dawn, and through the west the
 
 THE PLEASURES OF POVERTY. 119 
 
 last fading of the sun. I open a door on the north, and 
 up and down to my very feet slope the gentle hills ; and 
 all above and around are the blue sky and the arch 
 ing elms, and the wide expanse of the lovely world. 
 What a wonderful thing it is to be born into the sun 
 shine and the summer ! One little box of a house niched 
 somehow into the illimitable universe ! Into it we corne 
 from the unknown; out of it we go into the unknown. 
 Between, a few heart-beats, a haste, a heat, a passion, a 
 purpose, and then the eternal peace. Shuts down again 
 around us the mystery of the shall be, just as impenetra 
 ble as that of the has been, and neither greater than that 
 of the actual is. The yesterday -world did not know 
 me, and the to-rnorrow world will not know me, and 
 myself I know not to-day. The clock strikes the old 
 clock that has been striking for generations and its 
 voice rings as brisk and clear and cheery as when it 
 struck its first note. Its hands mark the unerring hours 
 but for them whose hand set all its life astir, and them 
 that looked and listened ; 
 
 "Their bones are dust, 
 And their good swords rust ; 
 Their souls are with the saints, I trust." 
 
 The clock ticks away untiringlj'. the moats float out 
 their everlasting leisure in the slant sunshine, and I 
 think of one who 
 
 "Swept a floor as to God's law, 
 
 And made that and the action fine;" 
 
 whose kitchen was no mere work-room, desecrated to 
 toil, and to be deserted at the first opportunity, but a 
 centre of household activities, a focus of home life. In
 
 120 TWELVE MILES FROM A LEJfOX 
 
 that room reigned order find system and spotless puri 
 ty the very principles that hold the worlds in hand. 
 Here economy was practiced, not as a stern, enforced 
 duty, but from a subtle sense of harmony the outward 
 and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace. 
 Waste was abhorred, not so much because it was cost 
 ly as because it was wrong. Forethought gave worth 
 to industry, and intelligence lifted homely household 
 work up from the level of labor into the dignity of ad 
 ministration, Sucti service was like the service of na 
 ture, whose forces achieve noiselessly for the most parr, 
 but always achieve. 
 
 And shall ignorance and untidiness and clumsy reck 
 lessness lord it over this peaceful domain? Must rude 
 hands mar this comely array, dim the lustre, and tarnish 
 the purity, and leave the trail of the serpent over it all ? 
 I suppose eternal vigilance is the price of culinary per 
 fection, and it is too great a price to pay. So my brass 
 will become dimmed, and my fine copper changed. I 
 shall look after matters somewhat; but because the rul 
 ing principle comes from without, and not from with 
 in, there will always be lapses from kitchen propriety. 
 Coffee will be left standing in the coffee-pot; kettles 
 will be put away not thoroughly cleaned and dried, to 
 gather foulness and rust; the broom will be left to stand 
 on the broom-end, and spoil for lack of thrift to put on 
 a fresh loop when the old one is worn out; the dish- 
 towels will drop into the wood-box, and be lost both to 
 sight and memory; the ironing-cloth will be rumpled 
 and jammed into the drawer instead of being nicely 
 folded and laid a\vav: the window-class will gather
 
 THE PLEASURES OF POVERTY. 121 
 
 specks, and the clock's mirror-face will become clouded, 
 and the ceiling will be festooned here and there with 
 dainty cobwebs, and I mentally shake my fist at the, 
 as yet, purely mental intruder whose far-off coming al 
 ready makes 
 
 " Discord on the music fall, 
 And darkness on the glory !'' 
 
 Oh ! why, when every prospect pleases, should only 
 man be vile, especially woman? For, unquestionably 
 vile as man is, he has not shown his vileness here. In 
 deed he has shown quite the opposite skill, ingenuity, 
 not to say benevolence. Every thing here which ex 
 cites my admiration is the work of man. I wonder if 
 women could not have done it just as well. This fine 
 finger- work of painting and graining and polishing 
 might certainly be wrought even by lady-fingers. A 
 great deal of the work of a carpenter requires skill 
 rather than strength no more strength, certainly, than 
 many a* woman commands. The lifting of heavy beams, 
 the painting of sky-roofs, might be beyond her power, 
 and in that fact I suppose lies her real disability. The 
 master-workman may not call upon his reserved strength 
 by the week together, but he can not carry on his busi 
 ness unless it is there, to be called on in an emergency. 
 The householder pays his man-servant higher wages for 
 the same work than his maid-servant ; but if he wishes 
 an errand dispatched at midnight, or in the midst of a 
 driving snow-storm, he sends his man-servant at once, 
 where his maid-servant he would not dream of send 
 ing; In paying the extra price, in choosing the boy for 
 nn apprentice and refusing the girl, these facts no doubt 
 
 6
 
 122 TWELVE MILES FROM A LEMOX. 
 
 have their weight. Yet carpenters might teach their 
 wives and daughters and sisters how to handle the 
 plane and chisel and saw, to immense advantage. Some 
 women have a natural turn for mechanics, and a little 
 instruction would give them power to help themselves 
 over many a hard place. If they could not earn their 
 living by mechanical skill, they could often minister 
 greatly to their own ease, comfort, and economy. They 
 could greatly improve the living that is earned for 
 them, and they could greatly serve those whose lines 
 have fallen in less pleasant places. 
 
 This at least is certain : if girls can not be carpenters, 
 they can marry carpenters. Of course, love, as the prov 
 erb says, goes where it is sent ; and you can not fall in 
 love with a man because he is handy, but, my blessed 
 damosels, you can at least maintain toward the guild 
 that appreciative attitude which wins from a man his 
 best all unwittingly. You can sufficiently possess your 
 selves of the principles of architecture and mechanics, 
 to know that he who has mastered them has made 
 no mean acquisition, and can proffer you at least that 
 solid ground whereon love must alight to rest his 
 weary wings. To be a good carpenter, a man must 
 have perception and acuteness, powers of comparison 
 and judgment, steadfastness and a sense of proportion ; 
 strength of arm and skill of hand and grip of mind 
 qualities which no woman dislikes, and which, in con 
 nection with other traits, make a character thoroughly 
 admirable. 
 
 The world's type of goodness in greatness was a car 
 penter's son. Not to a family of the rich and ennobled,
 
 THE PLEASURES OF POVERTY. 123 
 
 fed by hereditary grace, or endowed with exceptional 
 genius, not to the abodes of the thriftless, abject, and 
 hopeless poor came He, but to the home of skill and 
 intelligence, of self-respect, and self-support, to confer 
 upon these homely and honorable virtues the dignity 
 of Heaven.
 
 TWELVE MILES FROM A LEMON. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 TO TUDIZ BY RAILROAD. 
 
 DOUBTLESS the completion of the Pacific Railroad 
 was an event of national interest and continental im 
 portance ; and doubtless, second only to his honorable 
 record in the great rebellion, General Dodge congratu 
 lates himself, not unworthily, upon having enrolled his 
 name among those who have won for their country the 
 victories of peace, no less renowned than war's. And 
 what with the driving of golden spikes midway be 
 tween two oceans, and the baptizing of babies with the 
 mingled waters of the Atlantic and Pacific seas, our 
 enthusiastic and mercurial countrymen seemed deter 
 mined that no element of the fanciful should be want 
 ing to make the work impressive. It was more like 
 a fairy story than like the actual achievements of hard 
 heads and horny hands in this practical nineteenth cen 
 tury. 
 
 Yet for all your golden wedges and baptismal waters, 
 the whole Pacific Railroad does not touch one so nearly 
 as riding up to Tudiz on a railroad. Geographically 
 considered, Tudiz is to most scholars an unexplored re 
 gion. I might explain its locality by saying that it is 
 partially bounded by, involved in, and a constituent 
 part of, Pine Swamp ; but even then 
 
 " It would be a secret still, 
 Though all look on it at will ;
 
 TO TUDIZ BY RAILROAD. 125 
 
 For the eye shall read in vain 
 What the heart can not explain." 
 
 Etymological! j, Tudiz is full of interest. No word 
 analyzed and liistorized by Dean Trench is more lumi 
 nous than this, illustrating as it does the loyalty to law, 
 the hurnor, and the intelligence of our ancestors. Years 
 and years ago, before any person now on the earth had 
 been born, a question came np in "town meeting" con 
 cerning a large tract of land lying on the outskirts of 
 the township. The owner thereof, or some person con 
 cerned in the transfer, arose before the assembled sov 
 ereigns, and declared, or meant to declare, that there 
 was some error in the transaction, which he wished to 
 have rectified. Unhappily, the poor fellow was not 
 skilled in words, or was confused by the unwonted 
 prominence of his position ; and, instead of saying " rec 
 tified," he put it " rectitude." But these grim old Puri 
 tan Solons had no mercy. Nemesis pounced upon him, 
 and fastened to him the name of " Tudy " for the re 
 mainder of his natural life, and even handed his shame 
 and its scorn down to a local immortality, since the 
 land he owned and the region round about is called 
 Tudy's to this very day. 
 
 But we can not always go into explanation ; where 
 fore, when we wish to be romantic and mellifluous, 
 rather than philological, we spell it Tudiz, to match the 
 dark-eyed girl of Cadiz! 
 
 A railroad to Tudiz! The imagination refuses to 
 comprehend it. With the institution in general we are 
 not unfamiliar. The engine's shrill shriek has deafened 
 us so long, that the memory of man scarcely runneth
 
 126 TWELVE MILES FROM A LEJIOX. 
 
 to the contrary; but that a train of cars should delib 
 erately leave the beaten track of trade and travel, and 
 roll off toward Tudiz and Pine Swamp, seems to us 
 yet an almost incredible thing. I can more easily be 
 lieve in the scaling of the Sierra Nevada, or in pene 
 trating the Yosemite, than in modernizing Tudiz. The 
 West was made to be modernized. Telegraphs and 
 steam-carriages were invented to this very end ; but 
 Tudiz is sacred to the past. 
 
 If the Spirit of Conservatism could anywhere say to 
 the Spirit of Progress, "Thus far shalt thou go, and no 
 farther," it would certainly be at the old stone-wall 
 which fences off Tudiz and the river meadows. But 
 that wall of division is broken down, and all our secret 
 haunts are laid open to the march of improvement. 
 
 As you stand on the platform of the staggering car, 
 the wild rushing wind blowing your hat one way, and 
 your hair all ways, you see not the railroad crowd, but 
 the dead generations. You are cutting through the 
 corn-fields, the woodlands, the cranberry-meadows, the 
 blueberry-swamps, that have descended from father to 
 son for ages, unvexed by greed, unassailed by ambition. 
 What does Master Stephen think of 3*ou, seven devils 
 that you are, snorting, screaming, plunging past his 
 backdoor without so much as saying "by your leave?" 
 Master Stephen, the stately gentleman who dwelt so 
 grandly on his ancestral acres, and, with pardonable ex 
 cess of pride, wanted no son of his to go out into the 
 coarse scramble of trade, but thought the best way for 
 a young man to acquire property was to wait and in 
 herit it! In the eagerness and mad haste of this day,
 
 TO TUDIZ BY RAILROAD. 127 
 
 I love to remember that there was one man who never 
 gave in to it who set himself deliberately and hon 
 orably against it. Teaching the "district school" was 
 not only not derogatory to his dignity, but rather added 
 to it, so great was our reverence for learning in those 
 old times: and truly Master Stephen honored himself, 
 and honored his calling; for he taught with love for 
 teaching, magnifying his office, and rejoicing with pater 
 nal joy in the after-prowess of his pupils. Now, when 
 we want a teacher, we take young men from the col 
 leges, who yearn for a hundred dollars to eke out the 
 expenses of sophomore or senior year ; young men with 
 out experience and without responsibility, who may be 
 mature and trustworthy, but are quite as likely to be 
 chiefly intent on getting through the three months and 
 receiving their wage. This done, they flit ; and whether 
 they have wrought good or evil, matters little to them. 
 Not so in the brave days of old. Master Steve dwelt 
 among his own people. In the summer he tilled his 
 well-loved farm. In the winter he taught the well- 
 loved farmers' children, and faced the fruits of his do 
 ings all the year round, and called no man master. 
 Proud he was of his abilities and accomplishments; 
 but with a transparent, child-like pride, that gave amuse 
 ment and won sympathy, but never caused offense. The 
 offices to which his townsmen elected him were to him 
 a solemn trust; and the well-kept pages of many a 
 year's record show how faithfully he held it. All the 
 duties of life bore him honor; and never king went to 
 his coronation with form more erect, with tread more 
 majestic, or dignity more unalloyed, than he to his he-
 
 128 TWELVE MILES FROM A LEMOX. 
 
 reditary pew in the village church. Brave and blame 
 less gentleman ! We have fallen on other days and 
 other ways, and the world wears more loosely -fitting 
 garments than was its wont; but I question if we have 
 not lost, as well as gained, somewhat by the change. 
 
 Shriek on, you fiery -breathed dragon ; what do you 
 care for the blackberry-patches where we stained our 
 fingers and tore our clothes a hundred years ago? Pro 
 fane the silences of the greenwood, broken only in win 
 ter by the woodman's axe. Kush, mad monster that 
 you are, past yon still house half hidden beneath its 
 elms of the centuries, and give no thought to the mute, 
 inglorious Milton who used to haunt it. Unhappy Ken- 
 nettell, gifted beyond the common lot, but doomed by 
 some untoward fate to be chained to his muck-rake 
 forever! No improvisatore of Italy could rhyme more 
 readily than lie; but he never went farther than to 
 amuse the village shopman never within my knowl 
 edge ; but as I was one day walking down a green 
 lane, I was suddenly aware of some one behind me ; 
 and, using the eyes which we all have in the back of 
 the head, soon ascertained that it was Kennettell wheel 
 ing a wheelbarrow. For a long space he followed me 
 at a respectful distance, till I presently turned aside and 
 plucked a buttercup, to let him pass. To my surprise, 
 instead of passing, he set down his wheelbarrow, and 
 waited as punctiliously for me to resume my walk as 
 if I had been a monarch of the Middle Ages, and he 
 my most humble courtier. Presently he spoke: 
 
 " May I be permitted to ask if this is the author who 
 is known by the name of 'Vitriol Vixen ?' >;
 
 TO TUDIZ BY RAILROAD. 129 
 
 I was rather overcome. I had never heard of him 
 except as " old Kennettell " with or without the adjec 
 tive prefixed a drunken village vagabond, with great 
 facility in writing verses. But it was a gentleman who 
 addressed me with the courtliness, the deference, the 
 elegance of the old school; his manner was entirely 
 self-possessed, his words were deliberate, his voice, but 
 for a certain hollowness which comes from dissipation, 
 cultivated. What evil fairy frowned upon his cradle, 
 and sent him stooping, tottering, maudling through 
 the streets, in a solitary and dishonored old age, in 
 stead of setting him to grace and illustrate his time? 
 He should have been Kennettell, poet and gentleman, 
 instead of hanging around the shoe-makers' shops 
 old Kennettell, half crazy, and, when he is not crazy, 
 drunk. 
 
 "Not a bit of it," I answered, heartily, but gazing all 
 the while into his heavy eyes, if perhaps I might some 
 where, somehow, see the Kennettell that God meant, 
 rising, evolving, extricating itself from the Kennettell 
 that had become. " Not a bit of it. I am only myself; 
 but yon, I hear, are given to composition." 
 
 " I am, indeed, not unused to the pen. In my earlier 
 days, I used to contribute to several periodicals." 
 
 " Under j-our own name?" 
 
 "Sometimes, but usually under a pseudonym. My 
 favorite name was Einaldo, and that title I used most 
 frcquentty." 
 
 "I should like much to see some of \'our writings. 
 Have you preserved any of them?" 
 
 "None. They floated about in the 'Ladies' Maga- 
 6*
 
 130 TWELVE MILES FROM A LEMON. 
 
 zine,' in ' The Boston Mirror,' and in many otber papers. 
 I used to be much solicited and well paid." 
 
 And through some fatal moral gravity, some irresisti 
 ble downward tendency, this man lost the heights he 
 should have gained did for his fellows no better serv 
 ice than to tend through the small-pox some wretched 
 scalawag, whose bedside, indeed, he would occasionally 
 leave for awhile, to go around and make a friendly 
 call on the neighbors, so that the small-pox had a fair 
 chance to show its hand ; and if it did not embrace the 
 opportunity, and the population too, it must have been 
 an inferior article. 
 
 Thus he maundered through his feeble, useless life, 
 and died in the poor-house. The home of his haunting 
 stands silent under the hill, and out of his grave comes 
 no voice. Faint spark of divine life, dim glimmering 
 through degraded years, choked out of the world at 
 last, is there never and nowhere any relighting? 
 
 Whiz and roar and clatter and shake and rush, as if 
 the one object in life were to get away from, and get 
 to, somewhere. Passengers from near and far, why do 
 you look so careless and vacant? Why do you chat 
 ter and chatter, and see nothing? Conductor, put down 
 the brakes, take off your polished label from }-our 
 breast, and be a man. Do you see that old woman 
 swinging in yonder bent apple-tree? No? What are 
 your eyes good for? It is Grandmother Hubbard, in 
 her grave these fifty years, swinging on the bent apple- 
 tree. Who is Grandmother Hubbard? Oh! that I can 
 not tell you. She was born, and became a grandmoth 
 er, and died. So much is in her name. But of all her
 
 TO TUDIZ BY RAILROAD. 131 
 
 long life of love or Late, of pleasure or sorrow, of good 
 or evil doing, this only remains by tradition for future 
 ages to the world's benefit, that in this bent apple-tree 
 she used to sit and swing. Whether in her grand 
 motherly or pre-grandmotherly days she thus laid the 
 foundation of her post-mortem biography, we are not 
 informed. My childish eyes always saw her there in 
 octogenarian cap and glasses, a wrinkled and decrepit 
 woman, bowed almost to the angle of the tree she 
 swung on. It is not much to tell an immortality of 
 little worth faint essence to extract from the long tur 
 moil of a woman's life its sole savor left in departing; 
 but it was accident, not essence. Somewhere unre 
 corded perhaps in the world's annals, but not unrecog 
 nized of the world's Creator has floated out the aroma 
 of that forgotten life, and still, over this alert and eager 
 earth, broaden and circle the waves of impulse that she 
 started. Down brakes! Good conductor, do you not 
 see the whole parish trooping to church along the path 
 which you will assuredly plow across if you keep on 
 this headlong way ? In the village church-yard they 
 lie, every one, older than Noah and Methuselah ; do not 
 you see them flitting under the hill, filing through the 
 wood, dressed in their Sunday best Uncle Tim trot 
 ting on rods before his wife, and waiting now and then 
 for her to come up? They are crossing the brook, they 
 are climbing the stile, they are opening the gate stur 
 dy boys that are grandfathers now, and dead at that; 
 and among the strong-limbed girls, perhaps, is that very 
 Grandmother Hubbard who swung out her name and 
 fame on the bent apple-tree. The stile is taken away;
 
 132 TWELVE MILES FJiOJI A LEUOX. 
 
 the gate is built into the wall; the path has crept back 
 into field ; all the parish goes to church by the new 
 road : and only the oldest inhabitant and I know that 
 there ever was a thoroughfare in this beautiful wild 
 waste. Leave it wild and waste and beautiful, I pray 
 you, men and brethren, and do not crush our phantoms 
 under your iron wheels. 
 
 What do they think of you at Mingo's? the merry 
 imps, the graceless, dare-devil, do-nothing, happy-go- 
 easy gnomes, sparks of Southern fire borne by a wan 
 ton wind to this untender North, glittering a short, gro 
 tesque life, and going out forever? Children of the 
 palm-tree and the desert and the fervid tropical sun, 
 souvenirs of the Sphinx and the Pyramids and the eter 
 nal repose of Egypt, wrenched out of all their poetry, 
 their calmness, their broad, still civilization, flung up 
 bare and defenseless against our hard, foreign ways, our 
 cold, rugged, unnatural life Egypt and the Sphinx 
 went quickly out of them, and they were nothing but a 
 family of "niggers," shiftless, worthless, ne'er-do-well, 
 glad of the crumbs which fell even from poor men's ta 
 bles. What could they do but drop out of life one by 
 one? There are wreaths of blinding snow which shut 
 away the summer sun. Under the bleak hill they have 
 whirled up a curious mound. The belated, benumbed, 
 bewildered traveler, solitary and intent, pitches through 
 the ever -accumulating drifts, but stumbles upo'n this 
 and starts back, all his chilled blood shocked into sud 
 den heat and horror. It is the last of the merry imps 
 of Mingo's, lying in a drunken death in the pathway of 
 the storm, till death in sober earnest overtook him. So
 
 TO TUDIZ BY BAILROAD. 133 
 
 they drifted out of the great unknown into a narrow, 
 aimless, degraded life, and, after a little groveling and 
 grinning and grimacing, drifted out again into a great 
 unknown, and left upon the earth that we can see no 
 mark but "Mingo's:" yet known unto God are all his 
 works ; and if he must use for building-blocks these un 
 shapely and unsightly stones that will take no polish 
 and crumble under the chisel, it is the least of all possi 
 ble reasons why we should make them or leave them 
 unsightly and unshapely. 
 
 Merry imps, grim and grinning ghosts, sad shadows, 
 gentle and sweet phantoms, it is no work of mine. I 
 never broke into your fastnesses with smoke and whirl 
 wind and fury. I would have left you to your haunts 
 forever. Never should the foot of traffic or of pleasure 
 have pressed your turf. Only some wandering, wistful 
 wayfarer like me should now and then heighten your 
 solitude; only the familiar stroke of the frosty axe, or 
 the crusted snow crunching under the patient feet of 
 oxen, should have softened, not broken, your olden si 
 lence; only the gentle and timid cows should have 
 stood knee-deep at noontide in your sluggish summer 
 brook, or browsed along your ancient hill-side, scarcely 
 more ancient than they. But even to this snorting, 
 screaming devil, let us give his due. He makes havoc 
 among the phantoms; tr.ue, but it is only for a week. 
 Double, double, toil and trouble, for seven restless daj-s, 
 and then a year of rest again as deep as the centuries. 
 Only a week, and the iron rails shall lie as still as the 
 earth that holds them, and the dead generations shall 
 come back to their haunts, as noiseless as of old. And
 
 134 TWELVE MILL'S FROM A LEJIOX. 
 
 for that week, though he bitterly disturb the dead, this 
 frantic and ruthless demon, consider, I pray you, fair 
 ghosts, how much succor he brings the living. The 
 great and terrible crowds that used to descend into our 
 very door-yards, drink all our waters dry, choke us with 
 clouds of dust, jostle us in our own streets these 
 crowds he swallows as deftly as a. snake her endanger 
 ed young, and leaves us clean and content to go in the 
 old paths. All the booths and stalls that sprung up on 
 our borders for one vigorous week ; candy- tents and 
 coffee-barracks ; counters that invited you to buy baked 
 beans and brown bread, stalled oysters and hatred there 
 with ; marvelous menageries, that promised to show 
 you a Hindoo cow, and a Persian ox, and a performing 
 pig, and a Kentucky giantess, and a boa-constrictor, for 
 the moderate sum of ten cents, children half-price ; fan 
 dangoes that invited you to swing; and hobby-horses 
 without legs, whereon you might ride in a sort, of 
 round-robin for five minutes and five cents; bears that 
 danced, and monkeys that dressed all these this rapa 
 cious and remorseless demon, this kindly and merciful 
 genius, has drawn into his capacious maw, and let us 
 have peace. 
 
 Yet the world is never unanimous, and every bless 
 ing has its drawback. 
 
 "Oh mamma!" cries our little maiden of four sum 
 mers, with vivid memories of previous delight and un 
 shed tears of disappointment filming her black eye**, 
 U 0h mamma! I went to camp-meeting, and didn't see 
 the bear!"
 
 THE HIGHER LAWS OF RAILHOADS. 135 
 
 IX. 
 
 THE HIGHER LA WS OF RAILROADS. 
 
 To country-folk, railroads are Manifest Destiny. So 
 much of our life is connected with them, that the Eule 
 of the Eoad concerns us deeply. The courtesies, com 
 forts, and customs of the railroad come home to men's 
 business and bosoms. 
 
 In favored hours we are wont to sny there are no 
 disagreeable travelers. We are impressed with the con 
 sideration, which traveling Americans show each other, 
 and we even marvel within ourselves, "What becomes 
 of the disagreeable people?" 
 
 For, alas! much as we love our county, we can not 
 persuade ourselves that our countrymen and country 
 women are always and everywhere amiable. In all 
 classes there must be a degree of irritability, impa 
 tience, selfishness, unwisdom, which at times renders 
 the closest of friends a little outrageous and intolerable 
 to each other. They impute motives, and make re 
 quirements, and misunderstand, and meddle, in a man 
 ner which is exceedingly annoying when the tempera 
 ture is at three or four hundred in the shade, though 
 we are ashamed to remember it w r hen the thermometer 
 ranges back to a reasonable figure. But apparently 
 these people do not travel ; with all the flitting to and 
 fro which the summer months invariably witness, any
 
 136 TWELVE MILES FROM A LEXOX. 
 
 thing like rank discourtesy, positive impoliteness, stud 
 ied or even indifferent ill-manners, is rarely seen. AVc 
 have traveled hither and yon, by steamer, railroad-train, 
 stage-coach, and pleasure-wagon, and have remarked an 
 almost entire absence of social rudeness or unkindness 
 or ill-bred selfishness among American travelers. It 
 is unquestionably hard, when you are luxuriously loun 
 ging in four seats of a railway-carriage, to be called upon 
 to relinquish three of them, and pile your parcels over 
 head or underfoot, or in your lap; but our American 
 saints have done it without a murmur even more, with 
 a smile. It must be exasperating to pounce upon an 
 empty chair on a crowded deck, and meet the smiling 
 sentence " engaged," but we have never iailed to see 
 the claim recognized. The man who will lower his 
 umbrella, and be content to broil on the top of a stage 
 coach, that he may not break the view of his neighbor, 
 is entitled to rank in the calendar hard by St. Lawrence 
 on his gridiron. Nor has he any mean claim to canon 
 ization who will hush the clamors of his own appetite, 
 and supplement the services of slow or overworked 
 servants, by ministering the daintiest tidbits of the ho 
 tel table to hungry Samaritan strangers. All this, and 
 more, have our eyes seen in these later days. Consid 
 eration, courtesy, helpfulness are the rule : rudeness is 
 the exception. 
 
 Is it that the disagreeable people stay at home, or 
 that they leave their disagreeableness at home? Per 
 haps a little of both. Disagreeableness is oftener than 
 any thing else mere impatience, petulance, irritability, 
 narrowness, arising not from natural qualities, but from
 
 THE HIGHER LAWS OF KAILSOADS. 1ST 
 
 a too restricted life. Ilome is the natural centre of the 
 world; but too much staying there unfits one to make 
 home what it should be. It is necessary for the father 
 and mother to break up the routine of their days, to go 
 out into a fresh world, to change air and sky and scen 
 ery, to see new faces, and be surrounded by new inter 
 ests. It is better even that they should be tired, con 
 fused, perplexed by unwonted cares, than that they 
 should forever tread the old, dull round of things. A 
 woman goes back to her home with a better apprecia 
 tion of its value for having spent some time away from 
 it. To women the change afforded even by a short 
 journey is at once more necessary and more benefi 
 cial than to men. The every -day work of nearly all 
 men brings them into contact with the breezy, out-doo.r 
 world, while the work of women is isolating, if not ab 
 solutely solitaiy. When a woman starts on a pleasure- 
 trip, she leaves the whole care of housekeeping behind 
 her, without assuming new cares. Perhaps few men 
 can realize what a positive luxury it is to the house 
 mother to sit down to a meal for which she has no re 
 sponsibility. The mere fact that she does not know 
 beforehand upon what meat her Cassar and herself shall 
 feed, is a wondrous appetizer. Many an excellent wom 
 an is disagreeable simply because she is wearied, wor 
 ried, and worn with too long spinning in one groove. 
 The chain ever around the neck galls and irritates. 
 But the front gate clicks behind her; she takes car or 
 coach; she no longer serves, but is served; the perfect 
 leisure tranquilizes her strained nerves; the new sur 
 roundings awaken her dormant interest. Old cares
 
 138 TWELVE MILES FROM A LEMOK 
 
 drop off from her, mind and heart are revived and re 
 freshed, and she is smiling, and kind, and agreeable, be 
 cause she is her true self. If the day of "Woman's 
 Rights ever dawns on this benighted land, the first law 
 enacted by the Woman's Congress should be that every 
 woman shall spend one month of every year away from 
 home. And if the law shall be presently amended so 
 as not to include visiting, but to make the month's ab 
 sence a month of pure journeying, or at least of living 
 among entire strangers, so much the better. 
 
 And here, because benevolence is all-comprehensive, 
 let us put in a word for that long-suffering class, the 
 unhappy gentlemen who travel without ladies. True, 
 the unsophisticated mind spontaneously demands what 
 right has any gentleman to be traveling without ladies? 
 and to that query it would not be easy to give a satis 
 factory reply; but gentlemen do sometimes travel with 
 out ladies, and in that case are put to the torture of sec- 
 ing their comrades marching, under female banners, 
 into clean and orderly cars, while they are forced for 
 lorn into dens of smoking and swearing and all un- 
 cleanness, such as the natural man seems to revel in 
 when left to his own devices, unrestrained by female in 
 fluence. Can there be a stronger testimony to the pow 
 er of woman's influence than the misery of a man who 
 has been reared under it, and is doomed for a time to 
 the society of those who have been greatly debarred 
 from it? "It is hell, "says a devout Swcdenborgian of 
 our acquaintance; and when you are in a railway-car 
 with a man given to tobacco, and not well-bred, 3-011 
 feel that the Swcdenborgian dialect is not too strong.
 
 THE HIGHER LAWS OF RAILROADS. 139 
 
 There is much reprehension of the indifference with 
 which female travelers receive the courtesies of men, 
 and there is doubtless some ground for reprehension ; 
 but the combined ingratitude of female America is not 
 so great an offense, and does, not produce so much dis 
 comfort, not to say disgust, as does the use of tobacco 
 by a part of the male traveling public. The employ 
 ment of smoking-cars only partially remedies the evil, 
 for smoking is its least offensive phase; and when the 
 Woman's Congress has its first law well rooted and 
 grounded in the habits of the people, it may go on im 
 mediately to enact and enforce the second: that any 
 man who so disregards the proprieties and the cleanli 
 nesses of life as to outrage the senses of his neighbors, 
 and leave the floor in his vicinage unfit for occupancy, 
 shall be forever prohibited from public vehicles and 
 forced to make all his journeys afoot! 
 
 But there is a tide in the opinions as well as in the af 
 fairs of men, and that tide of late seems to have set rath 
 er strongly against female politeness. If we may judge 
 from the newspapers, good manners in public, consider 
 ation for others, have clean gone out of the list of wom 
 an's charms. The sweet, gentle angel of poetry and 
 sentiment, the creature too bright and good for human 
 nature's daily food, has folded her white wings, and 
 there reigns in her stead a selfish, scowling, exacting fe 
 male man, who keeps what she gets and gets what she 
 can ; who ignores rights, disdains thanks, and frowns 
 with only less severity upon him who proffers than 
 upon him who withholds the only scat in the crowded
 
 140 TWELVE MILES FROM A LEMOX. 
 
 We all know the calmness, the justice, the impartial 
 ity of the press, and from its decision there is no appeal. 
 If the newspapers affirm that women in transilu are 
 rude and selfish, rude and selfish they must be, for 
 
 "Who can contend with his lords?" 
 
 But is not a pardonable abstraction, a nervous anxiety, 
 sometimes mistaken for unpardonable incivility? A 
 man relinquishes his seat to a woman, she accepts it 
 without acknowledgment, and down it goes as another 
 instance of ungraceful and ungracious manners. It may 
 not be sublime good manners, but bethink you, oh!- man 
 and brother, who go your railroad journey of twenty 
 miles every morning to your business and every even 
 ing to your home, and to whom a railroad journey is 
 no more than stepping from your parlor to your dining- 
 room, this wayward sister, whose ingratitude has pierced 
 you so much sharper than a serpent's tooth, had to wind 
 up the whole house to run a day without her before she 
 started. Then she was hurried with dressing. She had 
 water -proof, parasol, and reticule, to begin with, and 
 has innumerable small parcels before the day is over; 
 she stepped on her gown stumbling up the car-steps, 
 her flounces were shut into the door as she entered, her 
 fringe was caught by some projection of the sofas, the 
 paper around Jenny's hat is coming unpinned, and the 
 roll of calico is slipping from its string. She will cer 
 tainly fall a victim to irresistible centrifugal law if she 
 can not have a basis of operation to concentrate her 
 scattering forces, and she is immensely relieved by your 
 offer of a scat. Of course it is a thousand pities that
 
 THE HIGHER LAWS OF RAILROADS. 
 
 she does not thank you, but is it not weakness rather 
 than wickedness? 
 
 But there are plenty of women young, assured, and 
 self-possessed who are equally inconsiderate. 
 
 Yes, I saw two of them not long ago in an omnibus, 
 handsome, hale, well-dressed, sitting at the head of the 
 omnibus engrossed in conversation. Three men were on 
 the same seat, and two men and three women on the op 
 posite seat. A gentleman opened the door one of those 
 good-humored, good-looking creatures who carry sun 
 shine with them, large in person and sympathy, at home 
 everywhere. He surveyed the scene a moment, counted 
 aloud blithely, " one, two, three, four, five," on each side, 
 and with great good sense bestowed himself on the side 
 on which the male element predominated. The two 
 women were so engaged that they did not notice his 
 entrance, and in no wise contracted their amplitude. 
 Of course, the men were rather crowded. But it is of 
 no consequence if men are crowded. They have no 
 ruffles to crush, no lace to tear, and their hats are over 
 head. These men were as they ought to be good-na 
 tured but they grimaced and contorted, and stretched 
 their heads in mock mute appeal toward the uncon 
 scious women ; and above the rumbling and rattling 
 one could hear praiseworthy snatches of sentiment, " it's 
 their privilege," " our rulers." Such sweetness deserved 
 recognition, and a passenger suggested that the ladies- 
 were unaware of theirposition, and would move at a word. 
 
 " Just as comfortable as in my own house," gasped 
 the hero ; but at that moment the ladies became con 
 scious of the situation, and immediate! v made room.
 
 14:2 TWELVE MILES FROM A LE3IOS. 
 
 I admit that perfect politeness is never unaware of 
 situations; but imperfect politeness is of a wholly dif 
 ferent nature is it not? from positive rudeness. 
 
 "You're another!" is the argument as well as the 
 phrase of savages. Wherefore let us be savages for a 
 little while. 
 
 On certain, perhaps on all, ferry-boats, one side is 
 placarded as the "Ladies' Cabin," and one side as the 
 "Gents' Cabin." Besides this, additional notices with 
 in tell you that "ladies have the first right to seats in 
 this cabin." Yet have I, time and again, seen a row 
 of men sitting in this cabin, reading their newspapers, 
 while women were standing by in groups, unable to 
 find a seat. "Worse than this: I have seen women 
 standing with babies in their arms while men occupied 
 the seats! Now, as against a woman with a baby, men 
 have no rights which heaven or earth is bound to re 
 spect. What name, then, shall we give to that mass of 
 organic life which plunders for itself the seat that of 
 right belongs to such a woman ? 
 
 "But women want to vote," you say, great-hearted 
 gentlemen. "They want to go into the trades and fill 
 the offices, and do as men do. Let them, then, try it in 
 all its length and breadth. They must take the chances 
 just as men take them. They must not expect to act 
 like men and be treated like women." 
 
 Infatuated men ! here is where the pit opens its 
 mouth and swallows you down, and }-ou have not a 
 foot left to stand on, and no place to plant one if you 
 had as many as a centipede. Women want to vote, 
 you say, and therefore they shall rough it. But they
 
 THE HIGHER LAWS OF RAILROADS. 143 
 
 do not vote. You have not yet granted them the vote, 
 whether they want it or not. You are double and 
 twisted tyrants ; when women complain of the tale of 
 bricks, you do not diminish the tale, but you take away 
 the straw, and say, "This is what you want, is it? See 
 how you like it!" Do you think that is calculated to 
 inspire a woman with a respect for your sense of justice? 
 We have heard of hanging a man first, and trying him 
 afterward ; but these women you hang first, and try not 
 at all. When women actually vote, they may suffer the 
 penalty of voting; but when you thus anticipate dis 
 ease with your brimstone and treacle, O generation of 
 Squeerses ! you add to your despotism hypocrisy. 
 
 Do you complain that women do not thank you for 
 3'our relinquished seats? You have no claim upon 
 their thanks. You have no right to the seats. Not a 
 man in any public conveyance has a right to a seat so 
 long as a woman stands. Chivalry ? Not at all ! It 
 is naked justice. You arrogate to yourselves the man 
 agement of all modes of travel. You permit women 
 no voice therein. You charter all the companies. You 
 have the right and the power to compel these compa 
 nies to furnish seats to all their passengers. You do 
 nothing of the sort. You are dogs in the manger. You 
 will neither provide seats for female passengers, nor will 
 you suffer them to provide seats for themselves. You 
 force a woman into the attitude of the recipient of a fa 
 vor where she has really paid full market price. Ask 
 her to thank you for giving you her seat? You might 
 better thank her for not ejecting you from the car. It is 
 asking her to kiss the rod which ought to be laid about
 
 144 TWELVE MILES FROM A LEMON, 
 
 your own shoulders. The man who does not give up 
 his se.it to a woman is simply dead in trespasses and 
 sins. The man who does give up his seat is only so far 
 alive as to proclaim himself an unprofitable servant: he 
 has done only a fractional part of that which it was his 
 duty to do. 
 
 I would, indeed, that a woman should always accept 
 these duties with the voice, the smile, the gesture of 
 thanks; but I would that men sl.or.ld always under 
 stand that she does not mean any thing by it! I would 
 have her do it because it is graceful, and grace is in 
 stinctive, and not reasoning. The polite hangman did 
 not apologize to the culprit whom he was about to drop 
 off because there was any thing to apologize for. I 
 would have women so innately, so organically, so help 
 lessly high-bred, that they should smile and smile even 
 upon the villains who, by their own action, aid and abet 
 the crowding of railroad trains. Moreover, if reason 
 be admissible where impulse is the only saving grace, 
 so great is the power of courtesy that I dare say men 
 will sooner be brought to a sense of guilt by receiving- 
 undeserved mercy than severe justice. People in the 
 country are often annoyed by peddlers, frequent in vis 
 its and voluble in proffers. As these peddlers are hu 
 man beings, whom we must assume to be engaged in 
 an honest calling, it is difficult to see why they should 
 not be courteously met But apart from the fact that it 
 is pleasanter to be pleasant, I have ever observed that 
 your peddler is more easily gotten rid of by smiles than 
 frowns. To the fro ward he is very apt to show himself 
 froward ; but he is speedily smothered with sweetness.
 
 THE HIGHER LAWS OF RAILROADS. 145 
 
 So let women be always and everywhere gracious, 
 because God hath made them so ; but let that gracious- 
 ness be to men a means of grace, and not an engine of 
 destruction. When women are allowed to vote it will 
 be time to talk about letting them stand in public car 
 riages ; but until then the least a man can do is to lie 
 with his hand on his mouth, and his mouth in the dust, 
 till every woman is comfortably seated. 
 
 The tradition that men always do resign to women 
 their seats in public carriages may as well yield to the 
 established fact that they do not. Voting or no voting,, 
 it is very common to see men sitting and women stand 
 ing in the horse-cars, and it is a sight not unseen in 
 steam-cars. In and about Boston the rule seems to be, 
 " first come first served." The cars are daily filled to 
 their utmost capacity seats, aisles, and platforms; and 
 a woman takes her chance with the rest. In New York, 
 I think, she fares better; in Philadelphia, better still; 
 while in Washington the traveling mind has been train 
 ed to a politeness which leaves nothing to be desired. 
 
 The excuse of recreant knights, those Bayards suffer 
 ing fear and deprecating reproach their excuse until 
 they bethought themselves of the suffrage is, that they 
 are tired. They have been on duty all day, and their 
 fatigue is such that they do not feel bound to yield their 
 rest in favor of women who, for aught they know, are 
 simply amusing themselves with shopping or jaunting. 
 
 And this is a comparatively valid excuse. At least, 
 it is not depravity so total as is involved in what one 
 is tempted to call the voting dodge. Only say it out 
 boldly, and stand by it. To be sure, dear sirs, you 
 
 7
 
 14:6 TWELVE MILES FROM A LEMOX. 
 
 confess yourselves shambling and ineffective. It im 
 plies that you give in to railroad corporations, and visit 
 upon women the consequences of your cowardice and 
 your weakness. But, with all your faults and their 
 name is legion women love}'ou still, sitting still even, 
 and pity you infinitely ; and if you will frankly say, and 
 confine yourself to saying, that you are tired, although 
 you are not half so tired as they will throw your 
 self on their compassion, even when you ought to launch 
 out for reform instead, they will not only pity you, but 
 such is the unreasoning and unspeakable forbearance 
 of female human nature ten to one they will urge you 
 to retain or resume your seat, and count you a hero and 
 martyr into the bargain. But do not be hypocritical 
 and pharisaical, and call it even-handed justice. Do 
 not lay to woman suffrage what springs only from man- 
 suffering. 
 
 But neither chivalry nor justice requires that a wom 
 an shall occupy two seats in a railway-carriage when 
 she has paid for only one, says her male censor. Yet a 
 woman will coolly bestow herself and her belongings 
 upon the whole sofa, while gentlemen walk up and 
 down the aisle searching vainly for a seat. 
 
 If I were not obstinately bent on being reasonable, 
 moderate, and far within bounds, on making no asser 
 tion which any right-minded man would refuse to ad 
 mit at first sight, I would say that such an arrangement 
 is no more than fair. Look at the flounces, the over- 
 skirts, the paniers, the ribbons, wherewithal men over 
 load women, or to change the name but keep the pain 
 wherewith social exigency overloads women, and then
 
 - 
 
 
 
 THE HIGHER LA WS OF RAILROADS. 147 
 
 say if twice the space allotted to men is not a very 
 modest estimate of what women need. I am quite con 
 fident that if men should devise for themselves a similar 
 garb, they would be quite as blind 'as women to super 
 fluous passengers wandering about in search of a seat. 
 
 But we will lay no stress on that. We will admit 
 that women, like men, have a right only to the seat 
 they have bought; and then I ask, how many times 
 since the existence of railroads in this country has it 
 happened that a woman has refused or has churlishly 
 consented to relinquish the space which did not belong 
 to her? One would suppose sometimes that it was the 
 common rule. It is not necessarily uncivil or ill-bred 
 for a woman not to offer her sofa, uncalled for, to an 
 able-bodied man. If there is no seat in this car, per 
 haps there is in the next; and it is far less trouble for 
 him to go to it than for her to shrink into the compass 
 of half a sofa. If the other places are all occupied, and 
 the gentleman, by a word or even a look, signifies his 
 desire for the one she holds, she seldom dreams of doing 
 any thing but resign it at once, without a protest, with 
 out even a thought. If there are women otherwise 
 minded, I have nothing to say for them. Let them be 
 given up immediately to fire and sword. But it is not 
 a deadly sin for a woman to be staring out of a win 
 dow, with calm, eternal eyes, while a few superfluous 
 men are walking up and down seeking whom they may 
 devour. 
 
 It is not half so atrocious as what I have frequently 
 seen a man enter a car where a dozen men were oc 
 cupying the sofas alone, and deliberatel} 7 - place himself
 
 148 TWELVE MILES F&OX A LE.VOX. 
 
 beside a woman! That is pure malice. The golden 
 rule requires that never a woman shall be disturbed in 
 the possession of her sofa till every man has been dis 
 turbed in his. This is not chivalry. It is simply folds 
 and flounces. If any man finds this unreasonable, let 
 him take it on trust. One hour of the folds and 
 flounces himself would establish, him in the truth for 
 ever. 
 
 So have I seen on the ferry-boats, to which I have 
 before referred, men occupying women's seats when 
 their own empty ones were distinctly visible on the op 
 posite side. What infatuation possesses you, men and 
 brethren, thus to rush out of your sphere? Why not 
 stay with your kind, and leave women to themselves? 
 A woman can neither refresh nor revenge herself by 
 going over to your side of the boat. You poach on 
 her manor without fear of reprisals ; and if she does not 
 gush forth gratitude when you offer late and scant jus 
 tice, you send a paragraph to the newspapers bemoan 
 ing the deterioration of female manners! 
 
 "Fleet foot on the correi, 
 
 Sage counsel in cumber, 
 lied hand in the foray, 
 
 How sound is thy slumber," 
 
 when thine own small sins pass before thee ! 
 
 Alas! one woman among a thousand have I seen. 
 She was well dressed, and to the casual glance looked 
 like a lady. She had pre-empted four seats in the 
 crowded car. I had followed a brilliant friend into the 
 train for the pleasure of half an hour's chat. My friend 
 was standing by the empty seats, running up a flag of
 
 - 
 
 THE HIGHER LAWS OF RAILROADS. 149 
 
 distress. " There are no seats to be bad but these, and 
 these are not to be had. Engaged." 
 
 "I don't know," said an incredulous gentleman near. 
 "I have been waiting half an hour, and nobody has 
 been in during that time." 
 
 I remembered the precepts and example of an elder 
 in Israel, for such case made and provided, and said 
 blandly : " We will occupy the seats till your friends 
 come, with your permission." The lady made no reply. 
 She gave no sign of assent. Not a smile flitted across 
 her face. On the contrary, she assumed a severity of 
 aspect that would strike a chill to the warmest heart. 
 Her silence became sonorous with disapprobation. The 
 very corn-sheaves of her bonnet bristled with displeas 
 ure. Seeing that we were about to be annihilated, we 
 took our lives in our hands, and turned the back of the 
 seat so that we .should not be forced to confront that 
 awful visage, adding, apologetically, "When your friends 
 come, the seat shall be turned back again." But no re 
 lenting softened the outlines of the stern countenance. 
 Then we began our longed-for talk, and the minutes 
 flew, and the engine snorted, and the train gave its in 
 itiative jerk, and we rolled out of the grumbling arid 
 smoky station ; and then came up a young man, one 
 young man, to the lady behind us only one young 
 man, and no more. Thereupon I turned to the disap 
 pointed lady, and said, meekly, " Your friends have not 
 come?" 
 
 Then and there broke out the irrepressible conflict. 
 Forth from the irate lips, with a deliberation of utter 
 ance, with an asperity of tone, and an acerbity of ges-
 
 150 TWELVE MILES FROM A LEXOX. 
 
 ture, of which mortal pen can give little notion, and un 
 der which a terrified soul still shivers, came the deci 
 sive answer, 
 
 "They have NOT!" 
 
 Nothing but conscious innocence could sustain one 
 in this trying ordeal. 
 
 Now that I have told the story, I hardly believe it, 
 for the woman herself,' with her causeless pugnacity, 
 her harsh tones, and her theatric head-tossings, seemed 
 like a character just stepped out of Diekens's novels, 
 rather than like a flesh-and-blood woman going home 
 to husband and children, and sitting-room and supper. 
 
 Oh, my soul ! come thou into her secret, if such a 
 thing may be. What are the views of life held by such 
 a one? More particularly, what are her -views of car- 
 sofas, and the rights of the road ? When one buys a 
 ticket, he is strictly entitled to one seat no more. Is 
 any person legally entitled to a seat he does not occu 
 py ? Suppose we go into the smoking-car, or the bag 
 gage-car, or take a ride on the engine; docs our right 
 to the seat in the ordinary car not lapse? If not, then 
 one ticket entitles the holder to two places : one in the 
 smoking-car, and one in the ordinary car, while his un 
 lucky neighbor is perhaps obliged to stand. On the 
 contrary, one ticket entitles the holder to one seat, 
 which is his only while he occupies it. His coat, his 
 hat, his newspaper, constitute his valid claim when he 
 returns, but do not forbid his Weary neighbor to occupy 
 it without discourtesy while he is gone. Wherefore, 
 let us hope that time and reflection will soften the judg 
 ment of our nsrsrrieved countrv-woman, and that she will
 
 . 
 
 " THE HIGHER LAWS OF RAILROADS. 151 
 
 not go down to her grave accounting us banditti and 
 interlopers, Goths and Vandals, preying upon the un 
 protected, and reckless of all law but might. 
 
 I do not mind confessing that any fall from grace on 
 the part of a woman is more grievous than a similar fall 
 in a man. Not that women are under stronger bonds 
 than men to keep the peace. Not one jot or tittle of 
 a man's duty shall be remitted ! Yet it remains, that 
 though a man's discourtesy may be repulsive, it does 
 not becloud the sun in the heavens. But where a 
 woman is uncivil, the very in-ward light is turned to 
 darkness. 
 
 There are certain points of good manners in which 
 women fail, which yet seem to have been greatly over 
 looked by their censors. Perhaps we ought not to say 
 women, for the class is undoubtedly small ; but the one 
 woman who behaves badly attracts more attention than 
 the nine hundred and ninety-nine well disposed; and 
 when even one woman falls below the proper standard, 
 all women seem, somehow, to be humiliated thereby. 
 
 In connection with our public schools there is spring 
 ing up a school of ungracefulness and indelicacy which, 
 to my thinking, goes far to neutralize the good wrought 
 by the former. Groups of girls travel daily from the 
 country villages, three, five, ten miles over the steam 
 and horse railroads, to the normal and high schools of 
 the city, and return at night. What is cause and what 
 is effect I do not know ; but these girls sometimes con 
 duct themselves so rudely as to force upon one the con 
 viction that it would be better for women not to know 
 the alphabet, if they must take on so much roughness
 
 152 TWELVE MILES FROM A LEMON. 
 
 along with it. Typical American girls, pretty, gentle- 
 faced, intelligent -looking, well-dressed, will fill a car 
 with idle, vulgar, boisterous chatter. Out of rosy, deli 
 cate lips come the voices of draymen, I was about to 
 say, but that is not true; for the voices of these girls 
 are like nothing in the heavens above or the earth 
 beneath. The only quality of womanliness they possess 
 is weakness. Without depth, richness, or force, they 
 are thin, harsh, inevitable. They do not so much fill 
 the space as they penetrate it. Three or four such girls 
 will gather face to face, and from beginning to end of 
 their journey pour forth a ceaseless torrent of giddy 
 gabble, utterly regardless of any other presence than 
 their own. They will talk of their teachers and school 
 mates by name, of their parties and plans, of their stud 
 ies, their dresses, their most personal and private mat 
 ters, with an extravagance, with an incohereney, with 
 an inelegance and coarseness of phraseology, which is 
 disgraceful alike to their schools and to their homes. 
 They will compel'without scruple and bear without 
 flinching the eyes of a whole carriage-load of passen 
 gers. Indeed, the notice of strangers seems sometimes 
 to be the inspiration of their noisy, unmelodious clatter. 
 They apparently think that this is to be sprightly, arch, 
 high-spirited, and winning, not perceiving that a really 
 high-toned and high-bred girl would as soon jump over 
 a stick in a circus as turn herself into such a spectacle. 
 There is nothing winning about it. The absolute ex 
 travagance and nonsense of it will sometimes excite a 
 smile from thoughtlessness, but it is a smile less com 
 plimentary than a frown. No amount of acquisition,
 
 THE HIGHER LAWS OF RAILROADS. 153 
 
 no mental training, can atone for such demeanor. If 
 the two are incompatible, it is better for a woman not to 
 know the multiplication table than not to be gentle- 
 mannered. If a woman is vulgarly prononce, the more 
 she knows the worse. I could sometimes wish that our 
 far- famed schools would stop their algebra, stop their 
 Latin, stop their philosophies, and give their undivided 
 attention to teaching their pupils how to talk. It may 
 not be possible to make them talk sense, but surely 
 they can be made to talk nonsense gracefully. Not 
 all can have musical voices ; but, upon pain of death, I 
 would have girls taught to speak low. Training can 
 do much in the way of melody and sweetness, but a 
 voice that is softly modulated can not be violently dis 
 agreeable. And if a girl's tongue is incorrigible, let her 
 be dispossessed of it altogether. 
 
 The pronunciation and the rhetoric of these girls are 
 a disgrace to their* elders. Words and syllables are 
 clipped, twisted, run together, mingled, mangled, and 
 muddled into a dialect fit for savages. Girls who can 
 read Virgil and calculate an eclipse will employ in con 
 versation a jargon that would stamp them with the 
 stamp of intolerable vulgarity at any well-bred dinner- 
 table. What cruelty, what waste is this! It is so easy 
 not to offend, it is so hard not to be stupid. It is so 
 unimportant to be learned, it is so indispensable to be 
 well-mannered. Why give time and pains unmeasured 
 to mental acquisition, and then neutralize it all by a 
 ruffianly exterior? Why cast an odium upon education 
 by associating it with uncouthness? 
 
 There are disadvantages worse than these, if any
 
 154 TWELVE MILES FROM A LEXOX. 
 
 thing can be worse, in sending girls to school over 
 the railroads. They somehow become common. They 
 cheapen themselves. They lose, if they ever possessed, 
 they destroy before they are old enough to feel, the di 
 vinity that should hedge a woman. They fall into I 
 can hardly dignify it with the name of flirtation but 
 into a sort of bantering communication with unknown 
 men, employes of the railroad, and season travelers a 
 traffic which is fatal to dignity in woman, and inspires 
 no reverence in man. And this passes for liveliness 
 and attractiveness, or at most, perhaps, it is being a lit 
 tle wild. But it is a wildness which girls can not afford. 
 Delicacy is not a thing which can be lost and found. 
 No art can restore to the grape its bloom ; and the su 
 preme charm of the grape is its bloom. Familiarity 
 without love, without confidence, without regard, is de 
 structive to all that makes woman exalting and enno 
 bling. 
 
 There are other displays of ill manners which are al 
 most incredible. Girls will sit with their faces toward 
 the passengers, and eat oranges in the most sloven 
 ly, but the most unconcerned, manner, and then pelt 
 each, other with bits of peel across the aisle. They will 
 scatter the crumbs and paper of their lunch over the 
 floor and sofas. I have seen the clean, tidy waiting- 
 room of the railroad station strewn with pea-nut shells 
 not always, I fear, by women young enough to be 
 called girls. Such things are simply disgusting. Clean 
 liness, order, propriety, are not local or incidental qual 
 ities. They are inherent, inbred. A lady will no sooner 
 be untidy in one place than in another. She will no
 
 THE HIGHER LAWS OF RAILROADS. 15o 
 
 more throw nut-shells on the bare floor of a station- 
 room than on her own parlor carpet. She will no 
 sooner thrust a penknife into the leather lining of the 
 station sofa than she would into the velvet upholstery 
 of her own. 
 
 " The world is wide, these things are small ; 
 They may he nothing, but they are all." 
 
 Nothing? It is the first duty of woman to be a lady. 
 The woman who says that this is making much ado 
 about nothing is the woman who will accost you by 
 name, when you enter a car, in a tone that introduces 
 you to every person in it, and makes you wish that the 
 part she occupies had run -off the track at the last 
 bridge. She is the woman who, under the pretext of 
 conversing with one or two friends, informs the whole 
 car company of her views on woman's rights and her 
 relations with her husband. She is the woman who, in 
 a public assembly, when we are all momentarily expect 
 ing the lecturer or the singer to enter, rises in her place, 
 fronts the audience, and stands two minutes waiting for 
 or beckoning to some Sarah Jane to join her. Good- 
 breeding is good sense. Bad manners in woman is im 
 morality. Awkwardness may be ineradicable. Bash- 
 fulness is constitutional. Ignorance of etiquette is the 
 result of circumstances. All can be condoned, and do 
 not banish man or woman from the amenities of his 
 kind. But self-possessed, unshrinking, and aggressive 
 coarseness of demeanor may be reckoned a State prison 
 offense, and certainly merits that mild form of restraint 
 called imprisonment for life.
 
 156 TWELVE MILES FROM A LEMOX. 
 
 We have not forgotten the paragraphs written at the 
 time of the visit of the Grand Duke Alexis. More than 
 one newspaper read lectures to our women on proprie 
 ty of behavior. The Grand Duke, they said, was ac 
 customed to see ladies wait at home, and not go out be 
 yond their thresholds into the harbor to receive their 
 visitors. "Blush a little; the Prince is used to it," 
 breathed some anxious Mentor to the girls, when the 
 young Prince Arthur was feted through the country ; 
 and common report put a more than lady-like importu 
 nity into the requests of some mammas for opportunity 
 for themselves and their daughters to dance with the 
 Prince of Wales. Every such suggestion is an indig 
 nity. It is a shame for women to be lectured on their 
 manners. It is a bitter shame that they need it. 
 Women ought to give the law, not learn it. Women 
 are the umpires of society. It is they to whom all def 
 erence should be paid, to whom all moot points should 
 be referred. To be a lady is more than to be a prince. 
 A lady is always in her own right inalienably worthy 
 of respect. To a lady, prince, and peasant alike bow. 
 How can a woman be willing, for the sake of gratifying 
 an idle cariosity or a petty pride, still less an inordi 
 nate self-seeking, how can she be willing to sacrifice the 
 modesty, the reticence, the digni.t} r ,. which should always 
 characterize her? And yet. this is a point on which 
 words are useless. The papers may say to women, in 
 rough or fine phrase, "Stay at home, and do not throw 
 yourselves into the arms of princes; be quiet and dig 
 nified on your journeys," but that is not enough. We 
 do not wish women to be such that the papers shall so
 
 THE HIGHER LAWS OF RAILROADS. 157 
 
 speak. Do not be restrained. Do not Lave impulses 
 that need restraint. Do not wish to dance with the 
 Prince unsought ; feel differently. Be such that you con 
 fer honor. Carry yourselves so loftily that men shall 
 look to you for reward, not at you in rebuke. The 
 natural sentiment of man toward woman is reverence. 
 He loses a large means of grace when he is obliged 
 to account her a being to be trained into propriety. 
 A man's ideal is not wounded when a woman fails in 
 worldly wisdom; but if in grace, in tact, in sentiment, 
 in delicacy, in kindliness, she be found wanting, he re 
 ceives an inward hurt. Therefore, oh ! women greatly 
 beloved and greatly preached at if not for courtesy's 
 own sweet sake, still for love's sake, for humanity's 
 sake, for the sake of the poor, strong, untutored men 
 who will die in their roughness unless you polish them, 
 who will go mourning all their days for an ideal unless 
 yon rise stately and commanding before them ; who, 
 for every inch of lapse from } T OU, will take an ell of li 
 cense for themselves, and out of the frogs and toads 
 which drop from your lips in idle moments will con 
 struct a whole menagerie of unclean beasts, to their own 
 undoing we pray you be so courteously affectioned 
 one toward another, in honor preferring one another, 
 be so faultless and so compelling toward the helpless 
 sex, which looks to you. for guidance, that a man shall 
 no more think of prescribing rules or throwing out 
 hints for your behavior than of regulating the stars 
 in their courses; but rather as the shipwrecked mar 
 iner finds his hope and lafety in the stars, so man 
 whom it is alwavs safe to consider as more or less a
 
 158 TWELVE JULES FROM A LEMOX. 
 
 shipwreck while employing all his energy in steer 
 ing his crazy craft through the wild waves, shall only 
 need to keep his eyes fixed on you to know that he 
 is going by a straight course to the haven where he 
 \vould be !
 
 HO LID A YS. 159 
 
 X. 
 
 H OLID A YS. 
 
 ONCE there was a little girl who would Lave been 
 very happy with her two doll children, Emilius Alvah 
 and Mary Maria, but for the sad thought which under 
 lay all her enjoyment that a time was corning when she 
 could no longer play with dolls. Grown people had no 
 dolls. What there could be to enliven the dreariness 
 of existence when dolls should have gone by, the little 
 lady could not imagine; and she found but cold com 
 fort in the determination that she would set herself res 
 olutely to drawing, and find in making pictures such 
 satisfaction as might be left when the real piquancy of 
 life should have passed away. 
 
 But the years came and went. Mary Maria disap 
 peared wholly from the eyes of mortals, and no man 
 knoweth her sepulchre to this day. Emilius Alvah, 
 with a badly battered face, and a sadly shattered ankle, 
 and a shocking bad hat, lay on a high shelf in a dark 
 closet ; and, strange to say, no one mourned him. His 
 little mother grew to womanhood; and, for the waste 
 she looked to endure, she found life so exceedingly 
 bright and sweet and full that she never had a regret, 
 but only a pleasant memory, for Emilius Alvah and 
 Mary Maria. 
 
 Just as it is with individuals so it is with nations.
 
 160 TWELVE MILES FROM A LEXOX. 
 
 J ust as it would be for a woman to go back to her dolls 
 for amusement, is it for a mature and intellectual nation 
 to go back to the antics of a crude and rollicking pe 
 riod, or to attempt to adopt the antics of a crude and 
 rollicking nation. There was a time when English 
 men entertained themselves and their wives by climbing 
 greased poles and running sack-races. Men and women 
 in Italy may still entertain themselves by putting on 
 grotesque garments, and pelting each other with sugar 
 plums. But surely the American populace never pre 
 sented a more melancholy spectacle than in a certain at 
 tempt to adopt the Carnival as an American institution. 
 Yet the attempt was not, necessarily, childish or un 
 worthy. There is a vague idea that Americans are too 
 sedate, that they have not sufficient relaxation, that they 
 ought to appoint more holidays. But what does the 
 idea spring from ? Amusement is for health, happi 
 ness, effectiveness. Do not the Americans live as long 
 as other people? Are they not the happiest people in 
 the" world? Are they really less effective than other 
 people ? What do we want of holidays ? Probably NYC 
 have come nearer than any other nation to equalizing 
 work. A greater proportion of persons are actively 
 engaged in business; a smaller proportion are suffering 
 from intense and prolonged overwork, or from idleness. 
 Just in the ratio of the equalization diminishes our 
 need of holida} r s. The American workman is not a 
 child with a set task, not a slave with an oppressive 
 burden, but a free, intelligent, self-respecting, nd self- 
 guiding man. He lays out his own life. He reaps the 
 reward of his labors. His work dees not mean simply
 
 HOLIDAYS. 161 
 
 bread-and-butter, and a dance under the May-pole, but 
 solid beef and pudding, a deaconship in the church, two 
 weeks' summer board in the country, a piano for his 
 daughter, and high-school, and perhaps college, for his 
 son. Set him running a sack-race, indeed ! He literal 
 ly is the populace, at least of New England. The quiet 
 country village, with its one meeting-house and four 
 school-houses, may have a, few exceptional tatterde 
 malions, recognized and tolerated, living from hand to 
 mouth a little Bohemia, half butt, half burden. But 
 the mass of the people are such as the deacon aforesaid. 
 They do not thank }<ou for holidays. What they want 
 more than the State prescribes they can take for them 
 selves without prescriptions. Sometimes, when they 
 come home from shop or market, they will buy a mask, 
 with which their children will delight and affright them 
 selves for a week ; but a wagon-load of men and women 
 going about the streets in sober -earnest masks, bow 
 ing to right and left, seems to them simply silly. A 
 man striding along the sidewalk in a yellow flannel sur 
 plice merely makes himself ridiculous, and they gazo 
 upon him with profound soberness. If they have mon 
 ey to spend in sugar-plums, the sugar-plums are safely 
 wrapped in brown paper bags, and bestowed in their 
 overcoat pockets for the delectation of their own little 
 folks, not for grown-up strangers. Tournament trow- 
 sers trimmed with tinsel lace look wonderfully incon 
 gruous over stout Yankee leather boots ; and our famil 
 iarity with circus-riders and outriders makes the haber 
 dashery of knighthood show marvelously mean under 
 the broad daylight of the nineteenth century.
 
 162 TWELVE MILES FJtOlf A LEMOX. 
 
 Whatever amendment is made for our relief from 
 work must be made in accordance with our constitu 
 tion, national and social. Americans must go forward, 
 and not backward. They can never become children 
 again. They are not to be raised by greased poles. 
 They are to find entertainment in society, not in sports. 
 Relaxation is to work itself more and more thoroughly 
 and beneficently into every day, not concentrate itself 
 into senseless revels on set days. With increase of 
 wisdom, occupation will more nicely adjust itself to 
 capacity and taste, so that a man's business will be 
 fruitful of pleasure. Every day will settle its own bills, 
 and leave no overplus of weariness to be offset by to 
 morrow's enforced rest or prescribed merry-making. 
 Our holidays will then be still more than they now are 
 holy days days of great memories and great sugges 
 tions, of family reunion, of national congratulation, of 
 profound and manly thanksgiving. 
 
 Meanwhile our merry-making, our pleasure-taking, is 
 neither unfrequent nor lugubrious. Life is varied, the 
 hours go swiftly, and work is warm with interest. 
 
 In the country, where every sound must give an 
 account of itself, the early stillness .of summer morn 
 ings is sometimes broken by a protracted clatter. The 
 noise assaults your ears long before it makes any im 
 pression on your soul, buried in sleep. You become 
 slowly aware that it is not a steady, level ado, but a 
 rattling that swells and sinks and swells again in a 
 series of disturbing culminations; and presently you 
 comprehend that a procession of some sort is going by, 
 and you are wide awake in an instant. Processions are
 
 HOLIDAYS. 163 
 
 not so common in the country that they can be suffered 
 to hide their light under a bushel. The household is 
 suddenly set astir every window -blind opened far 
 .enough for curious eyes to peer out, and for the bright, 
 fresh, dewy morning to peer in. The barefoot milk-boy 
 is slowly sauntering by, his newly scoured tin pail re 
 splendent in the sunshine, and his wide eyes fixed on 
 the clatter, just rounding the knoll beneath the elms: 
 one, two, three, four pairs of horses, as different from the 
 sober steeds in yonder pasture as silk from stuff gay, 
 high -stepping horses, that look as if the map of the 
 world had been wrapped around them for skin, the con 
 tinents tinted roan, the seas in white; and behind them 
 long two -story wagons, like boxes on wheels, gayly 
 painted, fast closed. But we know it is the circus, and 
 that those gorgeously colored boxes inclose a howling 
 chaos of bears and tigers, and that somewhere along the 
 road, at some auspicious hour, some happy person will 
 see the elephant; but we must content ourselves for 
 the present with the pretty little pony, and the grand 
 chariot which contains such members of the " troupe " 
 as are not driving the horses or stretched prone, dead 
 asleep, on the tops of the howling boxes. A very sleepy 
 circus it always is at this time of the morning; but it 
 sets the whole village wild with enthusiasm. 
 
 Then the handbills come and add fuel to the flame. 
 The county paper takes up the parable, and flares out 
 with chariots and horsemen and horsewomen too in 
 every attitude of danger and daring, and the odds are 
 you go. If you have children, you say it is to please 
 the children. If you have none, you say it is to see the
 
 IGl TWELVE MILES FltOlf A 
 
 crowd. But it is not. It is to see the circus. You feel 
 a little shamefaced to inarch up on the village green 
 and buy a ticket of the man -who has made an office of 
 the rear of his wagon, but you do it. Hosts of- minor 
 tents have colonized in the vicinity of the mammoth 
 tent, and on their canvas sides picture to you in vivid 
 colors and flaunting capitals the attractions of the Two 
 Interesting Idiots from Australia, Remarkable Double- 
 Ileaded Girl Is She One, or Is She Two? The Cal 
 culating Pig, or The Giantess of the Hebrides. But 
 you shun side issues and plunge at once into the lions' 
 den and take heart. For no loud advertisement nor 
 monstrosity of drawing can conceal the fierce magnifi 
 cence of a lion, the treacherous softness of a panther, 
 the graceful beauty of the leopard. They circle their 
 impatient round the free, wild, fettered souls and 
 bring into this mean arena the grandeur of Numidian 
 wildernesses. Before them the keepers walk back and 
 forth in dingy scarlet coats, reciting to their ever-shift 
 ing audiences choice bits of natural history with an im 
 passive face and a monotonous voice that make the 
 growling and roaring of the other beasts seem orator 
 ical and intelligent. Here is the huge white polar bear, 
 draggling his long hair on the floor, and panting with 
 heat, in spite of the four hundred pounds of ice where 
 with he is daily blockaded, and the hogsheads of water 
 that keep him constantly wet. Alas! the ice-chest and 
 the shower-bath are but a sorry tepid substitute for the 
 arctic floe that his hot blood leaps and longs for. Here 
 is the prowling hyena that ghoul among beasts, that 
 horror of ingenuous youth, till the same tender hand 
 
 o */ /
 
 HOLIDAYS. 165 
 
 which turned Henry VIII. into a fond husband, and 
 Judas Iscariot into a too zealous loyalist, touched the 
 hyena too, and whitewashed him into a roving sanitary 
 commission prosecuting its good work by moonlight. 
 Here in the middle of the tent lie the camels, mild and 
 ugly ; and immediately the white sands of the desert 
 stretch around us, and the damsel Rebekah, lithe and 
 blithe and very fair to look upon, stands once more 
 by the well of Nahor at the even-tide, and down from 
 Gilead comes a cavalcade of Midian merchants, bear 
 ing spicery and balm and myrrh. "Slow coaching," 
 young America would say ; but when Ahasuerus sent 
 out all swiftly a decree to revoke the bloody edict of 
 Haman, "hastened and pressed" by the love and the 
 terror of his young Jewish queen Esther the beautiful, 
 and brave as beautiful, and wise as brave the camels 
 and young dromedaries held their heads high among 
 his post-horses. Was it three thousand of such sturdy 
 cattle as these that Job's stables held? Round such 
 tawnjr, homely necks did Zebah and Zalmunna hang 
 their golden ornaments? And if, as my lord keeper 
 affirms, it takes one hundred and fifty pounds of meat 
 every day to feed a baker's dozen of lions and tigers, on 
 what enemy's country could Job have foraged to keep 
 his stalls from famine, even if his mews were as pious 
 ly inclined as our nineteenth century beasts, who have 
 unanimously agreed to keep the Sabbath-day by an 
 unbroken fast? No feeding in this circus on Sunday! 
 Let the compilers of our Sabbath manuals take notice. 
 Whether it is for the health of their bodies or the sub 
 jugation of their souls doth not appear; but it would
 
 166 TWELVE MILES FROM A LEMOX. 
 
 seem as if Sunday must be a rather long day to tbern, 
 with not even the solace of a curious stick to stir up 
 their sides and their solitude. 
 
 And here is that mountain of animated nature, the 
 elephant Is he an elephant? Is he not a mass of 
 baked mud. that lived once among the megatheriums 
 and ich thy osau ruses, when life was big and slow and 
 pokey, and has come down to us by mistake, as one 
 born out of due time? Certainly he seems here very 
 much out of time and place. He is so utterly unbeauti- 
 ful! and he appears to know it, poor fellow, and looks 
 meek and deprecating out of those small, sidewise, mod 
 est eyes of his. What straight, ungraceful legs! what 
 a short, useless neck ! what an unwieldy head ! And 
 why will they make him dance, when dignity is his 
 only role? And what does an elephant think of being 
 made to climb up and stand on a tub just large enough 
 to give room to his four feet if an elephant can be said 
 to have feet where the appearance is that his legs have 
 simply come to an end ? 
 
 Before you have had time enough to sec the baby 
 elephant, who is but half as homely as the other, be 
 cause only half as big; or the baby lion, who is as fierce 
 at heart as his jungle-born papa; or the ostrich, who 
 "can carry a full-sized man on his back, and run nine 
 miles an hour," says the exhibitor in his measured 
 monotone; or the quills upon the fretful porcupine; 
 or the always funny monkey; you must go in to see 
 the " performance," which does not, perhaps, rank among 
 the high arts, but which is often a good deal higher than 
 is quite comfortable to look at. It is harder to defy law
 
 HOLIDAYS. 167 
 
 than to organize law. Nature established gravitation ; 
 but she must establish something. If a stone does not 
 go down when it is dropped, it must go somewhere. 
 But having made a point of putting people down, Na 
 ture must feel astonished to see those circus-riders stay 
 up. The broad-saddle riding is not so incomprehensi 
 ble. Any body could ride standing on a soft saddle as 
 big and flat as a table, and perhaps make shift to jump 
 through a hoop in the air, since the horse, though gal 
 loping, gallops slowly withal. But when it comes to 
 riding without any saddle at all, and riding two horses 
 at a time, and standing straight up on them both, and 
 a woman standing straight up on you, and all sweeping 
 around together in a dizzy whirligig why, you can 
 not do it. 
 
 And here they live and grow together for years and 
 3'ears little lions and leopards, and little men and 
 women in a world of their own ; and you know, per- 
 hnps, as much about the one as about the other. 
 
 As for the ocean, there is a great deal to be said on 
 both sides, in the way of merry-making. 
 
 It is sultry and oppressive at home, and in your ears 
 is a low roar which common folks call the sound of the 
 sea, but which you, better instructed in sea-lore by a 
 sea-faring ancestry, know to be the moaning of the 
 wicked one doomed to construct a rope of sand. Sand 
 enough he can easily gather, and fashion for his rope, 
 but when he fain would twist it, the treacherous sand 
 falls perpetually apart, and his labors have no end. 
 Who wonders the unhappy wretch mourns over his 
 hopeless task? From our fair hill-top the long, level
 
 lOo T\VEL VE MILES FROM A 
 
 line of the sea stretches blue and far, white-specked 
 with sails, white-bordered with the shining beach. The 
 long liue of blue, the low roar, the brisk breeze blow 
 ing already through imagination all lure us seaward, 
 and with us 
 
 "As the rules require 
 Two towels and a spoon," % 
 
 and a hamper or two of hard bread, and a few dozen 
 eggs, and sweet-corn, and sugar-gingerbread, and other 
 such provender, which is supposed to be salt- water 
 proof, for we will camp out. Let Newport have its 
 thousands, and Long Branch its tens of thousands, 
 mine be a cot beside the sea, and a Ityronic mingling 
 with the universe, and a tasting of the sweets of soli 
 tude, 
 
 Oh! solitude, we no longer ask where are the charms 
 that sages have seen in thy face. We only ask piteous- 
 ly where is thy face? This beach, once so lovely-lonely, 
 swarms with people. Far off the white sea-sand is alive 
 with little black bugs creeping to and fro, amphibious, 
 for they float in the fringe of the sea ne*ir at hand. Our 
 romantic cot is overflowed with ephemeral picnickers, 
 and every black crag is crested with humanity. You 
 must boil your corn with a dozen pairs of eyes fastened 
 upon you, and there is no such thing as drowning your 
 self, though you should wish it as much as Johnny Sands 
 wished to save his wife, for a dozen round balls bobbing 
 up and down on the waves about you, arc the heads of 
 strong swimmers who would be sure to dive and wrench 
 you out by the hair of your head, if it would stay on. 
 And what a disheveled, dripping, forlorn set are the
 
 HOLIDAYS. 169 
 
 bathers coming up out of the sea. Oh ! my lovely la 
 dies, you will be stylish or nothing, and you talk dain 
 tily of scallops and trimmings, and you fashion bath 
 ing-suits as featly as ball-dresses; but the saucy sea 
 mocks all our finery, and tosses up against our scarlet 
 splendor as undevoutly as over the old tow-gown and 
 horse-blanket frock of our uncaring neighbor. But in 
 we go, with a leap and a bound to begin with, and come 
 near tumbling head first into Madrid, from not count 
 ing on the resistance of the water. Ugh ! how cold 
 it is! and how indefatigable! and irresistible! In the 
 twinkling of an eye all the conceit is thwacked out of 
 you. The sea will stand no nonsense. It beats you 
 about, it knocks you down. It takes your breath away. 
 It streams into your ears. It pours into your mouth. 
 It rushes up your nose. You are drowned and dead. 
 Who would have thought it was so savage and so salt? 
 You try to swim, and down you go plump to the coral 
 grove and the mermaidens, and up you scramble again 
 and strong arms pull you one way, and the strong 
 sea thrashes you another way, and every body is scream 
 ing all the while at the top of his voice for pure excite 
 ment. You leap, and it buoys you up you walk, and 
 it flings you down. You yield to it, and it hurls you 
 shoreward with a wild spray -tossing. You rush against 
 it, and it smites you merrily and cheerily, but with the 
 force of a sledge-hammer. 
 
 So you come out all dripping, and drowned, and for 
 lorn. Not a bit of it. Every nerve tingles with ex 
 hilaration. Every drop of blood is warm and alert. If 
 anv bodv wants a serpent strangled, or a world carried, 
 
 8
 
 170 * TWELVE MILES FROM A LEMON, 
 
 here is an arm of Hercules, and here is a shoulder of * 
 Atlas. But oh! the salt in your hair! And oh! the 
 amount of water that flannel will absorb! And that is 
 why you do not rnind how many rows of trimming 
 your bathing-dress has, or whether it is made of linsey- 
 woolsey or moire antique. Yon ocean is a great wild 
 beast, that rends you and tosses you without a particle 
 of respect for your coat of many colors, and in its re 
 morseless clutch you think no more of your wardrobe 
 than did Livingstone in the lion's mouth. And when 
 y.ou come out, never Solomon in all his glory was array, 
 ed like one of you, no matter how you went in. You 
 can not get out at all till you are wrung out, and you 
 never can be wrung out so dry that rivulets of water 
 do not trickle down at every step; and all your hair 
 droops round your glowing face like sea-weed round a 
 boiled lobster if one may quote poetry with varia 
 tions for the truth's sake and all grace is sopped out 
 of your folds, and all beauty soaked out of your but 
 tons, arid you walk homeward flapping as you go, and 
 firm in the faith that you might as well take the surf in 
 a coffee-bag as in purple and fine linen. 
 
 Who dare say that women are the slaves of fashion 
 and show? Go to, now ! To Hampton Beach, for in 
 stance, and see what " objects" they are willing to make 
 of themselves before angels and men for the sake of a 
 little wild fun, a little pure, wholesome, self-forgetful ex 
 citement 
 
 And when you arc once more clothed and in your 
 right mind, and staring like stern Cortes, silent upon a. 
 peak in Darien, at the great ocean lying still and ma-
 
 HOLIDAYS. 171 
 
 jestic below you, can you believe it is the same ocean 
 that played such mad pranks yonder? Beautiful and 
 bitter sea, august and solemn sea, I know you! Eoll 
 on, thou deep and dark blue ocean, roll ; I have rolled 
 with you, and, for all your stately steppings, you can be 
 as frisky as a colt. Unfold your purple grandeur to 
 the dazed beholder, be the highway of commerce, the 
 divider of nations, the great untamed power of the 
 world. A little cord no bigger than my finger has an 
 nihilated you, and as a beverage you are more than 
 disagreeable ! 
 
 One day rises head and shoulders above its brethren, 
 the holiday of the year, one to be remembered and per 
 petuated. 
 
 We are loyal citizens in Applethorpe, and we always 
 "celebrate," either at home or abroad. Indeed, our 
 patriotism is of that irrepressible kind which the four- 
 and-twenty hours of Independence Day can not hold, 
 but it bubbles up and boils over into the preceding 
 evening. There is a warning spurt and sputter of 
 Chinese crackers about the stoop of the "cheap cash 
 store," and through the dewy darkness come mingled 
 voices in shout and laughter, and mingled odors of pow 
 der and brimstone. But we are not in the full tide of 
 our successful career till midnight. When the clock 
 strikes twelve, the Abbot of Misrule enters in and takes 
 possession ; " the boys" begin their work. The stately 
 church-bell starts up astonished, and clangs out strange 
 greeting to the hills; and the hills, astonished, make 
 answer with the one rusty- throated cannon that has 
 been dragged up the highest hill of all. The villagers
 
 172 T\\'LV 3IILES FROM A LEXOX. 
 
 stir uneasily in their beds, with dim, momentary dreams 
 of fire and danger, fading gradually into a confused con 
 sciousness of " the Fourth." Ding, ding, ding, goes the 
 bell, heavily and sullenly booms the cannon at irregu 
 lar intervals, and every body is perforce wide-awake. 
 The din is dolorous to those who live under the drop 
 pings of the sanctuary ear-splitting, brain-wearying, 
 rest-destroying; but to me, far off, it comes no din, but 
 a soft, clear, musical melody, cleaving the silence, the 
 darkness, the heavy fragrance with a sweetness all its 
 own. King away, my brave boys ! The minister, the 
 lawyer, the doctor, the captain, the grocer, are mutter 
 ing harsh tilings of you, but I only thank you for the 
 tuneful voice. It is so pleasant to be awake, alive, in 
 the boundlessness of night. The solitude is utterly sat 
 isfying. There is neither near nor far, but the whole 
 universe stretches around you, the one being in infinite 
 space; and the repose is divine. Ding, ding, ding! a 
 fresh hand is on the bell-rope, and the melody that was 
 faint and feeble rolls out again full and pealing. The 
 vibrant voice rings royally through the night; the 
 cloud of sleep that was settling over the tired popula 
 tion is instantly dispelled; and again the butcher, the 
 baker, the candlestick-maker, have nothing pretty to say ; 
 but I know the little flower-hearts are beating breath- 
 lessty, and all the dew-drops tremble with delight. The 
 prairie-rose leans over in its glory, and whispers to the 
 honeysuckle, and the honeysuckle croons back softly to 
 the rose, pouring forth fragrance as lavishly as if hum 
 ming-birds and honey-bees had not fed on its sweetness 
 all day long. And, spite of the joy, I can not keep
 
 HOLIDAYS. 173 
 
 awake. Vain the sweet-toned bell and the delaying 
 perfume. Through the ivory gate my soul wanders, 
 wavers, and is lost. 
 
 Snap, snap, snap! the light-infantry approaches, arm 
 ed and equipped with fire-crackers, as the law of boy- 
 dom directs. They are making a raid through the vil 
 lage, charging upon the inoffensive inhabitants, and 
 driving away every chance of sleep with their talking 
 and laughing, and the uproar of the pert little crackers. 
 Then there is a lull, a murmur of low talk, and sud 
 denly an explosion extraordinary a sudden burst of 
 packs of crackers, torpedoes, squibs, and all things that 
 whiz and fizz and hiss and bang then a boyish shout 
 and yell, and the talk and laughter dying into silence. 
 So between sleeping and waking the short night speeds 
 on, and before the boys are tired the birds take up the 
 celebration, and trill out from a thousand throats the 
 heroism of our forefathers. The bell gives way to these 
 new re-enforcements; the hot-lipped rheumatic gun is 
 glad to rest its old bones; the sun comes up inquiring 
 ly from behind the hills, wondering what all the fuss is 
 about; and the Fourth of July is fairly set agoing. 
 
 The day is clear and hot, such a day as belongs to 
 the Fourth. We are early astir, for our little Celtic 
 handmaid has great expectations to-day. She is a late 
 comer from Green Erin a healthy, ruddy girl, with a 
 voice like the north wind, and an arm like the oak that 
 defies it. Her honest face is continually breaking into 
 sunshine beneath the great cloud of glossy dark hair 
 above. I am not yet tired of watching her as she goes 
 about the house with strong and sturdy tread, so igno-
 
 174 TWELVE MILES FROM A LE3IOX. 
 
 rant of fatigue, so unacquainted with weakness. The 
 greenness and vigor of her native island linger still 
 around her. All alone, scarcely sixteen, she came to 
 this strange, vast land, and dropped at once into her ap 
 pointed place as featly as a marble into its socket on a 
 solitaire board. There is something I do not under 
 stand about these Irish. Hardly able to read, seldom 
 to write, not over-intelligent, they manage somehow to 
 shoot straight to the mark. When we travel, we bring 
 heaven and earth into requisition. Every thing is pre 
 arranged. Letters fly back and forth, selecting routes 
 and hotels. The telegraph is brought into play, and 
 relays are set all along the road to keep us in the way 
 we should go ; and, after all, we miss the early train, we 
 stop at the wrong place, and reach our journey's end 
 with the best trunk missing. 
 
 But my Irish friend Honora takes it into her head to 
 send for "little Margery," and forthwith comes to me. 
 I dispatch the letter, forming the address according to 
 Honora's rapid tongue, revised and corrected by Col- 
 ton's Maps. That it will ever strike home, directed in 
 that wild way, seems to me very doubtful ; but Honora 
 harbors no doubt. " I shall get my answer back the 
 first of March," says Honora, in the full assurance of 
 faith, though to my certain knowledge she is innocent 
 of mathematics, geography, and the use of the globes. 
 Yet, sure as the sun in the heavens, the first of March 
 brings her letter. Will you read it? I know she will 
 not mind, and to me it is a pleasant insight into another 
 world.
 
 HOLIDAYS. 175 
 
 " DEAR HONORA, I feel most happy to have an oc 
 casion of answering your welcomed letter, which I have 
 just received after your long silence, for I was under 
 the impression that I would never hear from you ; but 
 it's an old proverb, 'Better late than never.' 
 
 " Honora, I am a poor old man, after rearing a long 
 family, and now I have neither son nor daughter to pro 
 vide for me in my old age, but I have new life in me 
 since I have heard from you, 
 
 "Little Margery is quite a young woman, and is very 
 proud that you are going to fetch her out to the United 
 States; you will make it your business to pay her pas 
 sage at your earliest convenience from Cork in a steam 
 boat. I am rather shy to request of you to send a 
 pound or two to her for to buy a little clothes, Dennis 
 went from here on the 1st of January, and, of course, 
 he left my hand empty, which going has caused me 
 great uneasiness and discontent. Your poor mother is 
 very lonely after Dennis, and after ye all. I trust you 
 will not be so slow in the future in writing, for it gives 
 me great pleasure when I receive your letters. We 
 are all very proud to know that Elfreda is married and 
 well; for Elfreda was a good daughter to me, and I 
 trust she will remember me yet. Dennis will go to 
 Boston, and you will make it your business to inquire 
 for him ; and if you meet him tell him to write imme 
 diately, and you also will answer this as quick as pos 
 sible. All the friends around here are well. Your 
 mother and I join in sending you and Elfreda and 
 husband our thousand blessings, and God may pros 
 per ye all. Patrick has a large family and is well. Be
 
 176 TWELVE MILES FROM A LEMOX. 
 
 pleased to send Michael a newspaper. Write imme 
 diately. 
 
 "Your poor mother is overjoyed to hear from ye all. 
 Good-bye. I remain your affectionate father, 
 
 " MICHAEL O'MORRITY." 
 
 Ilonora flings out another letter, with the money so 
 shyly asked, and the winds take it, and bear it to the 
 little cottage across the sea, and out from the little cot 
 tage trips little Margery smiling over the ocean, fearing 
 nothing. Safely the trusty ship sets her down in Bos 
 ton Boston, where you and I should lose way and 
 heart twenty times in the tangle of streets and alleys; 
 but Margery somehow thrids them all, and walks into 
 our apple-orchards promptly with the May blossoms, 
 as fresh and blooming as they. As I look into her ig 
 norant young face, I can only say, He giveth his angels 
 charge concerning thee, to keep thce in all thy waj-s. 
 But I can not help regretting that the good angels, 
 while they were about it, could not also find it within 
 their province to take charge of the "little clothes" so 
 painfully gained, but left them to be stolen by some 
 miscreant at Newfoundland, the "little clothes," and the 
 pair of stout Irish blankets which the fond old father 
 sent to his good daughter Elfreda, and which she mourn 
 fully and truly affirms would have lasted her all her life. 
 Cold comfort be found within their folds by the wretch 
 who stole them, and, like young Harry Gill's, evermore 
 may his teeth chatter, 
 
 "Chatter, chatter, chatter still!" 
 
 But there is no thought of blankets now. Speedily
 
 HOLIDAYS. 177 
 
 finishes Margery her morning work, arrays herself, well 
 pleased, in her new-country outfit, fashions a truly Cel 
 tic water-fall from her bright black hair, and joins the 
 group of stalwart cousins and cousinesses who are going 
 to Boston to "celebrate." It tires me to think of what 
 she will do and be and suffer with unfeigned delight to 
 day the tight new dress, the long, hurried walk to the 
 railroad station, the crowded ride, the din and dust and 
 furnace-heat of the city but her face is alight with 
 happy anticipations, and I at least enjoy her joy. God 
 speed your merry-making, Margaret ! 
 
 Now we close the south blinds and windows, shutting 
 out the burning, remorseless sun, shutting in the cool, 
 scented morning air, and loiter on the shady stoop, find 
 ing-it of all things sweetest to do nothing. I hear the 
 clatter of a mowing-machine in the meadow below, and 
 from the slope above comes the rhythm of the swinging 
 scythe, for so our hay-makers keep holiday. The birds 
 are mostly quiet, but occasionally from the orchard 
 comes a quick "Twhit!" and from the swamp a sono 
 rous " Caw ! caw !" The busy, saucy, overgrown robins 
 are hopping over the new-mown hay, the swallows 
 swoop down almost into our very faces, and the whirr 
 of the hurnming-bird brings me on tiptoe to catch one 
 glance at the mist of his gossamer wings and his flash 
 ing splendor among the vines. Now and then the 
 mowers come into view, curving the shell-work of their 
 broad swaths with an easy, graceful sweep that makes 
 mowing seem no toil, but a fine art a pleasurable mu 
 sical motion. 
 
 "Going to be a good hay -day, Aleck?" says my
 
 178 TWELVE MILES FROM A LEMON. 
 
 neighbor, the President, sauntering over, and leaning 
 his folded arms on the fence. 
 
 " Well there 'tis," says 'Aleck, introducing a rest into 
 the music. "The weather's well enough. It's the 
 wind. If the wind gets round to the south, we shall 
 have rain. If it don't, we sha'n't," 
 
 "A handsome piece of grasp, if you get it in without 
 rain." 
 
 "Can't tell much about the weather. George" (to 
 the boy, whose scythe rattles rather suspiciously), " I 
 wouldn't cut those stones in two, if I'se you." 
 
 " Quadrupedante putrem sonitu quati't ungula campum" 
 Trots smartly by a procession three or four gay horses, 
 each horse with a shining covered buggj r , each buggy 
 with a shining, trim young man all alone. But they 
 will not long be alone. I know the look of them. It 
 is Frederic, it is John, it is Albert spruce young farm 
 ers dressed in their Sunday best. They have been skim 
 ming the cream of the teams all the village round, and 
 now they are going for their "girls;" and a jolly day 
 they will have of it, and a safe home-coming let us pray, 
 Cor they will never think to do it for themselves: be 
 sides, there is a tradition hereabouts that if a young man 
 and maiden are upset in their drives their marriage is 
 certain ; and I half suspect the rogues plot to knock off 
 a wheel or sidle down a bank with the design of mak 
 ing their election sure. Now the railroad train roars 
 over the causeway, through the peat-field, now it hushes 
 into silence behind the hill, now it whistles out upon 
 the plain, and makes its noisy halt at the village station. 
 It will do a large business for us to-day. Young people
 
 HOLIDAYS. 179 
 
 will rush from the old farms to tbe cities, and youngish 
 people will flock from the cities to the old home farms. 
 Far off their coming shines. They are trooping up the 
 hill. They glimmer among the trees. Their chatter 
 floats before. I know them all, what comfort they car 
 ry, and what welcome awaits them in homes where such 
 holidays are indeed all too few! "Will the tide toss up 
 a little spray to us? Ah ! here they come, by twos and 
 threes; we shall not lose our share of greeting and good 
 cheer. " Here's three of us in a row with on pants," 
 calls the Governor, strutting up statelily to show his 
 first "suit of pants," as he calls them; and midget But 
 ternuts,, more shy, but equally elate, brings up the rear, 
 and whispers softly, "I've got on panth," and sticks to 
 the word as closely as if it were standard English. The 
 'new costumes have to be scanned, discussed, and ad 
 mired; a tear is attempted to be dropped over the tad 
 poles thus hopelessly transformed into frogs, news and 
 nonsense are trifled over, and there is an eye to be kept 
 on the wee boys, who have not put on the practice with 
 the trowsers of discretion, and are continually disappear 
 ing round corners, and potentially falling into wells and 
 running against scythes. Indeed, they will bear watch 
 ing, for the Governor has a way, strangely disagreeable 
 to mothers, of climbing house-tops and sitting astride 
 ridge-poles; and Butternuts belongs to a family whose 
 ten-year-old boys have been known to cling to a rope, 
 while their eight and ten year old brother and sister 
 stood at the attic window, and drew them up from the 
 ground into the garret. I shudder now to think of it, 
 and say again, " Their angels, their angels do alwaj's be 
 hold the Hicc of our Father which is in heaven."
 
 180 TWELVE MILES FROM A LEMON. 
 
 But the tiny stragglers are gathered in, the groups 
 reform, the tide recedes, but leaves us not impoverish 
 ed. Fragrant fat-sided strawberries, great bold Ama 
 zons of cherries, smothered in green leaves, are its pal 
 pable high-water marks; and while we are gathering 
 up these spoils of time and tide, my neighbor, the Sec 
 retary, bids me a pea-picking into his garden. Not to 
 day, though peas are sweet and juicy and tender, and 
 it is pleasant picking among his grape-vines and his 
 rose-bushes, his hemlocks and larches; but there will 
 be no dinner cooked and no fire kindled in this house 
 to-day. Ambrosia and nectar, manna and quails, bread 
 and milk, butter and honey this is our Olympian fare 
 for the Fourth. So the peas may sit unmolested in 
 their pods, and meditate after the fashion of Hans An 
 dersen's, who, observing that themselves were green and' 
 the shell was green, thought, therefore, the whole world 
 was green ; in which opinion good Hans admits they 
 were about right. 
 
 But the train that brought our friends brought also 
 our mail ; and we will run over to the post-office and 
 put ourselves in communication with the universe, drop 
 ping in on the way at my neighbor's barn to see the 
 new colt a shivering little day-old creature, the tiniest 
 morsel of a horse possible, but a two-thousand-dollar 
 beast, and therefore claiming respect, though I must 
 confess my unsophisticate eyes fail to detect the points 
 which make him worth well-nigh his weight in gold. 
 Four long crooked sticks of legs, and a bit of mouse- 
 colored body that is all I see for your two thousand 
 dollars.
 
 HOLIDAYS. 181 
 
 The Post-office is far better worth while. The Post- 
 office is a blessed institution in the country. It is so 
 ciety where none intrudes. Letters are the cream of 
 social intercourse. In them you taste the wit and wis 
 dom, the thought and feeling, of living persons, with 
 out the embarrassments of personal presence. It is con 
 versation at arms-length these letters whose dear, fa 
 miliar handwriting is like light to my eyes letters that 
 bless rne with their magnetic touch, even while I hold 
 them in my hand unopened. The daily paper brings 
 the world's history down to date, and sometimes antici 
 pates it. By an electric mystery you hear what has 
 happened long before it happens, and even when it 
 never happened at all. The continents report prog 
 ress to me every morning, though I never stir from 
 beneath my own vine and fig-tree. I know precisely 
 what the Queen wore yesterday. Livingstone is cir 
 cumstantially and definitively killed on the first page 
 of the morning journal, and brought to life and letters 
 again on the third. The tear forgot as soon as shed 
 was but the slow-coaching of the forefathers. Our tear 
 is stopped half-way out, and perhaps will never be shed 
 at 'all. 
 
 And then old Puss purrs and wins me out to see her 
 sleeping beauty, her week-old kitten ; and while I am 
 out I may as well look into the garden, to see what the 
 sun is doing for my one China-aster and my five sweet- 
 peas; for, alas! my seeds refused to come up, and my 
 weeds refused to stay down, and so my garden is a 
 howling wilderness when I am in it. And then come 
 the nectar and ambrosia, and must it be confessed?
 
 182 TWELVE MILES FJtOJf A LEMOX. 
 
 a hot dinner after all, sent in by these friendly country 
 neighbors but nectar and ambrosia too. And then 
 drowsiness and dreams, stillness of noon and afternoon 
 then a little of Thackeray and a little of Herder, and 
 then a low, muttering peal like thunder, and we start 
 up to find the heavens overcast. The bright day is 
 utterly gone. The west is lurid and angry. The sky 
 hangs low and sullen. A livid, leaden look is on the 
 frightened earth. The silence is portentous. We hasten 
 to make fast every door and blind and sash, and the 
 tempest bursts upon us rage of wind and roar of rain, 
 the lightning's incessant flash and the thunder's awful 
 reverberations. The unmown grass lies prostrate be 
 fore the fury of the storm. The rounded hay -cocks are 
 torn apart, and tossed over the field in wild confusion. 
 The tall trees bend and writhe and moan. The house 
 trembles. The water-spouts shriek. There is a snap 
 ping, a crackling, a crashing; one tree and another and 
 another are torn up by the roots, and dragged remorse 
 lessly through the orchard, or dropped heavily and 
 helplessly out of the track of the tornado. And sud 
 denly as it came the frenzy of the storm is gone. The 
 cloud still hangs over us, but the wind has died away. 
 The rain fulls softly. The lightnings do not rive the 
 whole sky, but only open a portal of heaven in the 
 horizon, and I think more complacently of the dilapi 
 dated state of our lightning-rods. The great storm last 
 winter twisted off one at the roof, and after several se 
 vere thunder-showers this summer, the other was 'dis 
 covered to have broken near the ground. The black 
 smith mended this, but that was not to be so lightly 
 healed. The holder of the pntent could not be found,
 
 HOLIDAYS. 183 
 
 but the owner of a rival patent said he would put up a 
 better set these were nothing and worse than nothing, 
 for they had never been safe. This was an alarming 
 state of things, but a mathematical demonstration speed 
 ily restored my peace of mind. For, first, the rods had 
 never been safe. Secondly, during the six years they 
 had been up, the house had never been struck. Third 
 ly, one of the rods was gone, consequently they were 
 only half as unsafe as they were before ; therefore the 
 probability of our being struck during the next six 
 years is reduced to one half of nothing. Q. E. D. 
 
 The patentee did not seem to see it, but there it is. 
 If any body can find a flaw in the reasoning, let him. 
 show it. 
 
 Yet I am fain to confess this demonstration, lucid and 
 satisfactory as it is, to be more comfortable under a 
 clear sky than a clouded one. When the west begins 
 to scowl, I begin to distrust my ciphering, and would 
 give up a mathematical certainty any time for a good 
 set of lightning-rods. Not so my neighbor. "You 
 may stick up as many prongs as you like," she says 
 energetically to her husband, who is dallying with the 
 agent that peddles them, " but I shall go over to Aunt 
 Kuth's and sit, every time there is a thunder-storm, if 
 you do !" 
 
 The rain-drops grow fewer and fainter. The birds 
 twitter out afresh. The flowers shake the big drops off, 
 and begin to look about them. The air is heavy with 
 numberless sweet odors the newly distilled balm of a 
 thousand flowers. A healthy evening red stains the 
 softening sky. The village girls come loitering down 
 the road; little maids are chattering like magpies, and
 
 184: TWELVE MILES FROM A LEMOX, 
 
 little boys paddling barefoot through the puddles. Two 
 dainty damsels stroll slowly ahead of the others. The 
 sunset glow lights up the brown curls of one to softest 
 gold, and lends a dazzling bloom to the ruddy cheeks 
 of the other. I know them, good, honest, wholesome 
 country-girls ; but gliding along under the trees, their 
 white gossamer garments floating in the evening breeze, 
 they look like angels just alighted ah! this is what 
 they are waiting for, then! What? Do you think I 
 will tell? If to other eyes than mine they look like 
 angels, and if angels choose to keep tryst under our 
 apple-trees, am I such a marplot that I will blab it to 
 all the world ? 
 
 The front gate clicks again a troop of shining ones 
 come floating up our steps, and more ambrosia, I sus 
 pect, lies hidden under that napkin's snowy folds. Lift 
 its fringed edges. Creamy cheese, the clover and vio 
 lets of our own meadows ; golden butter, that has hard 
 ly yet forgotten to be buttercups; light, white, tooth 
 some bread; blocks of rich sweetness, that the vulgar 
 call cake ; triangles of lemon and sugar and snow-flakes, 
 which school-boys know as pie Ah ! these country 
 neighbors are astir again, and thus their paths drop fat 
 ness. 
 
 Beloved and beautiful, my Applethorpc ! I know not 
 if the stranger's eye finds in you any thing to be de 
 sired ; but I better love the ripple of your quiet stream 
 than all the mountain-waves of the sea. Dear to me is 
 every shadow of your woods, every swell of your hills, 
 every dimple of your dells. Your green lanes woo me 
 through enchanted places, and on your blue lakes rests 
 the srnile of Heaven.
 
 CONFERENCE \YROXG SIDE OUT. 185 
 
 CONFERENCE WRONG SIDE OUT. 
 
 THE minister had gone to New York to marry his 
 sister, the lawyer was off on circuit, the deacon was laid 
 up at home with a sprained ankle, and the Conference 
 was coming. What should we do? 
 
 Do? AVhy, there was the church to be tidied up, 
 the vestry to be cleaned, tables to be made and spread, 
 crockery ware to be bought, begged, borrowed, and 
 broken, food to be cooked by the cargo, and coffee and 
 tea to be made by the barrel. I could not get an apple 
 gathered or a log split for a fortnight, because "I've 
 got to work up 't the meetin'-house. You know Con 
 ference is comiii'." Yes, all the autumn, Conference 
 darkled vaguely in the horizon, and it was when Octo 
 ber shimmered brown and gold and glorious, and Con 
 ference bore down upon us under full sail, near and in 
 evitable, that the minister must needs go off a-marry- 
 ing, the lawyer a-courting, and the deacon a-spraining 
 his ankle. So we laity were left to prepare the way 
 for a Conference which was used to good eating, and 
 which we could not let starve on our hands without 
 incurring perpetual disgrace. " Besides," said Confer 
 ence-goers among our brethren and sisters, " we have 
 been to Conference and got great dinners, and we will 
 give them as good as they send."
 
 186 TWELVE MILES FROM A LEMOX. 
 
 It is a praiseworthy principle. Sealed be the lips 
 that would gainsay it! 
 
 So, as foreordained from, the pulpit, we gather to the 
 preliminary meeting in the vestry, for we are advocates 
 of law and order. We will have organization and a 
 moderator. No mob-rule for us. In the vestry the 
 women are merry and many ; the men are two, and 
 forlorn. The women hold seats on the right, as is their 
 wont; they are fired with ambition, filled with plans 
 and enthusiasm; they talk in loud whispers, confuse 
 each other with cross remarks, and look daggers over 
 at the two lonesome, unhappy men, who flatter them 
 selves they are talking together, but really, with hearts 
 of lead, are only striving to pass away the time, and 
 wishing that Bliicher or night were come, and wonder 
 ing what they shall do if neither Bliicher nor night ap 
 pears. 
 
 "Come now," says a woman, energetically, "go and 
 shut those two men up in the small vestry, and let us 
 proceed to business." 
 
 For we are all woman's rights here, every mother's 
 son of us, and knowing,' dare maintain that is, we take 
 our rights without more ado. We have just voted that 
 we will vote in church, and as for our husbands, we 
 order them around well when we feel like it^ and sub 
 mit to nothing but fate. Still, we do our bullying by 
 our own hearthstones, and sit in prayer-meeting as silent 
 and meek as any subject race, to the annoyance of the 
 free white males, who would like to have us take the 
 burden off their shoulders by " offering a few remarks " 
 at the Teachers' Meeting or the Sunday-school Concert.
 
 CONFERENCE WRONG SIDE OUT. 187 
 
 But we won't. We prefer to sit still, and criticise their 
 remarks after we go home. 
 
 Finally, as the cows gradually get milked, and the 
 horses shod, and the tale of human shoes made up, the 
 men drop in one by one ; somebody proposes a moder 
 ator, and we are fairly a-going. Now, as we are all 
 " woman's rights," this would seem to be the golden op 
 portunity to put them in practice. The entertainment 
 of the Conference is but an enlarged hospitality, and we 
 women must engineer it through. Moreover, the Lord 
 has taken away our three masters from our head to-day, 
 and what doth hinder that we should not be our own 
 masters, and say what we want, and what we will have, 
 and what we will do, without the intervention of the 
 tyrant man ? 
 
 Wherefore, the chairman being chosen, and the ma 
 chinery ready to begin, we all sit with an expectant 
 look in our eyes, and an embarrassed smile on our lips, 
 for two minutes. The men think they will give the 
 women a chance, and keep still ; and the women think 
 they have got their chance, and it feels like a very large 
 elephant on their hands. Presently we fall simulta 
 neously to nudging each other to speak. 
 
 " We want a committee," whispers Mrs. A., from one 
 end of the long settee, to Mrs. B., at the other. 
 
 " Then you get up and say so," says Mrs. B., senten- 
 tiously, which is not encouraging. 
 
 After much skirmish in whispers, one of the men 
 rises and comes over to us. Oh ! wretched renegades 
 that we are, disfranchised and degraded the ox know- 
 cth his owner, and the ass his master's crib. No sooner
 
 188 TWELVE MILES FROM A LEXOX. 
 
 does this man take a seat on our settee than all tlie set 
 tees bow down and do obeisance as servilely as if they 
 believed the head of the woman was the man. AVc 
 pounce upon him, we twist ourselves around to face 
 him, we shriek at him in horrid whispers, none of which 
 can he distinguish ; but he manages to strike a general 
 average, and rises to move that a committee be appoint 
 ed. The motion is put and carried, and immediately a 
 lively caucus ensues on the settees as to the appointees. 
 
 " Mrs. C.," says one. 
 
 "Yes, she is beautiful : you nominate her." 
 
 " No, you !" with expressive pantomimic gesture. 
 
 The little lady clears her throat, and tries to say in 
 stentorian tones, " Mrs. C. ;" but she miscalculates her 
 force, and there is a, decided case of vox faucibus liccsit. 
 Then we all giggle. 
 
 "Do somebody nominate her," says the biggest cow 
 ard among us. "Can't you just say Mrs. J. C. ?" as 
 if it were as easy as breathing, she herself having near 
 ly suffocated in the attempt, whereat half a dozen voices 
 perpetrate another attack on the good name of Mrs. C. 
 But as each voice is on a different key, and as they all 
 begin with a wheeze and end with a whisper, and as 
 we have squatted in the farthest back seats, while the 
 chairman is at the other end under the pulpit, the nom 
 inations come to his ear only as a gentle inarticulate 
 soughing. Still, he evidently thinks something is going 
 on, and stares steadfastly and inquiringly into our cor 
 ner, while we are smothering with laughter over our 
 prowess. Presently one of us takes her life in her 
 hands, and gathering up all her soul, hurls "Mrs. J. M.
 
 CONFERENCE \VROXG SIDE OUT. 189 
 
 C." at the moderator, in a voice ringing from despera 
 tion, twice as loud as there is any call for, and then 
 looks back upon us with an air of triumph, evidently 
 thinking she has made a speech, and that it is the speech 
 of the evening. So we hitch along, canvassing as we 
 go, and announcing the result of each canvass in a con 
 fused and wabbling chorus of squeaky, husky voices, 
 because nobody ventures to speak alone, and no two 
 can agree to begin at the same instant, till the committee 
 is chosen, and we rest on our arms and query what is 
 to be done next. 
 
 We do not think of any thing, but choose more Com 
 mittee, when somebody brighter than the rest starts up 
 the impertinent question, "What is this committee for 
 that we have already chosen ?" 
 
 "Why every thing," we say blankly, looking from 
 one to another. 
 
 " To boss the job," says the carpenter, who has joined 
 us, not professionally, however. 
 
 "To taste the things that are brought in, and see if 
 they are good," says the chairman of the committee ; his 
 eyes dilate with foretaste of the feast. 
 
 Here it is suggested on the slowly darkening "men's 
 side" that no one has kept a list of the names. The 
 moderator proposes that a secretary be appointed. Our 
 mouth-piece has gallantly no doubt the ladies will 
 remember everything; still it maybe advisable to have 
 the list written, and he will act as secretary if any one 
 will lend him a pencil. The moderator proffers a pen 
 cil, and Mouth-piece steals a march upon us by advan 
 cing to the front. Hereupon a muffled shriek of de-
 
 190 TWELVE MILES FROM A LEMOX. 
 
 spair proceeds from the corner. "Oh! we have lost 
 our man." "Ob ! now our man is gone, and we can't 
 talk." " Oh ! make him corne back again." But he 
 smiles and smiles from afar, and is villain enough to 
 know when he is well off and stay there ; and another 
 king arises, seeing our bereaved condition, and deigns 
 to come over and help us. 
 
 "We must have a committee to take care of the 
 food," whispers Mrs. D. 
 
 " Yes," says Mrs. E., " if I send a pie, I want the Con 
 ference folks to have it. I don't want it eaten up by 
 small boys !" 
 
 "And we ought to have a committee to take care of 
 what is left, and set the table for supper." 
 
 "Why, we are not going to give them a supper." 
 
 "Yes, we are. There will be a good many who 
 won't go till the last train, and will want a supper." 
 
 "You have too many on committee now," says King 
 Stork ; " you don't want any more." 
 
 "And who is going to do all the work?" we demand, 
 turning upon him severely. 
 
 " Let this committee call in as much assistance as they 
 want, but let them be responsible. If you have so many 
 committees, there is no head and no responsibility." 
 
 We gaze upon him with pity, remembering the long 
 line of conferences and ordinations and tea-r>arties that 
 
 A 
 
 have made our village history a trail of glory, and the 
 innumerable committees under which our fields were 
 won ; but we remember also that he is but a late-corner, 
 who, during those eventful days, was wandering in some 
 outer darkness, and does not know that Britons never
 
 COXFEEEXCE WltOXG SIDE OUT. 191 
 
 will be slaves; awd though we are quite willing to work 
 day and night, we will do it as committee, and not as 
 the menials and minions of a committee! Assistance, 
 indeed ! Thus ever is the civic mind overridden by or 
 ganization, and would sacrifice the noble pride of the 
 rural districts to the same false god. 
 
 " We ought to have a committee on carriages," sug 
 gests one of the elect ladies. 
 
 " What do you want of carriages ?" asks King Log. 
 
 " Why, to bring the people to and from the station." 
 
 "Nonsense. If they are well they can walk, and if 
 they are sick they had better stay at home." 
 
 "But the ministers, we mustn't make them walk." 
 Forever to the female eye is your clergyman baked of 
 purest porcelain ; no common earthenware is he. 
 
 "Do 'em good," rejoins Earthenware, brusquely; 
 " they will enjoy it. When we had 'the ordination, 
 didn't Jeremy Taylor and Jonathan Edwards walk all 
 the way and think it was fun?" 
 
 The elect lady is silenced, but not convinced. Mean 
 while there has been a vote taken, and she holds up her 
 hand. "What are you voting for? Take down your 
 hand," cry the imperious whispers. 
 
 " I won't ; I'm going to vote." 
 
 "But you are voting contrary-minded. We've all 
 voted for Miss Mary B." 
 
 "I don't care. I'd rather be contrary-minded than 
 lose my vote." And men have the audacity to say 
 that in the kingdom coming, of female suffrage, the best 
 women will not vote! 
 
 " Take Mrs. X. Y. for the other one."
 
 192 TWELVE MILES FltOX A LEMON. 
 
 " What is that? Mrs. X. Y. ? No, she is deaf, and 
 she told me it was no use to put her on any thing. 
 Why don't you have Mrs. Q. P.?" 
 
 " Mrs. Q. P. ! She can't come. You need not nomi 
 nate her." 
 
 " Why can't she? She is a real good hand." 
 
 "But don't you know? She why she has a little 
 baby." 
 
 "No, she hasn't Iler baby is t\vo years old, and 
 can stay with its grandmother." 
 
 "But she has another." 
 
 " I don't believe it!" 
 
 " It's true." 
 
 " How old is it, come?" 
 
 " Born in July." 
 
 "Well, that's news to me." 
 
 Every body is taken aback, and the whole Confer 
 ence comes to a dead halt over this problematical baby ; 
 but the definite date seems to silence doubts. If you 
 can assert that a baby was born on a fixed day, it fol 
 lows as the night that day that he was really born. 
 So presently we return to business. Shall we have tea 
 and coffee? No. Tea, but not coffee. Yes, tea and 
 coffee. You can't make them both. Mrs. II. says you 
 may have her cooking-stove. I will give the coffee 
 rather than not have it. How much tea do we need ? 
 Oh! twenty or thirty pounds. Absurd! Six pounds 
 is enough. Why, .how many will be here? Thirty 
 churches belong to the Conference. And they will all 
 come. And most of 'em won't have any regular meals 
 for two days beforehand, so as to get up an appetite.
 
 CONFERENCE WRONG SIDE OUT. 193 
 
 Oh! have we got a committee to go around and see 
 what people will give? If we don't, they will all send 
 in cake or pies, and we sha'n't have any bread and meat. 
 La! we haven't half committees enough. We ought to 
 have sixteen more committees, two on each. Oh ! see 
 how Mrs. M. wants to be in office! She thinks if there 
 are sixteen she will stand a chance. Why look ! Mrs. 
 N. and Mrs. O. aren't on any thing. They ought to be, 
 they are so public-spirited. Well, make a committee 
 and put them on. But we've. got committees on every 
 thing you can think of. Make a general committee, 
 then. But the first was a general committee. And 
 this will be a general-in-chief. Make it quick. And 
 the perplexed King Stork puts his private opinions in 
 his pocket, and moves that Mr. N., Mr. O., Mr. P., and 
 Mr. Q. be appointed a general committee. 
 
 "And their wives!" yell the settees, in their enraged 
 whispers. 
 
 "And their wives," echoes the mouth-piece, subdued 
 beyond even the semblance of resistance. 
 
 And then, having formed committees enough to get 
 ourselves all in honorable positions, we depart in peace; 
 not fancying that we have made a brilliant stand for 
 woman's rights, .but firm in the faith that we shall come 
 out strong on the Conference dinner. And if you win 
 the battle, what matter whether }*ou do it by Hardee's 
 tactics or your own ? 
 
 Conference Right Side Out is a very different and a 
 very decorous thing. No committee, no squeaky voices, 
 no seven women laying hold of one man, no croaking 
 about cooking or pottering about pottery, but a digni- 
 
 9
 
 19-1 TWEL VE MILES FROM A LEMOX. 
 
 fied assembly of clergy and delegates met to report on 
 the state and progress of tbeir several Zions, to hear a 
 memorial sermon, to take counsel with each other on 
 the work of the Lord, and stir up their own pure minds 
 by way of remembrance. Still, if you ask how the Con 
 ference was, ten to one the delighted villager will reply, 
 enthusiastically : 
 
 "Oh! every thing went beautifully. There were 
 two hundred and fifty people sat down to dinner, and 
 enough for every body, and plenty left The baked 
 beans and brown-bread went like every thing." 
 
 Angels and ministers of grace defend us! I wish to 
 know if the churches are sound in the faith and alive 
 in the spirit, and I am answered in baked beans ! Yes, 
 and I venture to say, if we could get at the core of 
 things, good Christians as we all are, though we don't 
 all know it, that not one of us who receive the Confer 
 ence takes the least thought for the state of the churches. 
 What we had at heart was to furnish a good dinner for 
 the clergy and the laitj-. 
 
 And how they did come ! It rained almost inces 
 santly, and we all know the frantic efforts of the minis 
 ters and the religious newspapers to make people dis 
 regard the weather on Sundays, and the blank array of 
 empty pews with which people respond whenever there 
 is a cloud in the sky no bigger than a man's hand. So 
 we went to church bemoaning our loaded hampers, and 
 resolving to stay and dine ourselves rather than our 
 viands should be lost especially as we had no dinner 
 at home and lo ! a great multitude had gone up to the 
 courts of the Lord, and our pews were full in spite of
 
 COXFERESCE WROSG SIDE OUT. 105 
 
 the rain, and those of us who came to eat remained to 
 serve. 
 
 "What shall \ve do with our loaves and fishes?' 
 communed the villagers on their way to the tabernacle. 
 
 " What shall we do with the people that have come 
 to eat them?" they asked, in the consternation of hospi 
 tality, when the tabernacle door flew open to the throng 
 that gathered there. 
 
 I must confess I attempted'to stir up sedition, but met 
 with inglorious failure. Seeing the chaos and care, the 
 tables to be made, the settees to be turned and over 
 turned, the order to be disordered, and the disorder to 
 be reorganized into order, I said, "It is too much work. 
 It is fatiguing to think of." And every body cried with 
 one voice, "Not in the least!" Indeed, they were as 
 blithe as blackbirds, and as chattering. It was fun, and 
 society, and good cheer. The more the merrier, both 
 of hosts and guests; so then I turned right about face, 
 determined to pick a quarrel with the existing order of 
 things somehow, and said : " This shows how much we 
 need amusements. This Conference is a sort of eccle 
 siastical ball and supper. They are talking instead of 
 dancing up in the ball-room, but they look not much 
 more solemn than the average American going through 
 a cotillon, and I reckon the average cotillon American 
 does not cheat in trade, does not snub his wife, does not 
 lose his temper much oftener than the average church 
 American. But we churchlings have so discounte 
 nanced amusements that we are infinitely amused by 
 so small a change in our daily life as doing by the 
 dozen once, in seven years what we do singly at home
 
 196 TWELVE MILES FROM A LEMOS. 
 
 every day. The pleasure of getting out of the narrow- 
 routine of home, of getting together with our friends 
 find neighbors, takes the wear and tear out of the work, 
 and instead of wearying refreshes and heartens us. 
 Why do we not, then, learn a lesson from this, and in 
 vent pleasant little assemblies for and of ourselves, with 
 or without baked beans, where young and old can meet 
 and chat and sing and play such games as do not go 
 against the conscience of the brethren? "and retail 
 gossip, tittle-tattle, scandal, and slander," say the purists 
 and wiseacres who have been reared in the belief that 
 such is the black catalogue and history of village sew 
 ing societies. 
 
 Well, villagers might be guilty of worse crimes. 
 Scandal, slander, gossip, tittle-tattle hard names all. 
 And rough usage dealers in such wares receive at the 
 hands of the theorists. But are the little imps quite as 
 black as they are painted? 
 
 Humanity, as it lies under our observation, exists in 
 three layers. The first is the superficially polite and 
 smiling one. The neighbors call on }'ou, and you re 
 turn their calls. You meet them in the street and at 
 church. All is civility, kindness, and good-fellowship. 
 That is layer number one. 
 
 Then you fail in business, your lover jilts you, you 
 quarrel with your wife, your son is rusticated at col 
 lege, and the whole world turns glad and malignant, 
 and the air is darkened with the cloud of bad, false, 
 harsh rumors. No wonder you failed in business! 
 You have been living extravagantly these five years, 
 with purple and fine linen and sumptuous fare, wine
 
 CONFERENCE WRONG SIDE OUT. 197 
 
 and equipage, endless entertainment, and a houseful of 
 servants for to such dimensions swells your modest 
 menage under the magnifying-glass of your excited 
 neighbors. Your jilting lover has ever been a reluc 
 tant wooer; your wife you have abused since the first 
 year of your marriage ; and the trouble with your son 
 is that he made himself vile and you restrained him 
 not, and now he has killed a man, and is hiding from 
 the authorities with a price set upon his head. This is 
 layer number two ; and you are ready to rent a lodge 
 in some vast wilderness, where you may be free from 
 the sight of a malicious, evil-speaking people, that re 
 joices in its neighbor's misfortunes. 
 
 But give your auger another twist, and you will have 
 penetrated quite through this bed of mire, and come 
 into another stratum, clean and wholesome, and purer 
 and finer far than any thing you have yet found. 
 When a trouble comes whose source can be never so 
 faintly traced back to your own misdoing, your friends, 
 it must be confessed, are a little hard on you. No won 
 der your wife left you; you have always been mean 
 and tyrannical. No wonder your son has come to 
 grief; you always gave him his own head. The glad 
 ness at your trouble was not pure malice, but somewhat 
 an intellectual appreciation of the inexorableness of law. 
 There is a sort of poetic justice in the succession of 
 cause and consequence which never fails to give pleas 
 ure except to the persons who illustrate it. But let 
 your son be brought home to you beaten by a burglar 
 to the point of danger, if not death, be yourself strick 
 en with illness, or let }-our property be endangered by a
 
 198 TWELVE MILES FROM A LEMON. 
 
 fire in the vicinity, and every band is stretched out to 
 help you. The very persons who would be the first to 
 look askance upon your unwarranted expenditure will 
 be instant, in season and out of season, for your solace 
 and relief. They will run to fetch the doctor for 3*011 
 at any hour of the day or night. They will watch day 
 after day by your sick-bed, will strain their ingenuity 
 to invent some appetizing dish for your dulled taste, 
 will count no service too severe, no drudgery too me 
 nial, to divest you of care, and enable you to give your 
 whole thought and attention to the recovery of your 
 health. When your house is threatened, they will ex 
 ert every faculty to save it. They will put forth pre 
 cisely as much effort to rescue your furniture from the 
 flames as if it were their own ; and when, after all, your 
 house is stripped and not burned, they will come back 
 next day, and replace your goods as heartily and as 
 thoroughly as they snatched them off. Nor can you 
 help a certain clutching at the throat, an unsteadiness 
 about the mouth, a mist in the eyes, a pressure at the 
 heart, when you think of this wonderful brotherhood of 
 humanity this unspoken, all-helpful sympathy. This 
 is layer number three, and however deep down you go 
 you will find nothing deeper to neutralize it. 
 
 We often freight words with a heavier meaning than 
 they were meant to bear. We give to expressed disap 
 probation a disproportionate weight. We are always 
 trying to repress gossip, and never to fortify society 
 against it. We write stories showing how lovely wom 
 an was brought to her grave by careless rumor, but we 
 never show how foolish it was in the lovely woman tc
 
 CONFERENCE WRONG SIDE OUT. 199 
 
 make a grave matter of careless rumor. We are always 
 training the tongue, but we never train the ear. 
 
 " If you would always be discreet, 
 
 Five things observe with care 
 Of whom you speak, to whom you speak, 
 And how, and when, and where," 
 
 says Sir Mentor, and fancies he lias settled the whole 
 matter; but, if it is all the same to you, Sir Mentor, we 
 would a great deal rather not be discreet than pay such 
 a price for discretion. Conversation would be a very 
 lively exercise, picketed around with these five points 
 of Calvinism! A far better way is to estimate gossip 
 at its real worth. A great deal that "passes for scandal 
 is but an intellectual exercise, petty for want of some 
 thing larger, but sufficiently innocent. Malice, willful 
 falsehood, carelessness of truth, design to injure, are un- 
 mitigatedly bad, and ought to banish their proprietors 
 from society ; but curiosity a fondness for story-telling 
 and story-bearing may be only one form of mental 
 activity, and entirely consistent with great good-will. 
 Let us give in to it with what grace we may when we 
 have guarded ourselves against it as far as we can. 
 You do not in. the least care how many handkerchiefs 
 your neighbor has; but if it gratifies her to know how 
 many you have, let her count them on the clothes-line 
 if she likes. And if she thinks there are more than 
 an economical person ought to have, and expresses her 
 opinion in the vicinity, what harm is done? You need 
 not fling it at her the next time you see her, and make 
 her uncomfortable. It is not necessary that every body- 
 should npprovc us in every respect before we can be
 
 200 TWELVE MILES FJtOM A LElfOX. 
 
 on good terms with him. People may condemn half 
 the traits of our character and yet find enough in the 
 other half to insure friendly feeling and friendly de 
 meanor. 
 
 And half a loaf is so much better than sour bread ! 
 
 Why not have, then, a little neighborhood conference 
 every month, or as often as shall seem agreeable, to 
 which good manners shall be the only entrance fee, and 
 where baked beans or roasted potatoes shall be the 
 inexpensive but sufficient entertainment, though each 
 may bring that which seems good in his own eyes? 
 
 This would make the church the recognized social as 
 well as religious centre, and might somehow equalize 
 matters. For me, I am amazed at the goodness of the 
 world, its forgiveness, and forbearance, and general vir- 
 tuousness. Here we church-folk berate the " world's 
 people" every Sunday about their trespasses and sins, 
 and yet no sooner do we get up a Conference, which is 
 exclusively a church matter, and has nothing to do with 
 the world except to burnish up the weapons wherewith 
 we mean to attack it, and immediately the kindly, hos 
 pitable, good-natured world forgets all the hard names 
 we have been calling it; turns to with as hearty a will 
 as if it were in good and regular standing; knocks up 
 tables and chairs, provides horses and carriages, spreads 
 thick slices of bread and butter, and thin slices of ham 
 and tongue, all one as if we had not ruled it out of the 
 Kingdom Come. And we gladly accept. We have no 
 intention of associating with it in the next world, but we 
 are very glad to avail ourselves of its services in this. 
 We make a distinct mark on the sheep of our fold, and
 
 CONFERENCE WRONG SIDE OUT. 201 
 
 so class them off from the goats; but so far as natural 
 history is concerned you never could tell them apart. 
 
 There is, I regret to be obliged to say, one drop of 
 bitterness in our sweet draught. "We did not have 
 puddings at our Conference. To be sure, we did not 
 need them. Need them ! I should think ! Why, wheit 
 Mrs. Betty came in, erect and confident, with bag, pail, 
 and pillow-case, and succinctly inquired, "Meat cut up 
 yet? Want the scraps," were we not so filled with 
 faith in our resources that, though the meeting was 
 barely begun in the church triumphant above, and the 
 tables not spread in the church militant below, gener 
 ous hands- laid hold of joints, carved out bones, and cut 
 off gristle, leaving large margins of meat, made odds 
 and ends where none existed, and sent Mrs. Betty away 
 rejoicing, to feed out of her pillow-case till Thanks 
 giving? 
 
 No, we did not need puddings, nor even miss them 
 till the next day, when, as ill luck would have it, they 
 got up an installation in the neighboring village, which 
 we all attended, and the iron entered into our souls, for 
 they installed with puddings! In every other respect 
 we think we held our own ; but those frosted, foamy 
 puddings gave a whiteness and delicacy to the tables 
 which ours lacked. We like our minister too well to 
 hope for an installation of our own, and the Conference 
 only comes round once in seven years; but I warrant 
 you whoever lives to see that day will see something 
 in the way of puddings that shall make all his previous 
 experiences of frost and foam seem but an idle dream. 
 
 9*
 
 202 TWELVE MILES FROM A LEMOX. 
 
 XII. 
 COUNTRY CHARACTER. 
 
 RUSTIC simplicity is like the snakes of Ireland. 
 There is no rustic simplicity. At least, I do not know 
 where you -will find it outside of books. What with 
 the telegraph, and railroads, and lyceum lectures, and 
 fashion plates, every body knows every thing. Think 
 no more, oh city-zen, of coming down into our solitude 
 to astonish and captivate us with your airs and graces. 
 "We know how broad phylacteries ought to be as well 
 as you. We know where the flounces go, what colors 
 blend, what shades are stylish, which way stripes ought 
 to run. Do not think to overtop us with your Tyrolese 
 peaks, or overpile us with your puffs and paniers. Go 
 into our church, and learn that we worship just as de 
 voutly as you, \vith knots just as bright, heels just as 
 high, and hats just as daintily poised on the tips of our 
 noses or the backs of our heads. Ignorance is igno 
 rance, and vulgarity is vulgarity, but their existence no 
 longer depends on locality or population. Mr. Justin 
 M'Carthy thinks that American men are particularly 
 fine-looking, and some one, commenting on Mr. M'Car 
 thy, says these fine-looking men are generally city-bred. 
 Very likely. We talk prettily about many things, and, 
 among others, of the healthiness and desirableness of 
 farming; but it seems to me that no man sooner mars
 
 COUNTRY CHARACTER. 203 
 
 the comeliness which his Maker gave him than the con 
 firmed farmer, the actual, hard-working farmer. The 
 man who depends upon his farm for his subsistence is 
 very apt to be early wrinkled, bent, bald, rheumatic; 
 he comes to have a hard, shrunk, shriveled look. Too 
 often he bequeaths to his children diminished stature 
 and enfeebled frames. City folk are constantly urging 
 young men to remain in the country, and warning them 
 of the certain struggle and possible failure that await 
 them in. the city; but the country lads see sights which 
 impress them more than a thousand newspapers. They 
 see the country lad who went up to the city years ago 
 grown now into a stout, healthy, handsome man. He 
 stands erect, he walks elastic, and his clothes fit ! Every 
 thing betokens self-confidence, a man at peace with him 
 self and the world, a life that has had in it satisfaction 
 and enjoyment. His brothers, who staid at home on 
 the farm, or in its attendant shop, present a contrast al 
 most pathetic. They are round-shouldered, and gaunt 
 from constant toil and exposure. They have not the 
 air of command and possession. They are men whom 
 the world has pressed hard, not men who have con 
 quered the world. Their fate is not enticing, yet they 
 see many things. 
 
 "Yes," says my friend, the forester, "I got up and 
 went off to work at seven in the morning about every 
 day last winter." 
 
 "It was you, then, whom I used to see going across 
 the fields so regularly ?" 
 
 " With a tin pail? Yes, that was me." 
 
 "You carried your dinner, and staid all day?"
 
 20 TWELVE MILES FROM A LEMON. 
 
 " Yes, Sam and me, we cut twenty-five cord of wood, 
 one job. That's pretty hard work a cord of wood a 
 day. Wnst of it was bavin' your feet soppin' wet. 
 We had to stand in the water and slosh clearn up to 
 here." 
 
 " I should think you would have frozen." 
 
 " Did. I froze one side of my foot a little." 
 
 "Did it give you any trouble?" 
 
 " Lor' no ! I'se out there all winter, working in the 
 cold, and never got cold. Then I come home and lay 
 round a coal stove, an' goin' out an' in, an' got an awful 
 cold." 
 
 "But did not your dinner freeze?" 
 
 "Yes. The' want no other way. But there, you 
 couldn't do it if you hadn't got a constitution to lay 
 out on." 
 
 "But isn't it a pity to lay your constitution out on- 
 such a hard undertaking?" 
 
 " Well, you must do what comes to hand. Jem, now, 
 will make five hundred dollars out of that lot. That's 
 my cal'lation ; and I got a good job, though it was a pret 
 ty tough one. There's a few men in this town that's in 
 dependent, and I'm glad of it; but I ain't one of them." 
 
 "Who are they, for instance?" for I seem to see a 
 mischievous twinkle in his demure eye. 
 
 " Wall, there's Ed Stanley keeps a horse and carriage, 
 and rides round, and lives on the interest of his money." 
 The sly-boots ! He knows every one is concerned only 
 to see how severe will be the jerk when Ed Stanley 
 comes to the end of his very short rope. For ropes 
 have an end, and, if they are forever unrolled, the owner
 
 COUNTRY CHARACTER. 205 
 
 will find it, whether he be Marquis of Hastings or a 
 village tailor; fortunate if he do not find it around his 
 neck." 
 
 "How long do you suppose the interest will last?" 
 
 " Oh ! I do' know that. 'Tvvould last a good while 
 if it did not take so much to live on. Now in my line, 
 you see, it takes a good deal just to live on. Work up 
 to your knees in slosh, and you don't want much plum- 
 cake or frosted cake, but somethin' that's got some hold 
 onto it." 
 
 " That makes work to do at home." 
 
 " That's so. But then, when I was out there, I used, 
 mostly, to get breakfast myself, and let the woman lay 
 abed." 
 
 u YOU did r 
 
 "Yes. I'd rather. Bread was all made, an' I'd just 
 make the coffee and broil a steak." 
 
 "How came you to know ho,w?" 
 
 " Oh ! I can cook. I don't like to, but I can do it, 
 and it's a great deal better than to have her up before 
 daylight and then round alone all day." 
 
 "That is a thousand times true and thoughtful and 
 considerate; but I don't see how your itnregenerate 
 mind ever came to think of it." 
 
 "Oh, I've thought of a good many things browsing 
 along, like, and, between you and me and the post, I 
 think the women have the hardest time. I've done 
 woman's work a good many times at a pinch, fust and 
 last, and I vow I'd rather do my own. It's the easiest 
 in the long run. But la ! settin' round at home, I'd just 
 as lievcs clap a piece of pork on the fire as not."
 
 206 TWELVE MILES FROM A LEMOX. 
 
 " You are like all the rest of us ; that is, work that 
 is not work you like, and for the rest you will do what 
 you must, without whining." 
 
 "That's so; but then, some work with their head.^, 
 and some with their hands. Some heads are better 
 than others different from others, at least. Now, if I 
 had had all the advantages I did have a good many 
 I went to school ; but, if I had gone to school till I 
 was as old as Noah, I never should have been a Rufns 
 Choate or a Daniel Webster. You see, the mind acts 
 in that line, and ambition goes along with it." 
 
 "Yet in hand labor one needs brains." 
 
 "That's so. You want brains in funning need to 
 use a great deal of judgment. If it's only going into 
 the woods to cut a cord of wood, there's an advantage 
 to be taken. One will do more work in less time than 
 another, just from the way he takes hold. One comes 
 in, all of a breeze, and goes right into it, and don't do 
 so much as a man who looks round and gets the ad 
 vantage." 
 
 I am sure I have heard that said before in more 
 pompous phrase. 
 
 Here is a book, printed in London just a hundred 
 }*ears ago, called "The Rural Socrates: being Memories 
 of a Country Philosopher. Translated from the French.'' 
 The French, I fancy, had very little to do with it. My 
 copy says it was written by Hon. Benjamin Yaughan, 
 of Hallowell, Maine, a follower of Priestley to this coun 
 try, once a Member of Parliament, and a practical farm 
 er of skill and good sense. The traditions of his adopt 
 ed home report him as a white-haired, fine-looking gen-
 
 COUNTRY CHARACTER. 207 
 
 tleman of the old school, without fear and without re 
 proach. Thus statelily discourseth rny gentleman of the 
 old school : 
 
 "I have studied with uncommon assiduity the char 
 acters of men of every profession, who have been distin 
 guished for prudence and understanding. I observed, 
 with astonishment, that, among those engaged in the 
 same occupations, some were riveted in penury and 
 want, while others enjoyed affluence and ease. The 
 cause of this inequality seemed worthy of the exactest 
 and most accurate examination ; and the pains I took 
 to investigate it at length succeeded : I perceived that 
 those persons who formed no regular plan of life, 
 strangers to reflection and foresight, thoughtless of to 
 morrow, were, by the .negligence of their conduct, the 
 sole authors of their own distresses and disappointments. 
 Those, on the contrary, whose steady and enlarged prin 
 ciples govern and guide their sagacious and determined 
 views ; who unite, in their several professions, diligence 
 and attention, order and punctuality, qualities which 
 smooth the rugged paths of life, will find the journey 
 more easy, more speedy, and infinitely more lucrative. 
 These are maxims which whoever attends to must gain 
 his point, in defiance of opposition, and amass wealth, 
 should the malignity of men or demons endeavor to 
 wrest it from him." 
 
 This Rural Socrates speaks from the gathered wisdom 
 of the centuries and the amenities of a scholarly and 
 courtly life. My Rural Socrates has behind him. only 
 the courtesies of the corn-field and the wisdom of the 
 wood lot; yet it seems to me he goes by a shorter cut
 
 208 TWELVE MILES FROM A LEMON. 
 
 to the same core of truth around which our majestic 
 philosopher circumambulates with so much dignity. 
 
 "That's so," says my Socrates, who listens to my 
 reading of the extract with grave and critical attention. 
 "It's all cal'Jation. You may work, but it's cal'lation 
 that makes you rich. Jest so in the house." Oh ! true 
 man! always taking refuge from his own sins in "the 
 woman whom Thou gavest to be with me!" "One 
 woman will make a good meal out of nothin', you may 
 say; it's wholesome, and palatable, and good. And 
 another woman will take the same, and you jest pass 
 it outdoors. The difference is now you won't write 
 a book about me ? ;? 
 
 "Yes, I will report every word. Go on." 
 
 "It all depends on the woman. A woman can throw 
 out of the window, with a tea-spoon, more than a man 
 can bring in at the front door with a shovel." 
 
 "Of course she can. my Socrates, woman being the 
 superior person ; and never is her superiority more 
 brilliantly proven than in this very fact : that with her 
 delicate, dainty, silver tea-spoon she not only purifies 
 her house of all the dirt and rubbish which her hus 
 band brings in with his huge, unsightly shovel where 
 shovels do not belong, but she leaves a margin of clean 
 liness, as your own self admits. Besides divesting the 
 house of his impurity, she invests it with her own beau- 
 ty,eh?" 
 
 Possibly my Rural Socrates did not mean precisely 
 this, but he shoulders his shovel and walks off with an 
 indescribable, twinkling, appreciative, yet sober smile 
 
 But now comes up a greater than Socrates, who is not
 
 COUNTRY CHARACTER. 209 
 
 to be so easily dislodged. Says Horace Greeley :* " My 
 father was of this [the farming] class, as my only broth 
 er is; so were both my grandfathers, and their ances 
 tors, so far as I can trace them. My paternal grand 
 father raised nine sons and four daughters, and never 
 was worth $2000 in any one of his ninety-four years. 
 My father was an unusually hard worker, always a 
 farmer, never worth $2000, generally worth from up 
 to $500; he died eighty-six years old, and five of his 
 seven children survive, from sixty to forty-nine years 
 old. (The two earliest died in infancy.) My uncle 
 John, born two years after my father, has been a farmer 
 all his life; he is now eighty-seven years old, but erect 
 and vigorous; his eye bright, and his voice as full and 
 ringing as most men's at fifty. lie is the last of the 
 thirteen children of my grandfather; one only died of 
 consumption at thirty-three years of age, leaving six 
 children, of whom five are still with us; the rest of my 
 father's brothers and sisters lived to be from seventy to 
 eighty years old, except one who died at fifty, and he 
 was not a habitual worker. All the rest were farmers 
 or farmers' wives none of them ever rich ; most of 
 them quite poor ; yet not one of them all was prema 
 turely ' wrinkled, bent, or bald ;' not one of them be 
 queathed to his children (and all of them had children) 
 'diminished stature' or 'enfeebled frames.' Here is 
 a large family of poor, and generally hard-working 
 farmers, the descendants of a race of just such, who have 
 lived by tilling the hard, rocky soil of New Hampshire 
 
 * It is, perhaps, needless to say that this was written before Mr. 
 Greeley's death.
 
 210 TWELVE MILES FROM A LEMOX. 
 
 since the year 1640 I happen to be the only one 
 
 of the crowd who might be called 'bald.' I was move 
 'bent' at forty than my father or his father at seventy; 
 and I am the only one who earned his livelihood other 
 wise than by farming I have been here [in the citv] 
 
 forty years, neither thoughtless nor unobservant; and, 
 in my judgment, more country -born men have died here 
 in prisons, hospitals and the alms-house, in those forty 
 years, than have achieved even a modest competence. 
 And day after day my soul sickens at the never-ending 
 procession of the multitude who crawl on the knees of 
 their spirits to those who have achieved position and 
 means, with the beggar's petition: 'Please give me 
 something to do.'" 
 
 Alas! I am in an evil case. I have made an asser 
 tion which I can not prove. I spoke of the attractions 
 of city life to country folk, and contrasted the erect 
 figure and clastic step of the lad who went to the city 
 and made his fortune, with his prematurely bald, bent, 
 rheumatic comrades who fought it out on the farm ; 
 and down comes Mr. Greeley upon me with a regiment 
 of uncles, aunts, and grandfathers, all farmers, all straight, 
 smooth, hairy, and hundreds of years old, and marshals 
 them "in opposition to my naked assertion." 
 
 And I can not answer back. It is all very well to 
 bring on your bright-eyed, heavy-haired ancestry to 
 confute and confound your foes; but think of the she- 
 bears that would come out of the woods to tear me in 
 pieces should I go around among my kinsfolk and ac 
 quaintance, and say to one and another, "Go up, thoir 
 bald-head. Go up, thou bald-head, and show thyself to
 
 COUNTRY CHARACTER. 211 
 
 Horace Greeley in proof of my veracity." No, my 
 "naked assertion" must still stand unclothed upon, for 
 I can not afford to pay the price of a wardrobe. Yet I 
 did draw from life, not upon imagination. My painting 
 was a portrait, and no fancy sketch. My generaliza 
 tion may have been wrong, but my observation was 
 right unless, indeed, I arn called on to prove it in a 
 court of law, in which case I shall not only deny its cor 
 rectness, but shall stoutly maintain that I never made 
 it! 
 
 And no more than I can prove my own statements, 
 can I disprove Mr. Greeley's ; but I can do the next 
 best thing, and show that they do not amount to any 
 thing. I admit that his family are all as tall, and hale, 
 and old as he represents, though I have seen none of 
 them. But I have seen him. Now, he says he is the 
 most "bald" and "bent" of the whole crowd; thinks 
 he works harder at sixty than his farming friends did 
 at thirty ; and, with all his hard city work and city care, 
 he has a face like the full moon for roundness, and fair 
 ness, and placidity, and his voice is the voice of tran 
 quillity, and his step is the step of abstraction, undis 
 turbed by hurry. When, therefore, he arrays his farm 
 ing friends against my farming facts, I simply set his 
 cit}*" face against his city facts, and, if that is not a vic 
 tory, it is at least a dead-lock ! We are just where we 
 were when we started, for the Greeleys are all hand 
 some together, and ruled out of court. 
 
 What /know about farming is that, as it exists be 
 fore my eyes, it is hard work, and wearing work, and 
 uncertain work or rather uncertain wao:o. In the Ions;
 
 212 TWELVE MILES FROM A LEXOX. 
 
 run, I suppose, a man is as sure of getting a living off a 
 farm as anywhere else, but be is tolerably sure of not 
 getting much more than a living. In that sense, indeed, 
 farming is certain work. Mr. Greeley's own figures show 
 this. Jf farmers are healthy, happy, and wise, of course 
 it is immaterial whether they are worth two thousand 
 or two millions of dollars ; but as things go, the prospect 
 of working hard for ninety-four years, and never having 
 more than two thousand dollars to show for it, is any 
 thing but an enchanting one. Mr. Greeley may sing 
 idyls all his life, but his good, calm face, his exalted 
 position, and the rumors of the fortunes he has gained, 
 and saved, and lost, will overpower his idyls, and lure 
 young life to the city with a stronger attraction than all 
 the bright eyes, and ringing voices, and slender purses 
 of his highland-clan can counteract. It is no matter 
 how many fail. We do not see the failures, and we 
 walk by sight. We hear nothing of the journals that 
 die in their infancy. We know only how victoriously 
 the Tribune has lived. We do not see the country-born 
 paupers perishing in the city alms-house. We only see 
 Horace Greeley calling no man master. We do not go 
 up from the country farms to be the ninety-nine failures, 
 but the one success. 
 
 Of the fortunes of farming, compared with those of 
 other occupations, I am not competent to speak. In 
 deed, the only way in which I see how a person can 
 ever become rich is by writing. There, you do what 
 you like, what you would rather do than not, what you 
 would do any way, and are paid ten times what it is 
 worth, even when you are cheated. You please your-
 
 COUNTRY CHARACTER. 213 
 
 self on high wages. But to accumulate a fortune by 
 making a half-cent profit on a pound of sugar, or a yard 
 of cloth, or a bushel of potatoes, is rolling the stone of 
 Sisyphus. And farming seems to have the steadiest run 
 of unsteadiness. Wheat is up, and your crop is down 
 with a tornado. Next year you have a magnificent 
 harvest, but so have your neighbors, and the price is 
 nowhere. This year your whole farm raises three ap 
 ples. Last year the trees were loaded, and the mar 
 ket would not pay for transportation. The cranberries 
 flourished like a green bay-tree, but an early frost nip 
 ped them in the green. The peaches and grapes prom 
 ised well, -and a hailstorm destroj's the whole year's 
 growth. Hay is fifty dollars a ton, but the drought has 
 starved 3*0111' fields. The marshes at last were fruitful, 
 but a sudden north-caster carried your hay-stacks out 
 to sea. 
 
 But when Mr. Greeley asks "whether our loving 
 Father and Friend has so ordered his creation that 
 obedience to his commands makes us 'early wrinkled,' " 
 and so forth, I say at once, No. But he has so ordered 
 it that, if we do not know how to obey them wisely, we 
 suffer just as much as if we refused to obey them will 
 ingly. I will not say that he has ordered us to till the 
 ground, but he has so arranged matters that the one 
 thing indispensable is to till the ground. Therefore I 
 firmly believe that farming must one day be profitable, 
 both for the life that now is and for that which is to 
 come. It is, indeed, becoming so. But in multitudes 
 of cases it is not so. I do not deny that ignorance or 
 thriftles'sness may be the cause. I only say that farm-
 
 214 TWELVE MILES FROM A LEMOX. 
 
 ing is a work which requires so much more brains, 
 science, skill, than many other occupations, that igno 
 rance is more fatal. It requires more shrewdness and 
 sagacity to be a successful farmer than it does to be a 
 successful shoe-maker or tailor. The reason why farm 
 ers work harder than their peers in trades is not be 
 cause they are less intelligent, but because their work 
 is more exacting. The boy who is not bright enough 
 to make new discoveries or inventions in forming may 
 be bright enough to tend a corner grocery, and too 
 bright to be a mere routine farmer. But if the corner 
 grocery will tire of him, and he is too proud or too lazy 
 to come back to the farm, let him not go begging to 
 Mr. Greeley and say I sent him. I scorn him ! Any 
 one is to be scorned who will whine rather than work. 
 I never saw farming made easy or particularly lucra 
 tive either to man or woman ; and neither stake nor 
 scaffold shall force me to say that I would not rather 
 be sitting in my own library, writing at a hundred dol 
 lars a word, than digging potatoes at a dollar a bushel, 
 or churning butter at fifty cents a pound. But if pub 
 lishers reject my papers, and I refuse to dig or to churn, 
 but join "the never-ending procession of the multitude 
 who crawl" on the knees of their spirits," begging Mr. 
 Greeley to give them something to do why, then, let 
 me be given over to uncovenanted mercies! 
 
 Another man, " mountain born/' says : "I have always 
 been an admirer of the beautiful in nature and art, yet 
 it seems to me that there is an inner life a wealth of 
 character which is far more lovely than polished speech, 
 fine clothes, and costly mansions, and which is tlie only
 
 COUNTRY CHARACTER. 215 
 
 standard by which to estimate a man's true worth. Yet 
 I have been forced, under the most aggravating circum* 
 stances, to believe that city people, as a class, entertain 
 a feeling bordering on contempt for their rural cousins, 
 whose manners are not so polished, whose hands are not 
 so small and soft, and who do not always dress in the 
 height of fashion. I have been frequently scorned and 
 sneered at by misses who to-day are my social inferiors, 
 and would receive my advances with pleasure. What 
 makes the difference? My purpose to lead an upright 
 and useful life was as strong then as now. 
 
 "I know of a woman who has been from her child 
 hood one of the most heroic persons that ever lived. 
 At home she had scarcely any advantages. She was 
 nurse, servant, and housekeeper of a large family. She 
 was never allowed to attend a quarter's school, and was 
 really required to do the work of three persons until her 
 marriage. She has been a slave to work, trouble, and 
 anxiety nearly all her life, and yet, although she is one 
 of the best Christian women in the world, her rustic 
 manners and language would excite the scorn of col 
 lege-bred men and city ladies so that her own children 
 would feel it. Such is the shameful power of city asso 
 ciations, that they tempt the young to neglect and al 
 most to scorn those to whom they are bound by the 
 strongest and most sacred ties." 
 
 I think my friend is violently wrong and deeply 
 right. Now, then, let us draw the line exactly on the 
 boundaries. He believes there is a wealth of character, 
 an inner life more lovely than polished speech, and by 
 which alone a man is to be judged. Yes and no. Yes,
 
 216 TWELVE MILES FROM A LEMOX. 
 
 because the life is more than meat, and the body than 
 raiment. No, because we must judge of the inner life 
 largely by speech, and dress, and manner of outward 
 life. For instance, I know nothing whatever of Mr. A. 
 T. Stewart's inner life. He may be a noble and heroic 
 soul, or an ignoble and cowardly one. But if he builds 
 for himself a stately dwelling, filling it with the treas 
 ures of art, I infer that he loves beauty. If he gives to 
 Chicago fifty thousand dollars for her suffering children, 
 I infer that he is inspired by the enthusiasm of human 
 ity. Do you say it may have been mere ostentation 
 that the widow who bestowed her ten-cent scrip may 
 have been more really benevolent? You have no right 
 to say it. If you think so, keep it to yourself. It is 
 bad enough to ascribe bad motives to bad deeds, but he 
 who ascribes bad motives to good deeds is a churl in 
 deed. We have no more right to asperse the motives 
 of a millionaire than of a poor widow. When we find 
 that a man may be confidently counted on to do good 
 acts, then we attribute to him, perforce, a noble inner 
 life, whether he is poor and only shares his crust with 
 a poorer brother, or whether he be rich and gives of his 
 abundance. Too much can not be said to emphasize 
 the superiority of soul to circumstance, but do not let us 
 be too hard on circumstance. It is better to be lovely 
 in heart than in hand, but it is charming to be both! 
 The sweetest temper, the grandest soul in the world, ap 
 pears to better advantage through grammatical language 
 and correct pronunciation than their opposites. No 
 body will deny that, but it must follow, as the night 
 the day, that uncouth ness of word and manner is a dis-
 
 COUNTRY CHARACTER. 217 
 
 advantage; and the sun under a cloud can not make 
 so deep an impression, can not be so easily seen and 
 recognized, as the sun in a clear sky. My friend, I am 
 sure, agrees to this heartily, so we will go on to the 
 next head. 
 
 Do the city people, indeed, look down upon their 
 country cousins? I can tell them that we, the country 
 people, return their look with compound interest. But 
 it seems to me the contempt on both sides is very inno 
 cent. Cultivated and well-bred people recognize and 
 respect each other wherever found ; and to the con 
 tempt or admiration of the ill-bred we are alike indiffer 
 ent. The closer association of cities is perhaps favor 
 able to the growth of that consideration for others' 
 rights and feelings which we call good-breeding; but 
 the vulgarity of the city is infinitely more offensive than 
 that of the country. There is an uppishness, a pertness, 
 a flimsiness about it that annoys you. The untutored 
 rustic is slow and clumsy, perhaps, but, Heaven be 
 praised ! he is not dapper. lie may be uncomfortable, 
 uncertain as to the proper disposition of his hands and 
 feet, but he never commits the damning cockney sin of 
 thinking that he is "astonishing the natives." Awk 
 wardness and ignorance. are never really vulgar except 
 when they are pretentious ; and those persons, whether 
 in city or country, who make an awkward person feel 
 uncomfortable are themselves as deficient in manners as 
 is he whom they ridicule. The best-bred people are the 
 most simple. The finest manners are like the finest 
 style, invisible. The gentleman, the lady, has no tangi 
 ble " manners.'' It is only that a sweet soul, a kindly 
 
 10
 
 21S TWELVE JULES FROJI A LEUOX. 
 
 nature, shines out to bless and cheer, to amuse and help 
 its fellows. 
 
 Perhaps, -after all, I have not so much maintained 
 that the city does not contemn the country, as that it is 
 of no consequence whether it does or not. That is not 
 the same thing, buf it is pretty near it so near that 
 the practical results are the same. 
 
 Why did the misses laugh at the man to whom they 
 would now bow down and do obeisance? Partly be 
 cause they were giddy, giggling girls, who knew noth 
 ing better to do. But do not let us be too hard on the 
 poor things. They unlearn their laughing so soon. 
 Their heads often stay light while their hearts get 
 Very heavy. And then, dear friend, be not angry; but 
 possibly you did say or do some little thing that was 
 ridiculous. The best men and women are liable to the 
 same fate. A doctor of divinity once spoke of Goethe 
 as: " Go-eath " un A manner that it was agonizing not 
 to. laugh at. There is nothing disgraceful in mis 
 pronouncing a foreign name. "We all give Paris her 
 tale of consonants; but there was a rotundity, an nu- 
 speakable, unflinching loj'alty to his native tongue in 
 the way my reverend gentleman named the great poet 
 that was weM- nigh -irresistible. The girls were silly 
 and ill-bred to sneer. They are older and wiser now, 
 and you, friend, are 'less sensitive, less self-conscious, 
 more sure 5 -of. your ground, more a man of the world 
 than you were. You have both improved as you have 
 matured-^-so do not lay it np against them. Country 
 girls- are' just as hard on a man whose person and man 
 ners do "not please them as are city girls. It is not a
 
 CO UXTR Y CHAR A VTE&. 219 
 
 matter of city and country. It is a matter of individ 
 uals. Bufr if girls only would or could be high-bred! 
 Good-breeding", in the last analysis, is but perfect sym 
 pathy. It is simply having imagination enough to 
 know how another person feels, and sense enough to 
 know what to do to make him fee 1 ! hnppy, and good 
 ness enough to do it and be quick about it. 
 
 What shall be said of the mother whose weary years 
 have -but ministered to the necessities of others and 
 neglected her own soul's needs? Alas, the tragedy of 
 such a life! Alas, that.it is too often a real trngedy! 
 The past can not be restored, but the future is ours. 
 The man who turns from the wife or mother who has 
 thus sacrificed herself at his altar is accursed; but the 
 sacrifice ought never to be made. The very precious 
 ointment was not taken to anoint the feet of the Lord, 
 but to rub up the pots and kettles. Its sacredness was 
 in its uselessness. Its use was sacrilege. 
 
 Children can not prevent it. The fire is ashes on the 
 altar before they know its cost. But a man is worse 
 than brutal to demand or to accept such a sacrifice from 
 his wife. A woman is wholl\ r , cruelly wrong in mak 
 ing it. 
 
 Petroleum V. Nasby, in his poem of "Hannah Jane," 
 gives us such a life-history. Hannah Jane yields youth, 
 beauty, culture, all, to make the fortune of her husband. 
 She remains to the end illiterate, a drudge, slave, pack- 
 horse, and her husband rather takes credit to himself 
 for not " shoving her out alone," and never gets further 
 than "-if- either," I'm delinquent." If either! Such a 
 man is dead in sin not to see that he is worse than a
 
 220 TWEL VE MILES FROM A LEMOX. 
 
 wife murderer. He has slain a soul. What he prom 
 ised to love, honor, and cherish, he has degraded, de 
 spoiled, destroyed. " There's another world beyond 
 this," poetizes the musing husband, but he need not con 
 cern himself with that at present. There is this world. 
 One is enough at a time for such culprits as he. The 
 man who builds his own fame and fortune on the souls 
 of his wife or his children does not wait for the next 
 world to condemn him ; he is condemned already. lie 
 is that execrated and ever execrable monster who plun 
 ders the one he has sworn to protect, that he may en 
 rich himself. 
 
 But women ought to see for themselves that it is a 
 waste of the ointment. Sometimes, perhaps, it can not 
 be helped. Fate closes around the child, and fixes her 
 in one groove till the grave releases her. Perhaps. I 
 can hardly think that in this country any fate is so 
 strong as to keep the soul fast if the will be not first a 
 traitor. But, at least, let women not feel that any such 
 sacrifice is their duty. They injure the very ones whom 
 they wish to benefit. The noblest son in the world can 
 not feel that delight in a rude and ignorant mother that 
 he would feel in an intelligent mother. He will be 
 unspeakably grateful, tender, faithful; he will love her 
 and cherish her to her life's end ; but he will miss it is 
 impossible he should not miss all that she has lost, all 
 that she has failed to gain that which makes her his 
 equal and comrade. Nasby's Abel was a villain, but, if 
 he had been an angel, he could not have enjoyed Han 
 nah Jane degraded, as he would have enjoyed her ex 
 alted. His villainy was not in his recognizing that she
 
 COUNTRY CHARACTER. 221 
 
 was his wife, nor in feeling ashamed of her, but in per 
 mitting her to become his inferior, of whom it was pos 
 sible to be ashamed. A refined taste can not be grat 
 ified with rude manners, though gratitude and- duty 
 join hands. It is not the effect of city association. It 
 is the natural repugnance of delicacy to coarseness, even 
 though it be only coarseness of manifestation. If the 
 whole world lived in scattered houses, all the same the 
 trained ear would be pained by rough words, the train 
 ed eye by ungraceful motion, the trained intellect by 
 slow perception. Mother, is it for your sons' sake you 
 are grinding in the prison-house of drudgery? For 
 their sake, if possible, ascend out of it. For their sake, 
 if for nothing else, cultivate your mind. Do not bestow 
 upon them the pitiable kindness of giving to their as 
 piring young manhood a worn-out drudge for a mother. 
 This awful abnegation may be the stem fiat of fate, may 
 seem the only resource of love; but whether it be fate 
 or choice, at the last it biteth like a serpent, and sting- 
 eth like an adder. 
 
 There is no finer life than springs from our rocky 
 soil, is nurtured beneath our easily frowning skies. 
 
 Eight miles across country, past broad, level fields, 
 lines of encircling hills paint themselves hazy blue 
 against the far noonday sky, or tender transparent pur 
 ple upon the glowing sunset. High and steep they rise 
 beneath your climbing feet, but from this western win 
 dow they are but gentle swells in the horizon but a 
 dim, dreary background of the fair, still picture wood 
 and meadow, pleasant cottage, busy men and laboring 
 oxen, and over all an enchanted silence. For their
 
 222 TWELVE MILES FROM A LEMON. 
 
 -beauty and their guardianship, for their ever-changing 
 and their never-changing, I love my hills ; but one among 
 them wears a charm and holds a secret of its own. ]f 
 you are riding by on brilliant afternoons, you may see 
 the ample folds of a scarlet scarf rising and. falling and 
 floating from the attic window, and you will think we 
 are but airing the woolens from the camphor chest; 
 but my hill knows better. Ever he is aware that in his 
 -veiled and misty depths he shelters a warm human in 
 terest, and that my floating signal, my Scarlet Letter, 
 will be read by welcoming eyes, and answered in such 
 abounding measure as makes Ten Times One seem 
 Twenty. ,:. 
 
 To-day I look upon my hill with peculiar fondness. 
 Surely his blue is luminous, he wears his purple roy al 
 ly, and this matchless sunshine has Woven him a crown 
 of glory, for his message to-day is not for me alone, but 
 for all the world. Forth from his silent shadows where 
 it grew, a little book has stolen into tlie world, as silver- 
 leaved as the abele-tree from which it drew its name, 
 but sound and sturdy as my hill that nurtured it to life. 
 
 Touching lightly upon many things, it touches noth 
 ing which it does hot adorn. Perhaps not half a dozen 
 paragraphs concern themselves with scenery, but, by a 
 few bold yet dainty strokes, fall and spring and winter 
 rise before you, vivid, real, and recurring. Next to noth 
 ing is said of the "woman cause," but, by "the law of 
 indirect effort," all women are elevated and ennobled 
 through its pages. Its women, positive but not opin- 
 .ionated, gracious without manner, influenced but not 
 driven by ideas, hospitable to thought but op.n also to
 
 COUNTRY CHARACTER. 
 
 : "sentiment, informed but not "domineering, equally large- 
 . hearted and large-minded bow quietly, harmoniously, 
 -successfully, if indirectly, they work upon the men who 
 seek their small home circle ! Opposing convictions are 
 not wanting, but they do not monopolize the field, and 
 even opposing prejudices war you gently, though- war 
 they must, being prejudices. In that narrow but inde 
 pendent and intelligent home, it is no question of ma- 
 -tron or maiden ; but women stand as they should stand, 
 sovereign by virtue of their unrepressed womanhood, 
 cultivated, dignified, free necessarily, therefore, magnet 
 ic and influential. In language the book is singularly 
 .choice and elegant. It shows the result of culture and 
 not more perhaps than needs must in our country 
 -the process of culture. '., The 'sentences are agreeable, 
 even striking, for their str.uclure, as .well as impressive 
 for substance. The characterization is delicate but defi 
 nite, the conversation flexible and natural, the thought 
 subtle, precise, and not unfrequently deep, the temper, 
 ah, me! always perfect. There is humor, too, that 
 shines, and also smiles, a satire as sharp as if it were not 
 playful, a criticism none the less keen for being good- 
 natured, and sometimes an honest, direct, and wholesome 
 indignation. Here, in dignified and eloquent words, a 
 daughter of the country presents, the cause of country 
 against city. Never, surely, was the bubble of Brah- 
 manism more deftly blown into nothingness; never, sure 
 ly, were the "clumsy and the co.untrified " more nobly 
 nor so much defended as dismissed from the attitude of 
 defense. Never was refined snobbery .cloven by a finer, 
 and keener sword. Without flattering ignorance, never
 
 224 TWELVE MILES FROM A LEMON. 
 
 pandering to coarseness, the censor extracts from scoffs 
 their sting, and turns it politely, but with an all-pene 
 trating point, upon the scoffers. That which alone con 
 stitutes the nobility of democracy is fairly, proudly, and 
 victoriously set against that which alone makes aristoc 
 racy ignoble. 
 
 I like to think that a woman little known has been 
 listening in her "saintly solitude" to the world's voices 
 sounding near and far, loud or low ; that in her soul, si 
 lently, without aim, thoughts have been revolving, con 
 clusions maturing, convictions deepening, impulse quick 
 ening, till all this mental stir found overflow and chan 
 nel to the world. A book may be an accident. Cir 
 cumstances, change, a thousand slight modifications of 
 life may prevent the still, small voice from speaking be- 
 3 ? ond the sphere of home listeners; but it is pleasant to 
 feel that over all the country, unknown to fame or even 
 to society, may be such, listeners, such observers, such 
 possible talkers Girls of the Period, who will keep the 
 Period sweet and bear it well aloft ; women who discern 
 and discriminate, and calmly, despite all clamor and 
 heat, deal just judgment, and show ns how divine a 
 thing a woman may be made. 
 
 At the beginning of our last and greatest revolution 
 ary war, among the thousands of Northern families that 
 rose up, filled and fired with the inspiration of loyalty, 
 was one consisting of father, mother, and three promis 
 ing sons. The father was smitten with an incurable 
 disease. No strength of his ebbing life could be flung 
 into the breach to stay that destruction which threatened 
 the nation : but not his mortal weakness nor his death-
 
 COUXTRY CHARACTER. 225 
 
 longing for clear faces should hold back his sous. The 
 youngest was too young; but the oldest was of fit age, 
 a strong, beautiful young man, in the first flush of con 
 scious power, full of enthusiasm, full of hope, high-prin- 
 eipled, high-hearted, resolute. Swift and terrible was 
 his soldier's march to the grave. He enlisted in, June, 
 1861, rushed into the foremost of the fight, was taken 
 prisoner by the Rebels, and for our country's and our 
 countrymen's sake, for our own honor's sake, would we 
 could forget that such things ever happened; but truth 
 is greater than all, and we must remember that lie was 
 starved to death in a Rebel prison. To his family and 
 this was only one among thousands of such families, 
 this fearful event seemed but to call for another soldier. 
 They never dreamed of being daunted, but rose up to 
 a still greater sacrifice. The dead son's place must be 
 made good. The second boy must go. That was the 
 thing to be done, not to be talked about. The boy was 
 ready. The father and mother were not unready. He 
 enlisted, did valiant service till his health entirely failed, 
 was placed on the sick-list till it became evident that 
 he never would be able to do soldier's duty again, when 
 he was finally and honorably discharged. His health 
 and his time he had gladly given to his country, and 
 regretted that he had no more to give; nor did he ever 
 seek reward or recognition. 
 
 But now the third and last, the young Benjamin, had 
 grown to be eighteen, stalwart, and brave, and loyal, like 
 his brothers, and the family must be represented in the 
 Army of the Republic. They had sore need of him at 
 home. The slowly dying husband and father, the dis- 
 
 10*
 
 226 TWELVE MILES FROM A LEMON. 
 
 abled son r the; bereaved mother cleaved longingly and 
 lovingly, to this last strong staff of their weakness, but 
 the country's .need was sore, and they gave him up, I 
 can not say gladly, but calmly, without complaint or 
 ado; like .Americans. "While in camp he fell ill with 
 typhoid fever. Those of us who have ever been in the 
 camp hospitals know, how dreadful was the situation 
 to a .home-and-mother'loving boy, even with all the al 
 leviations which science and love could bring. 
 
 In the story-books, proud ladies find their discarded 
 lovers lying wounded and sick, and the situation be 
 comes immediately dramatic and sentimental; but, when 
 I think of these hospitals, I think always of long, dreary 
 rooms full of light, and flies,, and smell, and heavy-eyed^ 
 suffering men, and the dread and hopelessness of it 
 brood over me after all these years with scarcely a lift 
 ing of the shadow. To such a place came the young 
 Benjamin; but.tliQre a lady found him, a friend of his 
 mother's, and took him from the hospital to her own 
 house, sent for liis mother, and employed her own phy 
 sician to attend, him. This was not exactly field serv 
 ice, but surely no general ever accomplished a desi 
 rable end by. wiser and more efficient means than this 
 loyal lady.. Hi's mother remained with him till he was 
 convalescent, paid all his bills, and as soon as he was 
 able carried him home. There the most skillful phy 
 sician of the vicinity was engaged ;. and the moment that 
 gentleman .pronounced him well enough to "r^ake the 
 journey with safety, his uncle, a member of the House 
 of Representatives, and. subsequently an officer in the 
 arm}'-, carried him to the Central Hospital at the State
 
 COUNTRY CHARACTER. 227 
 
 Capitol. There they learned, to their, dismay, that nei 
 ther of his. physicians had reported him, and consequently 
 he was recorded a deserter! ' . . ;..' 
 
 To the still feeble young man this was-, a terrible 
 blow. To the high, stainless soul, the very breath, the 
 shadow, the thought of shame was intolerable. His agr 
 ony was acute and intense, but he and his uncle were 
 assured in the strongest terms that his record should bfi 
 made right, and the latter unhappily departed .without 
 seeing in person that the .vital thing was done. 
 
 Unassured, but undaunted, with only one purpose 
 and one aspiration, to serve and save his country, the 
 young man took his place in: the ranks, fought' a good 
 fight, won the name at all times and in all places of n 
 good soldier, and laid down his grand young life at lasfy 
 in the high tide of battle on the decisive field of Gettys 
 burg. 
 
 And never in all these 3 T ears has the cloud been lifted 
 from that noble family. Never did the now widowed 
 mother, never did the heroic son receive aught of pen 
 sion or pay, for never oh, crowning grief! was the 
 false record corrected, and he, patriot, hero, martyr, was 
 written down a deserter of the cause to which he had 
 given all ! 
 
 At last some friendly person took up the matter in 
 behalf of the stricken mother, and after careful inves 
 tigation learned that the trouble probably had arisen 
 from a mistake in reading for the name of his native 
 village another village four times as far off from head 
 quarters, and at a distance to which it was said he had 
 no right to go, and to which he never did go. This
 
 228 TWELVE MILES FROM A LEXOX. 
 
 gentleman wrote to an officer of the Government in 
 Washington, stating the facts, and saying, with a simple 
 trust in the right which Heaven grant our Government 
 may never shame: "Please get the record righted, and 
 communicate the fact to me, and I will at once inform 
 
 Mrs. :, who will be much more gratified that her 
 
 son's name stands right than she will to receive the 
 money due him." 
 
 By a little gentle pressure in the right spot, the 
 mighty wheel ceased rolling, the great Government 
 paused, repaired the wrong wrought so long ago, cor 
 rected the lying record, lifted the dead soldier's name 
 into the light that should encircle it, and gave to the 
 mourning mother the desire of her heart, the sole solace 
 that remains to her for her beloved and honored dead.
 
 AUTUMN VOICES. 229 
 
 XIII. 
 
 A UTUMN VOICES. 
 
 THE melancholy days are come, the saddest of the 
 year, when the Old Coal Man starts on his periodical 
 round of travel through the newspapers. Patient and 
 provident housekeepers, whose lives are already a bur 
 den to them by reason of the wastefulness of servants, 
 are now, through the precession of the equinoxes, ap 
 proaching the place where they will be told for the sev 
 enty-times-seventieth time that America is the land of 
 extravagance ; that our forests are disappearing before 
 the woodman's axe, and our coal-mines hollowing into 
 emptiness beneath the miner's spade; that European 
 families buy wood by the pound, and old coal burns 
 amaist as weel's the new; and if }'ou, sweet Cinderella, 
 will but sift and pick and rinse, smother yourself in' 
 ashes, and burrow in your cellar with sufficient assidui 
 ty, you will save your country from a fire famine, and 
 doubtless at last reach a point where fresh coal will be 
 no more requisite, but you may burn on and on from a 
 self-supplying bin, forever spent, renewed forever. 
 
 Dear and long-suffering Cinderella, be not deceived. 
 Shake the ashes from your hair, scrub off the crock 
 from your poor hands, turn a deaf ear to the wretched 
 man, and while the sun is not yet cold in the heavens, 
 and these birds of ill omen have only piped the first
 
 '230 TWELVE MILES -FJtOJI A LEXOX. 
 
 feeble note of tlieir harsh discord, listen to one who 
 knows more about it than a regiment of newspaper the 
 orists. 
 
 Marry come up, now, Old Coal Man, and be yourself 
 sifted! Let us see what. is grain and what is chaff in 
 your profuse advice. You give minute, specific, and 
 long-drawn-out 'directions for the management of range 
 and stove and furnace, by following which the heat 
 shall be regulated,, waste prevented, and expenses re 
 duced. In the first place, Old .Coal Man, permit me to 
 say, with what "sweetness and light" may be, but at 
 any rate with explicitness, that I, for one, do not half 
 believe you. I.speak.from the point of sight of a prac 
 tical experimenter who has spent a large part of his life 
 in coal cellars, who has tried most of the furnaces in 
 this country, and has reflected deeply on the rest. 
 "Leave this little door open, "-says "Father M'Gee, "as 
 soon as your fire is well started, and the coal will last 
 all day." "Put your coal into this 'cylinder," says the 
 base-burner, "and it feeds itself down as it is wanted, 
 *and only as", it is wanted, and you need hardly look at 
 }'our fire from morning to morning." "Spread your 
 -old coal on the top of your new coal," snys> Penny 
 'Wise, "and 4he moderated heat;will be all-sufficient." 
 "Slide -in this little damper,". says Pound Foolish, "rtnd 
 the heat which the world has hitherto dissipated to the 
 skies will be diffused through your house."' And with 
 servile fidelity^ have I shut all the doors, and opened all 
 -the registers, and slid all the slides of the furnaces and 
 the funnels thereunto appertaining, and the conclusion 
 of the whole matter is thatyou can not have fire with-
 
 AUJUXN VOICES. .; 
 
 put fuel. The price of comfort is an eternal supply of 
 coal. If your object is simply to keep a fire alive, you 
 can do so at a very small outlay ; but if it is ,to keep 
 yourself alive through our rigorous Northern winters, I 
 know no way of doing it but to burn out your bins. 
 
 Granting, however, that you have found a, royal road 
 to warmth, does it certainly follow that it would be 
 worth our while to travel it? Even supposing your 
 directions, if complied with, would reduce the consump 
 tion of coal, is it at all certain that they would, not re 
 quire the consumption of something more; valuable than 
 coal ? for in this world, at least in this part r of it,, one 
 can live rationally only by a comparison of values. 
 Our servants mostly know how to make coal, fires. 
 Very likely they do it- after a clumsy, and cosily- fasli.- 
 ion, and keep up their fires by an unwise and unneces 
 sary method. The good housekeeper instructs, them in 
 the more excellent way, but, unless she constantly min 
 isters at the altar herself, the probability is that the 
 flame will immediately return to its costliest sacrifice 
 And lap up far more than its legitimate food .The good 
 housekeeper knows this has a constant, aching, sense 
 of it; but her husband, her children, her house, her 
 books, her friends, make incessant demands upon her 
 time, and, after a few stremious efforts on her part, 
 Providence mercifully vouchsafes to her a life-preserv 
 ing apathy, broken; only by an occasional pang .when 
 she catches a; glimpse of the rapidly lowering coal bin 
 and the rapidly, heightening coal bills. And just at 
 this moment- of all moments, when we might .hayq 
 peace, you, miserable, must needs come "clattering in,
 
 232 TWELVE MILES FROM A LEMON. 
 
 with your deafening din of old coal and economy, and 
 relegate every thing to uneasiness, not to say remorse. 
 Away with you ! What bee is this in your bonnet, 
 making all the world uncomfortable? Do you mean, 
 to tell Cinderella that it would be more economical for 
 her to tend her fires and save her coal than to tend her 
 children and save her soul? What shall it profit a 
 woman if she gain all the mines of Lehigh, and lose 
 her own tranquillity of temper? Whether is it ( better 
 to pay a few additional dollars each year, or to pay out 
 your time and patience each day in pawing over a heap 
 of ashes? For this is what it amounts to. It is not, 
 in most cases, a question between careless and careful 
 supervision, between wanton recklessness and wise pru 
 dence, between a conscientious and an unprincipled 
 woman. It is whether a scrupulous Christian, an al 
 ready overburdened wife and mother, shall neglect still 
 more than she now is forced to do the weightier matters 
 of the law, and give her attention to paying, with accura 
 cy and promptness, the tithes of mint, anise, and cummin. 
 Beyond the obligation which we are all under to re 
 quire, so far as practicable, thorough work from our 
 workmen, and to give faithful service to our employers, 
 it is a great deal wiser and more economical to let the 
 fire consume &. little extra coal than it is to throw our 
 own peace of mind into it for the sake of keeping it 
 down. Waste is hateful to God and man ; but if waste 
 there must be, let it be of the cheaper and not the cost 
 lier material. The worst waste is the waste of the bet 
 ter in pursuit .of the meaner. Life is more than anthra 
 cite, and the body than seasoned oak.
 
 AUTUMN VOICES. 233 
 
 To hold up foreign ways against ours is utterly futile. 
 Europe has little coal and much people. We have 
 wide-stretching coal-fields and a sparse population. A 
 woman with a dozen servants to do the dozen different 
 kinds of work can perhaps afford to burn a cinder a 
 dozen times over before calling it ashes. But our wom 
 en, having much of the hand -work and most of the 
 brain-work to do themselves, must discriminate between 
 the duties that can be delegated and those that can not. 
 Surely, with our immense coal-mines stored up for gen 
 erations, and our society still crude, and our children 
 who can not wait, the choice of duties is not difficult. 
 Is she a \vise and economical woman who, when her 
 children ask for stories, for pleasant talk, for a sweet- 
 faced, gentle- voiced mother, holds out to them, in grimy 
 hands, a bit of bitumen ? 
 
 And when you present European economies for our 
 emulation, what do you mean? That we shall be ben 
 efited by compassing their results? Look at some of 
 these economical Continental firesides close at hand: 
 
 "Keeping no fire within doors," says Hawthorne, 
 " except possibly a spark or two in the kitchen ; they 
 [the Romans] crept out of their cheerless houses into 
 the narrow, sunless, sepulchral streets, bringing the fire 
 sides along with them in the shape of little earthen 
 pots, vases, or pipkins, full of lighted charcoal or warm 
 ashes, over which they hold their tingling finger-ends. 
 
 Through the open door-ways no need to shut 
 
 them when the weather within was bleaker than with 
 out a glimpse into the interior of their dwellings 
 showed the uncarpetcd brick floors, as dismal as the
 
 234 TWELVE MILES FROM A LEMON. 
 
 pavement of a 'tomb. .... In New England, or in Rus 
 sia, or scarcely in a hut of the Esquimaux, there is no 
 such, discomfort to be borne as by Romans in wintry 
 
 weather Wherever we pass our summers, may all 
 
 our inclement months, from November to April, hence 
 forth be spent in some country that recognizes winter 
 as an integral portion of its year !" 
 ; Is this a pleasing picture to contemplate? Would 
 the Old Coal Man like' to exchange our extravagant 
 hearth-stones and furnaces for the snug, saving fire-pot 
 jon a Roman sidewalk? . Or shall the fire continue to 
 joar, somewhat superfluously perhaps, yet with a heart- 
 some and hospitable glow withal ? ," 
 
 Your dissolving views of our forests and our mines 
 are not in the least appalling. God will not leave his 
 world out in the cold until its appointed time is come, 
 and-.that day will not be postponed though we spend 
 our lives in piling wood. Coal came into use long be 
 fore wood gave out ; and by the time we get to the end 
 of our coal-mines, ocean, air, and sunshine will be ready 
 ,to give up the heat which is in them for our cheer. 
 Oil-wells spouted long before whales had ceased to 
 <spout. We had been bemoaning our droughts, lo! 
 these many years, and wise men of the East said it was 
 .because we had so ruthlessly felled our forests, and, un- 
 jless we planted trees again, seed-time and harvest would 
 fail for want of rain. Then came a most beautiful and 
 bountiful summer, filled our tanks and cisterns, fed our 
 fountains, flooded our meadows, drowned our cranber 
 ries, washed out our- salt hay, and soaked our rowen 
 -.into mulch, and how can our savants keep their head;!
 
 :v VOICES.. 235 
 
 jvbove water? For some reason, we were told, the cli 
 mate of the earth was changing glacial cold was com 
 ing upon us, and the earth was gradually freezing down 
 from, the north pole. Now if any there be who have 
 not felt this theory thoroughly thawed out of them by 
 the fervent heat of our all too swiftly flown midsummer 
 months, let him hear what Daniel Draper saith from 
 his eyrie in the Central Park of the Universe. After a 
 careful comparison of the most reliable records .for the 
 past seventy -six years r he comes to the conclusion that, 
 "both as regards rain-fall and winter climate, there has 
 been, no change in the lapse of many years." 
 
 Surcease, Old Coal Man, your evil speaking and cause 
 less whining. Our mines of coal shall not .waste nor 
 our wells of oil fail till the day that the Lord revealeth 
 something else in the earth to burn. Meanwhile, come 
 clown, into our ash-heap, if you will, and claw among the 
 clinkers to your heart's content. There are plenty of 
 thern r and slate to be had for the asking, and doubtless 
 soot as the sands of the sea ; or descend betimes to your 
 own furnace shrine, and win your own household down 
 by your merry morning song: 
 
 "Come into the 'cellar, Maud, 
 
 For the black bat, night, has flown ; 
 Come into the cellar, Maud 
 
 It's poky down here alone. 
 And the fumes of the coal gas are wafted abroad, 
 
 And the 'fire is almost gone." 
 
 But for Maud herself, and for all busy and virtuous 
 women, Heaven grant them grace never to believe that 
 any necromancy or machinations whatever can make in
 
 236 TWELVE MILES FROM A LEMON. 
 
 our ashes glow their 'wonted fires, and firmness to stay 
 above-ground and keep the world sane and sweet ! 
 
 Sometimes it seems as disastrous to be a good house 
 keeper as a poor one. It is just as bad to be a better 
 housekeeper than there is any call for, as it is to be a 
 poorer housekeeper than there is any justification for. 
 There are plenty to exact perfection in all household 
 machinery. If I could induce women to be willing to 
 be poor housekeepers when, through their poverty, life 
 could be made rich, I should feel that I had not lived 
 in vain. 
 
 There are, no doubt, reckless, brainless, wasteful, un 
 principled women who bring ruin into a man',s heart 
 and home. Such women need no exhortation to a wise 
 negligence, nor, indeed, can they profit by exhortation 
 to wise thrift. It is of no use to admonish them one 
 way or the other. They may extract, even from moral 
 words, encouragement for their folly ; but they would 
 be foolish just the same, whether they had encourage 
 ment or not. There is nothing to be done with them 
 but to make the most you can of this life, notwithstand 
 ing the wounds they deal, and to look forward with 
 hope to a fresh start in another and a better world. 
 But these women are a small minorit}-. Female Amer 
 ica is, in the main, conscientious, disposed to be frugal, 
 and to do its full part in building up the family for 
 tunes. To my observation, women err through being 
 too careful and troubled about many things, rather than 
 in not being careful and "particular" enough. They 
 look too well to the ways of their household, and do 
 not eat so much of the bread of idleness as would be
 
 AUTUMN VOICES. 237 
 
 good for them. They need to be encouraged to "let 
 things go," rather than be exhorted to "look after 
 things." When some troubled teacher tells us that a 
 French family will live luxuriously and keep boarders 
 off what an American family throws away, patient 
 Griselda feels admonished to renewed and still more 
 scrutinizing pursuit of every morsel of meat from the 
 moment when it leaves the butcher's stall till it is set 
 on her overflowing table ; nor even thence shall the dis 
 jecta membra be permitted to depart in peace, but must 
 be followed to their final classification and deposit in 
 the frying-pan or soap jar, lest some atom be premature 
 ly deflected to pig-pen or poultry-yard, and so the har 
 mony of the universe disturbed. 
 
 But the overwhelming probability is that Griselda 
 already gives quite its due share of time and thought to 
 the salvage of scraps. She may or may not make as 
 much out of a shin-bone as a Frenchwoman would ; but 
 in our happy country shin-bones are many and sirloin 
 steaks not few, and it is a question whether energy and 
 ingenuity may not be better expended than in wrest 
 ing the last fibre of nutriment from a dismantled bone. 
 Must is a word from which there is no appeal ; but 
 where there is freedom of choice, let us remember the 
 great army of dogs and cats which is glad to feed upon 
 the crumbs that fall from our tables ; and if the ma 
 nipulation of fragments into viands seems likely to cost 
 more than it would come to, let us not be deterred 
 from comforting our dumb brethren therewith by any 
 fears of foreign comparisons. 
 
 Economy is a divine law. No amount of wealth jus-
 
 238.1 TWELVE MILKS FROM A LEMON. 
 
 tifies waste, A man can never be so rich as to afford 
 wanton expenditure. The " man of means" is under 
 just as strong bonds to spend his money wisely as the 
 man of "limited income." All the teaching that a 
 woman can give her servants she ought to give them, 
 for their sake and her own. They touch her sphere, 
 and she is responsible for all the good she can do them. 
 But it is not her duty to sacrifice to their teaching u 
 higher good. She has duties more strenuous than in 
 culcating economy, far more strenuous, in most cases, 
 than the saving of money. To economize at the cost 
 of making her family uncomfortable, or of destroying 
 the elasticity of her mind and the buoyancy of her spir 
 its with the burden of details, is not thrifty. 
 
 Nature is sometimes prodigiously wasteful, to all ap 
 pearance, yet she is strictly economical, since not only 
 is no force and no. substance really lost, but the seem 
 ingly extravagant expenditure is really the smallest 
 that would certainly secure the desired end. Myriads 
 of blossoms bear no fruit, but they gladden the e}-e, and, 
 on the whole, making all provision for failures, there 
 are, doubtless, no more than are necessary to keep up 
 the suppty. Nature surely believes that a large margin 
 is the truest economy. 
 
 Flies are not a desirable adjunct to housekeeping, 
 and the ideal housekeeper will set her face like a fliiit 
 against them, regardless of my innocent remarks. Nor 
 have I the smallest sympathy with that misplaced mas 
 culine tender-heartedness which forbids the use of the 
 sticky fty-traps because they make the fly. uncomforta 
 ble, : or the poison-pnpcr because it disagrees "with the
 
 VOICES, 239" 
 
 
 
 fly's constitution. When a fly comes into human habi 
 tation, he takes his life in his hands, and if fate swift 
 ly takes it out again, that is his own affair. But why 
 should we make more ado to put the fly out than he 
 makes by coming in? Why should the sweep of his 
 wings in parlor or dining-room be the signal for a sud 
 den pause in talk, a rush for towels, a vigorous on 
 slaught, and a vindictive slaughter? Extreme fastid 
 iousness is a greater nuisance than flies. There are 
 women who ought to be bound over to keep the peace. 
 Domestic happiness, social order, and the. whole fabric' 
 of civilized life ought not to be at the mercy of a fly;; 
 and since, you can not always catch the fly, there is 
 nothing for it but to catch the women. When I see 
 people devoting their minds to, and disturbing the uni 
 verse for, the expulsion of a harmless wandering way 
 farer, I arn moved to say that I like flies. They are a 
 busy and a cheery folk, well worthy of study, and capa 
 ble of rewarding an intelligent curiosity. I remember* 
 once spending a whole Sunday afternoon in watching, 
 one with great interest, and, I trust, not without profit. 
 How could Mr. Theodore Tilton have written that 
 charming lyric, beginning, 
 
 "Baby Bye, 
 
 Here's a fly : 
 Let us watch him, you and I," 
 
 if a rigid domestic discipline had been brought to bear 
 on the immortal little guest the moment he appeared 
 in sight? Certainly it was .with a positive satisfaction 
 that I perceived .one day on what a: friendly footing, 
 stood the flies with a certain agreeable and refined fum-.
 
 240 TWELVE MILES FHOM A LJtOX. ' 
 
 ily of my acquaintance. The windows were thrown 
 wide open, and with the scent of honeysuckle and the 
 song of birds came in, too, the busy, contented, pre 
 occupied tribe, adding their blithe buzz to the sum 
 mer's infinite harmony. It bespoke a large and lavish 
 hospitality, a generous sympathy, a unison with na 
 ture, a freedom from petty and deteriorating anxieties 
 which promises well for the future and the human 
 ities. 
 
 The world is full of wasps. There are four crawl 
 ing over the window-shade, half a dozen more sunning 
 themselves on the glass, two or three creeping out of 
 the curtain folds. In fact, you can not stir any thing 
 without disturbing a wasp. Outdoors their buzz is in 
 cessant. The sunny south angle is alive with their fuss 
 ing and fuming. Where they lodge no one can find 
 out. This morning, behind a closed south blind, a col 
 ony of them was found hanging to the window-sash 
 outside. They, were gathered in a close cluster, as if 
 they had clubbed together to keep warm ; and perhaps 
 they had, for they seem to be a slow, cold-blooded race. 
 A fly is swift, active, continually busy. lie moves as 
 if he had an object in life, as if he had taken out a 
 contract, and were paid by the job ; but a wasp crawls 
 around sluggishly, as if he were not going anywhere 
 in particular, and did not much care whether he got 
 there or not. So he stops midway, and tries to start up 
 his torpid liver by a sun-bath ; but midway is far from 
 being the safe way for him. It is just there, reflective 
 and immovable, that the newspaper or the wet towel 
 comes slnp down on him like a thousand avalanches;
 
 AUTUJfy VOICES. 
 
 and it is only when the newspaper and wet towel have 
 missed fire, have startled without stunning him, that 
 he shows any agility in walking. With such incentives 
 to exertion, I have seen a wasp in a hurry, tiptoeing 
 frantically along, with wings upstretched, like Blondin 
 on his tight rope; but ordinarily he cornes as Lady 
 Geraldine went to Mr. Bertram after he had half recov 
 ered from his dead faint, 
 
 "Ever, ever more the while in a slow silence." 
 
 Wasps have the credit or discredit of being an irri 
 table race, stinging on the slightest provocation. That 
 rnny be, but our wasps are evidently a better-bred spe 
 cies, as they have stung no one yet, though they have 
 had every excuse for doing so. Wet cloths have been 
 slung at them, death has menaced them at the brush 
 end of the broom, scalding water has been the slightest 
 of their provocations, the duster has restricted them to 
 the dust-pan till the burning fiery furnace ingulfed them 
 to a swift and, we trust, an almost painless departure 
 from a terrified world, yet through it all they have nev 
 er pushed one sting. But as the poor invalid, who was 
 woefully disturbed by the cock crowing, remarked to 
 chanticleer's owner, who affirmed that he never crowed 
 more than half a dozen times of a morning, "You think 
 of what I suffer when he crows; you do not count what 
 I suffer from the feeling that he is going to crow!" as 
 Prescott, the historian, says of the reign of terror in the 
 Netherlands under the Inquisition and Philip II., "The 
 amount of suffering from such a persecution is not to 
 be estimated merely by the number of those who have 
 
 11
 
 242 TWELVE JIILES FROM. A LEMOX. 
 
 actually suffered death, \\-hen the fear of death hung 
 like a naked sword over every man's bead;" so the 
 reason \vhy wasps are a nuisance is not the amount 
 of physical pain but mental discomfort that they cause 
 you. As in monetary circles, they create a panic by 
 destroying confidence. So while the busy, friendly flies 
 we poison with sugared water, tenderly, as if we loved 
 them, at the wasps, equally harmless, but with harmful 
 possibilities, we go out as against a foe, with deadly 
 weapons and fierce, relentless hostility. 
 
 The gravel-walk before the front door has been hon 
 ey-combed with holes, some of which on investigation 
 proved to be three or four inches deep as deep as the 
 point of your sun-urnbrella. A little winged beast, 
 black and vermilion, with two curved sickles on his 
 head, made the holes by vigorous digging. What was 
 the name of the little horned beast, or what he was up 
 to, I do not know, not being sufficiently well-read in 
 natural history ; but he spent a good deal of time in the 
 hole, and seemed to be very busy when he was out 
 of it. I watched several days. Had there been but 
 a single pair, I should have perhaps eclipsed Thoreau 
 for waiting, and Pliny for discovering, but they came 
 in hordes; they seemed determined to monopolize the 
 waHc. Every time you stepped out-of-doors the air was 
 alive and angry with a swarm of spiteful, vicious, ver 
 milion little vixens buzzing about your ears. So one 
 sunny morning I sat on the door-step, and as soon as 
 a fiery imp went down into his gallery I poked the 
 gravel on him with my parasol, till every house within 
 reach had caved in. The others somehow crot wind of
 
 X VOICES. 243 
 
 it, and they all went away. If they are an absolutely 
 harmless tribe, I am sorry I did it, but no doubt there 
 are plenty more, and they must learn to colonize on 
 land that has not already been pre-empted. 
 
 Kesting on a rock by the road-side one afternoon, we 
 noticed a little fellow something like a beetle, but ap 
 parently not a beetle, digging away for dear life, lie 
 was making a hole, and he worked at it with a very 
 comical energy. His slender little claws antennae, or 
 whatever you call them made the dirt fly, and when 
 the heap was so large as to obstruct the entrance to his 
 gallery, he leveled it with admirable swiftness and skill. 
 Sometimes he went in head first and pawed, and some 
 times he went in tail first and shoved. The size of the 
 pebbles which he lugged out was surprising one you 
 could not get into a number seven thimble and the 
 persistence with which he tugged and toiled over his 
 load was amazing. When the gallery was apparently 
 finished he flew away. Soon a wriggling was observed 
 in the grass two or three yards off, and there appeared 
 our bonnie bug riding a big brown locust three or four 
 times as long as himself. This locust proved, however, 
 to be dead or very much demoralized. The bug was 
 striding his neck, and dragging him along by main 
 force. When within a foot and a half of the cavern 
 the bug left the locust, ran forward and examined the 
 hole, trotted back and forth several times between the 
 two, evidently taking measurements with his eye, made 
 the excavation a little deeper, dragged np the locust to 
 his grave, tilted him over the edge, and shot him in 
 head-foremost! As he did not at once wholly disap-
 
 244 TWELVE MILES FROM A LEMOX. 
 
 pear, the bug leaped in himself, dragged him down, then 
 climbed out, shoveled in the dirt upon him, leaped in 
 after it, and trod it all down snug and close around ev 
 ery part, till, by a laborious process, the hole was com 
 pletely and compactly filled, the heap of gravel leveled, 
 and no sign left of the burial but a patch of fresh earth. 
 If I could have stayed a little longer, I suppose I should 
 have seen him put up a head-stone with an epitaph, but 
 I was obliged to go. It was as interesting a display of 
 skill, persistence, and activity as one often witnesses; 
 and I should very much like to know whether it was a 
 foe that he was burying, or food that he was salting 
 down for winter. 
 
 Some pestilent fellows lately prostituted our agricul 
 tural fairs to the promotion of patches by promising 
 premiums to the best mender. And there were not 
 wanting foolish virgins to come forward and compete 
 for the prize. Now I do not mean to say that a patch 
 may not sometimes be requisite and necessary as well 
 for the body as the soul ; but there is a great deal of 
 darning and patching and mending be}*ond what is 
 wholesome. "Women will sometimes darn stockings 
 which, as stockings, had no right to further existence. 
 True economy would have put the feet into the rag-bag 
 and sewed up the legs into dishcloths; and to see n hu 
 man being, capable of love and hope and memory and 
 judgment, turn away from this great, beautiful world, 
 and all the stir and thrill of multiform life, and give it 
 self to driving a stupid little steel crow-bar back and 
 forth through a yawning heel and a dilapidated toe 
 when whole stock inccs can be bonsrht at fortv cents a
 
 AUTUMN VOICES. 245 
 
 pair, is melancholy, not to say exasperating. We are 
 not bugs. 
 
 "A little darning now and then 
 Is relished by the best of men ;" 
 
 and there is a nervous irritation which is allayed by a 
 short and solitary turn at the needle, and there are acci 
 dents and incidents which, demand a stitch, and which 
 no "right-minded woman will refuse; but a protracted 
 and repeated darning a darning on principle and from 
 choice, a premeditated and vainglorious prostration be 
 fore the shrine of this little one-eyed despot is a sight 
 for gods and men to weep over, not hold out prizes to! 
 
 I say- again, if a woman must, she must, and that is 
 the end of it; but she often thinks she must when she 
 need not. She often darns and mends and makes over 
 what it would be cheaper to throw away infinitely 
 cheaper, as regards time and patience and happiness, 
 which are real values and not dearer in respect of 
 money, which only represents value. 
 
 Patient Griselda, do not let your patience which in 
 right measure and for right purposes is a divine virtue 
 degenerate into meanness of spirit, insipidity of mind, 
 poverty of resources, and acquiescence in what is not 
 inevitable. Life is short, and its issues mighty; and 
 there are things which ought to be done with painstak 
 ing, and things that ought to be done slightly, and 
 things that ought not to be done at all. She is the wise 
 woman and the thrifty housekeeper who accurately dis 
 criminates and intelligently chooses the good part which 
 shall not be taken awav from her.
 
 2-iG T\VEL\'E X1LES FROM A LE3IOX. 
 
 XIV. 
 
 OF SOCIAL FORMULA AND SOCIAL 
 FREEDOM. 
 
 WHY should \ve be creatures of formula, and not of 
 philosophy ? There is a reason under every rule, if we 
 would only take the trouble to think it out; and we 
 should thereby save ourselves the trouble of remember 
 ing the rule, and other people the trouble arising from 
 our forgetting it. Grammar is not an invention. It is 
 only a classification of usages. The nominative case 
 governs the verb in number and person, not because 
 some Lindley Murray put on a crown and sceptre and 
 said it should, but because he found that when respect 
 able people talk it always does. The rules which regu 
 late parliamentary organization and debate seem to be 
 involved, arbitrary, and technical; but a close investi 
 gation, a thoughtful analysis, a reductio ad alsurdum, 
 shows that they are not woven of red tape, but are laid 
 down each one for a definite purpose, and that purpose 
 if, without exception, a right and righteous one. This 
 rule is to prevent a factious minority from wasting the 
 time in useless delay. That is to prevent a powerful 
 and successful majority from overriding the rights of 
 the minority. If you study the rules as some students 
 learn geometry, by main force of remembering that the 
 angle A C D is contained by the sides A C, C D, you are 
 in a lubvrinth at once. But if you look at the reasons
 
 SOCIAL FORMULA AND SOCIAL FREEDOM. 247 
 
 for the rules, you have a thread to guide you out, even 
 when you do not quite see the path ih which you are 
 to walk. You can be a rule unto yourself. No man 
 nay, in view of the possibilities of our politics, let us 
 say no woman can be a good parliamentarian unless 
 she reads between the lines, and sees that laws are nec 
 essary and effective, as well as that they are. 
 
 I hope this is a sufficiently learned preamble to my lec 
 ture, and will strike terror into those culprits for whom 
 it is written those unthinking, vexatious people who 
 fail to answer your letters because you did not give 
 them your address! They are the people who will 
 never succeed in Congress, because they will be tripped 
 up instead of helped on by the rules. They will ac 
 complish little as doctors, because, when bleeding and 
 warm water fails, all they can do is draw more blood 
 and administer more warm water. They will be wretch 
 ed country dwellers, because they must have the regu 
 lation quantity of straw or they can never make bricks; 
 whereas the ordinary routine of country life is the 
 steady production of bricks without straw, making 
 without machinerv. and mending; without tools. 
 
 / / O 
 
 "Did not give the address." But may not the Chief- 
 justice of the United States Supreme Court be assumed 
 to know something? If no State is named in the date 
 of your letter, is it not always understood that you are 
 in the same State with the person addressed? If no 
 town or city is named, is it not also because you are in 
 (he same with your correspondent ? By a parity of rea 
 soning, does not the date of a letter always involve tho 
 address of the person writing it, unless some other ad-
 
 248 TWEL VE MILES FJROlf A LENOX. 
 
 dress be given? Or must a man append to liis date 
 the statement, " This is where I am ?" No. If you date 
 your letter at Yonkers, New York, and desire an imme 
 diate answer, the whole duty of the man to whom you 
 write is to send you an answer to Yonkers, New York. 
 If, in the mean while, you have gone to Omaha, or if 
 your letters need to be sent to Washington Street, No. 
 1872, and you have failed to give directions to that end, 
 your blood be on your own head ; but let the answer 
 go to Yonkers. 
 
 There is another epistolary sin, of sad import to conn- 
 try-folk. My dinner is spoiled, my beefsteak with 
 stuffing, my snow-pudding, and all my tid-bits must 
 waste their sweetness because my expected guest did 
 not give me her full address, and has probably not re 
 ceived my summons. She had given it in her previous 
 letter, which lotter, being answered, was immediately 
 deposited in the waste-basket; and the last letter gave 
 only the name of the great city in which she, a pilgrim 
 and a stranger, was to tarry for a few nights. Where 
 upon I, the philosopher and parliamentarian, lay down 
 in addition to 
 
 RULE 1. For the person addressed. The date of a let 
 ter involves the address of its writer. 
 
 RULE 2. For the person writing. Let the date of every 
 letter involve the address of the reply. 
 
 Otherwise we must carry upon our backs a burden 
 of old letters, or in our brains a heavier burden of 
 streets and numbers. And why should you make my 
 rustic brain remember No. 879,563 East Ninety-ninth 
 Street, between Chester Square and Madison Avenue,
 
 SOCIAL FORMULA AXD SOCIAL FREEDOM. 
 
 when I am already overwhelmed with the effort to re 
 member to direct my workmen to put a transom win 
 dow over the bath-room door, and two funnel holes in 
 the chimney, and a scroll on the portico pillar, and 
 make the cistern ten feet deep, and shut up the chick 
 ens every night? Just date your letter, and save to a 
 wretched life one item. 
 
 Eevolving these views in my mind, as used ^Eneas 
 and Dido in our school-days, the dinner is eaten and re 
 moved, Malone is departed to the society of her swains, 
 and I sit with "Thackeray" in the twilight, when, sud 
 den and shame-faced, in comes my guest! I am divided 
 between, welcome and consternation. Here, after all, is 
 the fair, sweet face I longed for; but there, alas! is the 
 empty table; and where is the absent maid? where is 
 the savory steak? where the extraordinary pudding and 
 the coagulated gravy where ? 
 
 "So you did get my letter in spite of the lack of 
 street and number?" 
 
 "Yes, it came duly; but I misunderstood the direc 
 tions. You said the four o'clock train, and I thought 
 you meant our four o'clock train, which I took ; and it 
 dropped me on the way, not being a through train." 
 
 " Oh." I moan, " I meant the train that reaches us at 
 four o'clock," and foresee the tables turned on myself j 
 and disgrace impending, for Hassan the Turk ever avows 
 that the four o'clock train is the train that leaves the 
 Hub of the Universe at four o'clock, entirely irrespect 
 ive of the time it whistles along to any station on the 
 spokes or rim. But I maintain that the centre of the 
 universe for me is where I am. Why must I leave my
 
 250 TWELVE MILES FliOlf A LEMOX. 
 
 shepherd's crook, humble though it be, and travel to the 
 great cities to assume a railway train? I know not when 
 it leaves Boston or New York, or whether it leaves them 
 at all. I do know when it reaches me, and of that I 
 testify, yea, and will testify. 
 
 " Yes," says Hassan the Turk. "You would no long 
 er have longitude reckoned from Greenwich and lat 
 itude from the equator, but every man should reckon 
 from the centre of his own dining-room, which would 
 simplify navigation. Learn to look at the principles of 
 things, and not simply at the incident which lies next 
 to your hand." 
 
 But I am the philosopher, not the pbilosophee, and 
 shall I be tamely hoist with my own petard? 
 
 I am not confident about that four o'clock train. But 
 I know I bear a grudge against it for giving my guest 
 a cold dinner. 
 
 I am next day smitten with a desire to see you, my 
 intimate friend a desire so irresistible that I take the 
 train and an hour's journey for the purpose, and must 
 take the return train home in another hour. You are 
 equally desirous to see me, and for fifteen minutes we un 
 fold our budget unmolested; but by the time our intel 
 lectual wares are unpacked and well scattered, the door 
 bell rings, and up come the cards of Mrs. A and Miss B. 
 
 " Oh !" say you, trying to smother an inhospitable ex 
 clamation of disappointment into an innocent exclama 
 tion of surprise. 
 
 "Oh!" say I, in outspoken disappointment, for it is 
 no ho,use of mine, and I am not under bonds to be hos 
 pitable. " Can't you ( do something?"
 
 SOCIAL FORMULA ASD SOCIAL FREEDOM. 251 
 
 A sensible and practical suggestion ; but what you do 
 is to go down and see the excellent Mrs. A and Miss B, 
 and I sit alone and reflect that there is no freedom in 
 our social life. And there never will be any. And there 
 never can be any. And we get on very comfortably 
 without it Only it is pleasant to rattle our chains once 
 in a while, and hold up the links to look through them, 
 and let it be understood that we know we wear them, 
 and are not living in a mistaken belief that we are free. 
 Mr. Henry Eogers, in his charming "Grey son Letters," 
 shows a very lively sense of the existing state of things. 
 He sees there is no possibility of any different social 
 status in this world, and is very careful to locate his re 
 form in the next. Even in heaven he considers that the 
 angels will sometimes bore each other; but it is only 
 in heaven that the angel who sings you the 119th Psalm 
 without stopping, and then begins again, may be act 
 ually hushed up at the hundredth stanza without his 
 taking offense at it! In another and a better world, 
 but never in this, may we accomplish such a feat. 
 
 For, look you, Mrs. A and Miss B are your town folk, 
 who can visit you at any time on the supposition that 
 they really want to see you. But they do not want to 
 see you. If they had come to the door and been told 
 that you were out, not a pang would have rent their 
 hearts ; not a slvade of sorrow would have saddened 
 their faces. They would have communed with each 
 other on departing, "Well, we have made our call, and 
 have gained time enough to call on Mrs. C. Eeally, we 
 are in luck to-day." 
 
 Does this argue false friendship on the part of those
 
 252 TWELVE MILES FROM A LEMON. 
 
 estimable women ? Not the least in tbe world. Un 
 doubtedly they esteem you very highly in love for 
 your work's sake. They are quite devoid of any hos 
 tility toward yon, or any want of faith in your integri 
 ty. If you are sick, they will inquire for you with real 
 and warm interest, will send you flowers and oranges 
 and exquisite tid-bits, which your soul loathes and your 
 children devour ; but as for seeing you at any special 
 time or at any special interval, their hearts are in no 
 wise bent on it. And you equally were not particularly 
 desirous of seeing them, and you were desirous of seeing 
 me, let us assume. If, now, you were in another and a 
 better world, you would say to them, 
 
 " My friend is here for a short time, and we wish much 
 to have a little talk together. You can come any time ; 
 so just you go away now." And the lovely ladies being, 
 under the circumstances, all sorts of angels, would stretcli 
 their white wings and soar away to some other of the 
 many mansions as sweetly as if they had been let in to 
 yours. 
 
 But try that heavenly etiquette in this world, and 
 you would soon have very few callers to try it on. 
 Your friends would smile suavely, and say, "Oh, cer 
 tainly; I would not interrupt you on any account." 
 
 And as soon as the front gate clicked behind them, 
 one would say to the other, "Wasn't that cool?" and 
 the other would reply, " I should rather think so." 
 
 And, without -entering into any formal pact, they 
 would mutually agree that you would not have the 
 opportunity to refuse them again for one while! 
 
 And the beauty of it is, that you would feel and do
 
 SOCIAL FORMULA AND SOCIAL FREEDOM. 253 
 
 precisely the same were you in their place, and so would 
 I. Nobody will often visit at houses where they tell 
 him, in so many words, that they would rather see some 
 one else. That is what it amounts to. No matter how 
 delicately the preference may be decorated, it is still a 
 preference, and we do not wish to go where we are not 
 wanted, not we ! 
 
 It is because you well know this that you leave me, 
 and descend into the parlor to your neighbors, and be 
 tween you you dig out a half of the hour that in the 
 nature of things belongs to me, and fill up the whole 
 with unnecessary chat about the society, and the picnic, 
 and the sick people ; all of which means only that you 
 still continue to be friendly, and not hostile, which is 
 much, I grant. But the ladies are no more assured of 
 it, and no more satisfied in the consciousness of dimin 
 ishing their list of calls by one, than they would be if 
 you had been absent. You are inwardly impatient to 
 see me, whose time is short, and you fret a double quan 
 tity because you know I am impatient. As for me, I 
 walk up and down the room, and look at the clock, and 
 grow wroth without reason, for nobody is to blame. 
 We are all good citizens, doing our social duty, and do 
 ing it in the only way it can be done, or will be done, 
 until our wings are grown. 
 
 In communities where these things are reduced to a 
 system, "not at home" comes into play to great advan 
 tage. Some persons have constitutional objections to 
 this formula when it is used to express what the words 
 by themselves do not imply. But that view is merely 
 superficial. You are not telling the truth, they say.
 
 254 TWELVE MILES FH01I A LE2JOX. 
 
 Well, you do not want to tell it, But you nre tell 
 ing a falsehood. Not at all. The phrase has a tech 
 nical and perfectly understood sense. You send out 
 cards, saying that you will be "at home" on sue^ 
 da} r . According to this theory, the cards are an imper 
 tinence. What do the card-receivers care whether you 
 are at home or not? The significance of the announce 
 ment is that you wish them to be at your home with 
 you. And the significance of the other statement is 
 that you do not wish them to be at home with you. 
 Why not say so, then? Because human nature is so 
 sensitive a thing that it can not bear much, and we 
 have to guard it at all points. The ''not at home" 
 leaves every thing in a delightful dubiety. You may 
 be actually away; we can, at least, always flatter our 
 self-love that you are away, and we feel better in con 
 sequence. 
 
 And you, my friend, who are such a stickler for the 
 truth, would be the first to take offense if we told you 
 the truth. Blessings on the man or woman who in 
 vented this nice little short-cut to our convenience with 
 out crossing our self-love! 
 
 But in country communities where this formula is 
 not adopted, and where the words, therefore, would be 
 false, there is nothing for it but to "face the music" at 
 any inconvenience, or 
 
 "Run and deposit 
 Yourself in a closet,'' 
 
 and listen to Malone slamming and calling through the 
 house in a vain show, and enact the following dialogue 
 when you present yourself at dinner:
 
 SOCIAL FORMULA AXD SOCIAL FREEDOM. 255 
 
 MALONE. "An' indade, mum, I did not know you 
 was out." 
 
 YOURSELF (I adopt the method of the old tract dia 
 logues between "Yourself" and "A Sinner"). ' : I have 
 not been out, Malone." 
 
 MALOXE. " Why, sure, mum, Mrs. A and Miss B was 
 here, an' I tould them you was in, an' fetched 'em in, 
 and couldn't find you at all." 
 
 YOURSELF (benignly). "Never mind, Malone, I shall 
 have opportunity to see them again soon." 
 
 Either mode, as Macaulay said of torture, has its ad 
 vantages. But perhaps neither is wholly free from dis 
 advantages. 
 
 In the countrv, however, where callers are few and 
 
 */ i t 
 
 distances long, it is a very great inconvenience indeed 
 which can justify us in turning away a visitor from the 
 door, or, still more, in turning away a visitor after she 
 is within doors. 
 
 There are visits which remain in our memories as 
 bright spots in life, and there are visits whose only pleas 
 ure is that they are over. But visiting ought always 
 to be pleasant pleasant to both giver and receiver. 
 
 One of the best things connected with keeping house 
 is the freedom to receive one's friends. Many a newly 
 married couple, many a small family without children, 
 could board with far less care and expense than house 
 keeping costs them, and with almost equal comfort. Nor 
 need housekeeping be confined to married people, or to 
 those whom God hath set in families. Why do not 
 the solitary set themselves in families? Few women 
 ever think of keeping house and making a home for
 
 256 TWELVE MILES FROM A LEMOX. 
 
 themselves and a centre of social life for their circle un 
 less they are married. Of course it is a great deal easier 
 to set up and keep up an establishment with a man at 
 the fore if he is the right sort of man. The right sort 
 of man is one who knows instinctively when to be an 
 active partner and when to be a silent partner; who 
 goes to the front when there is money to be earned for 
 the home, and to the rear when it is to be spent; who 
 provides and enjoys a bountiful table, but is sweet-tem 
 pered, cheerful, and consoling in an emergency ; who is 
 main-stay and head centre of the family, but who shows 
 it only in constant providence and tender watchfulness 
 a man of whose comfort and taste every one else thinks 
 first, but who thinks of it himself least and last. Such 
 a man is a real help in housekeeping. But suppose a 
 man is ignorant or incapable, has small knack in getting 
 on, never is suited with his situation, but leaves a good 
 one in search of a better, and finds none; refuses a sal 
 ary of a thousand a year because his "family can't live 
 on a thousand dollars," and so they live on nothing; 
 does not know what to do with money when he gets it, 
 but fritters it away in trifling expenditures and foolish 
 investments, while his family lack comfort in the pres 
 ent and security for the future; or suppose he is thrifty 
 but fretful, exacting, imperious, capricious, selfish is 
 he a help over the hard places in housekeeping? If a 
 man^ean, in case of distress, put on a door-knob, mend 
 a broken pane of glass, hang a picture, tack down a car 
 pet, entertain a guest, eat stale bread and like it when 
 the stove would not draw and the biscuit will not bake. 
 he is pleasant to have about, and far better than no-
 
 SOCIAL FORMULA AND SOCIAL FREEDOM. 
 
 body ; but the chances are large that lie can not ineiul 
 the knob, and will forget to call a carpenter, and may 
 lower over the "slim breakfast;" so that his failure to 
 put in an appearance need not be fatal to an establish 
 ment. But if a girl is left, the one ungathered rose 
 upon the family tree, she goes to live with her married 
 sister or brother, and, ten to one, becomes merged in the 
 family, and presently loses all distinct individuality of 
 position or influence. 
 
 So the teachers in a city, and the clerks and the shop 
 girls, and all unmarried and self-supporting or inde 
 pendent women, live in boarding-houses or in families, 
 often finding it difficult to secure an agreeable homo, 
 and often dwelling in a place and a manner that pre 
 clude every idea of home, and really deprive them of a 
 large part of the social power to which their character 
 and ability entitle them. 
 
 Suppose, now. four young gentlewomen who have 
 been left each with a slender income, quite insufficient 
 for gentle housekeeping, but sufficient for a respectable 
 maintenance in the proffered home of a brother or 
 brother-in-law, without further help from him than such 
 proffer affords. Suppose that, instead of accepting these 
 offers and becoming superfluous members of other fam 
 ilies assistants possibly, but not indispensable, and al 
 ways subordinate these four should unite their forces. 
 Four insufficient incomes may combine into one suffi 
 cient not only for comfort, but for elegance. The cost 
 of housekeeping for four women is very far from be 
 ing four times the cost of housekeeping for one. In 
 many respects it would not be perceptibly increased.
 
 258 TWELVE MILES FROM A LEMOX. 
 
 One woman, for instance, would need one servant; and 
 by distributing the light and agreeable but time-and- 
 care-needing parts of the house-work among themselves, 
 four women could do perfectly well with one servant. 
 Even their association can be so guarded that there 
 shall be no necessity for undue or undesired intimacy, 
 and liking shall be its only measure. Each one's share 
 of superintendence and service can be rigidly prescribed 
 and observed. The dining-room and parlor are the 
 only common ground. In their own rooms they are as 
 secluded and supreme as if their souls were like star?, 
 and dwelt apart. In the drawing-room they are har 
 monious and hospitable. To the outside world they 
 are householders, a family, a unit. They may receive 
 and entertain; they have standing, a local habitation, 
 and a name. To themselves they are themselves free, 
 self-possessed, self-acting. It needs only a certain pow 
 er of adaptation a certain similarity, or rather harmo 
 ny, of taste and purpose to begin with, and then a mod 
 erate amount of Christian forbearance, of intelligent al 
 lowance, and, above all, scrupulous and invariable good- 
 breeding. But there is no situation in life in which 
 good-breeding is not indispensable to happiness and 
 character; while in point of forbearance and adaptation 
 they would not need to exercise half as much as if they 
 were married. The strain upon patience and temper 
 would be far less than in marriage; and though, justly 
 enough, the happiness arising from the alliance might 
 be less intense and perfect, it would be far greater than 
 from a tame and spiritless life of perpetual subordina 
 tion or perpetual self-denial.
 
 SOCIAL FORMULA ASD SOCIAL FREEDOM. 259 
 
 Or suppose the four gentlewomen supplement or sup 
 ply their income by teaching or by some form of remu 
 nerative work. Each earns five hundred dollars a year. 
 Five hundred dollars a year would keep no house, but 
 four five, hundreds would keep one respectably and 
 comfortably. By systematic arrangement, four friends, 
 one would think, might live together in a cozi ness and 
 even a luxury unattainable at any boarding-house 
 which their means could command, with a pride of self- 
 direction and independence which would be impossible 
 for them in any other family, and at a cost really less 
 than their united expenses in a separate life. They 
 would purchase comfort and supervision at a less price 
 than discomfort and subordination. They would spend 
 their money for exactly what they wanted, and of what 
 ever economy they chose to exercise themselves would 
 renp the fruits. 
 
 But the boarder is dependent upon the will and con* 
 venience of others. He can not invite his friends to 
 come and spend a week with him without consulting 
 the capabilities, or depending for welcome upon the dis 
 position, of some other host than himself. This puts 
 him in an attitude not wholly dignified not that which 
 a mature person, man or woman, would naturally choose 
 to maintain. The householder is monarch of all he sur 
 veys, and invites at his own sweet will. If he meets an 
 old friend suddenly in the street, if she learns by chance 
 that a former school-mate is in the neighborhood, there 
 are no outside authorities to consult, no whirns or 
 moods of a landlady to consider. Forth from the \ann 
 welcoming heart goes the invitation, and the fatted calf
 
 260 TWELVE MILES FROM A LEMOX. 
 
 walks to the block at once, knowing tlint his hour is 
 come. 
 
 This theoretically ; yet practically the hospitality of 
 householders sometimes seems as really hedged in as if 
 they were but inmates of a stranger's house. People 
 who are hospitable at heart, thoroughly friendly and 
 well disposed, do yet make such a burden of hospitality 
 that one wonders how they can find any pleasure in it. 
 This is a great pit} 7 , for the exchange of visits ought to 
 be what it is capable of being, one of the great pleasures 
 of life, a rest, a refreshment, an incentive, not a burden. 
 
 But to render it so we need not follow the rules laid 
 down in the books, to divest receptions of their terror by 
 being always ready to receive. Is it Euskin, or East- 
 lake, or Launcelot, or another, who condemns exten 
 sion-tables on the ground that your table should be 
 equally large at all times, to indicate that you are al 
 ways ready for your friends? Go to, Eastlake and 
 Launcelot! Sincerity is the -watch-word of the new 
 dispensation. We must have the supports of our 
 brackets visible, and the chair-legs as palpably as they 
 are really and as really as they arc palpably firm ; but 
 if the table is to indicate that we are always ready for 
 our friend, the table becomes at once a piece of house 
 hold artfulness and not of household art,, for we are 
 not at all times equally ready. Honesty in life must 
 precede honesty in furniture. We need not direct our 
 efforts to being always ready to see friends, but we 
 rould do much in the way of trying not to be disturbed 
 liy fheir coming when we are not readj r . If Serena 
 could have her own way, she would prefer Celestia's
 
 SOCIAL FORMULA AXD SOCIAL FREEDOM. 261 
 
 call to be in the afternoon, when the midday meal is 
 over, the dishes are washed and removed, and Serena 
 is calmly reposing in tidy dress and comparative leisure. 
 But if Celestia must leave town by the noon train, and 
 runs in by ten o'clock in the morning, when Serena is 
 trimming the lamps, and there is much odor of petro 
 leum in the air, and Serena's fingers are not wholesome 
 to Celestia's gloves, shall Serena be dismayed and apol 
 ogize and mentally regret that she is always "caught 
 in the suds?" Not the least in the world, if she is a 
 sensible and friendly woman. If it is the proper time 
 for her to be cleaning lamps, and she is in a garb proper 
 to a lamp-cleaner, she has no call to be disturbed though 
 the Queen of England, in crown and sceptre, should pay 
 her a morning visit. She should not consider herself 
 as "caught in the suds," or as caught at all. She is in 
 the suds of her own free-will and by the fore-ordina 
 tion of Heaven, and if "Heaven itself should stoop to 
 her,'' it ought to find her nowhere else at that hour. 
 It would be very unbecoming that she should be trim 
 ming her lamps in a silk gown in the front parlor. 
 Why not be entirely frank and at ease, and if her work 
 be pressing, bid Celestia to a safe seat by the kitchen 
 fire, or if she can conveniently go off duty for a while, 
 take her pleasant chat to the pleasant parlor? 
 
 So far from its being necessary to be always ready 
 for company, it is one of the pleasures of housekeeping 
 to prepare for company. Sweeping and dusting are 
 but dull drudgery when cleanliness is the only object; 
 but how pleasant it is to " tidy" the rooms when a house 
 ful of quests are coming at the end of it! There is an
 
 262 . TWELVE MILES FROM A LEMOX. 
 
 incentive worthy of toil that transmutes toil into de 
 light. But suppose you have been ill, or the children 
 have had scarlet fever, or Norah is gone, and there is a 
 chance for a visit from a friend. Must you send her 
 away? Yes, if you absolutely can not undertake the 
 slight addition to your work which her visit necessi 
 tates. But remember her visit does not necessitate that 
 you should go through house-cleaning previous to her 
 appearance. Suppose the doors are finger-marked, and 
 the windows not faultlessly clean, and the guest-cham 
 ber has not been swept for a month, the doors will open, 
 and the windows will let in fresh air, and you and your 
 friend can get immense draughts of satisfaction out of 
 the visit, though things are not as you would so glad 
 ly have them, if you will only not fret about them, but 
 consign them to the insignificance they merit. We are 
 afraid of each other, forgetting that our friends have 
 the same kind of experiences that we have. The most 
 thorough of housekeepers is sometimes forced to "let 
 things go," unless she sacrifices something of more im 
 portance than "-things." Serena is distressed because 
 the afternoon sun reveals to her responsible eyes a little 
 dust under the sofa. Bat Celestia is equally distressed 
 because her student-lamp suddenly goes out during 
 Serena's even-ing call. Why should not both comfort 
 themselves with the reflection that nothing has hap 
 pened unto them but such as is common unto women, 
 and dismiss their apprehensions? I know a man who 
 cnme near bleeding to death because there was not a 
 cobweb to be found in house or barn to stanch the 
 blood. Be advised, dear house mother, and do not lose
 
 SOCIAL FORMULA AXD SOCIAL FREEDOM. 263 
 
 all the freshness and impulse to be found in your friend's 
 visit because you have no time to go through the house 
 with your broom upside down. 
 
 Here is -where comes in that much belabored institu 
 tion, the Best Room. What vials of sarcasm have been 
 poured out upon it! Its closed shutters have cast a 
 <2'loom over the pathways of literature. Its mustv 
 
 W * . V v 
 
 smells have penetrated the corners of remote novels. 
 Its covered chairs have stiffened in smart essays. Men 
 easily influenced by public opinion have sought to avert 
 the shafts of satire by building themselves ceiled houses 
 without any "spare room" houses whose every apart 
 ment should be occupied. But women, with a stronger 
 instinct of the fitness of things, cling to the "best room," 
 the "sp;ire room," the parlor, and have hitherto made a 
 good fight. 
 
 And the women are right. The best room is often 
 absurd, but a best room is not an absurdity. It is ap 
 palling to be shown into a square apartment, with heav}', 
 chill air, with a horse-hair sofa, a horse-hair arm-chair, 
 and six horse-hair plain chairs only this and nothing 
 more. But because a black silk gown is ill fitting you 
 do not therefore discard black silk gowns. The spare 
 room may have a straw matting, if you please, and cane 
 chairs, and blinds open or closed, according to the light 
 and heat, but every housekeeper knows that, after all 
 the essays are written and all the arrows shot, a spare 
 room is a great convenience, a great resource, a great 
 peace of mind. 
 
 But it is inhospitable, says the visitor. You do not 
 wish to be turned off by yourself into a room outside
 
 284: TWELVE MILES FJIOX A LEXOX. 
 
 of the family life, destitute of associations, prim, orderly, 
 decorous, but silent and inexpressive. You want to go 
 in where the sewing and reading and talking are, and 
 see your friend in her every-day garb. That may be; 
 but suppose your friend prefers not to be thus seen? 
 You will admit that the family is sacred. Not every 
 one who is welcome in the parlor could be welcome in 
 the family room. Nor is the welcome to the family 
 room at all times one and the same. Absolute freedom 
 to repel is the only guarantee of warmth in welcome. 
 If a house have no room set off for visitors, there is no 
 special gratification in being admitted to its family room. 
 Nor is that home sentiment very desirable which does 
 not instinctively make a distinction between its own 
 and the outside world, however amiable and friendly 
 may be its relations therewith. That family is, indeed, 
 doing its work best all other things corresponding 
 which jealously guards itself from an indiscriminate 
 open communion. 
 
 There are scenes of leisure, chitchat, light reading, 
 upon which the entrance of a friend would be no intru 
 sion. But when you are in eager consultation over the 
 grny cashmere will it turn for Anne? will it dye with 
 out cockling? is there enough for a whole suit, or shall 
 the brown go with it, and make a suit of two shades for 
 Anne, and perhaps a polonaise for Ella? and the ruf 
 fles are on one chair and the over-skirt on another, and 
 there is a universal ripping and rippling, it is then a 
 solid satisfaction to reflect that there is a room across 
 the hall which tells no tales. It is not a false shame, 
 a foolish pride in keeping up appearances, that makes
 
 SOCIAL FORMULA AX1> SOCIAL FREEDOM. 265 
 
 you dislike having Mrs. A and Mrs. B and Mrs. C walk 
 in upon your turnings and matcliings and contrivings. 
 It is a spontaneous modesty, a natural reticence, which 
 prompts always to the suppression of processes and the 
 exhibition only of results. When, afterward, Mrs. A 
 praises Anne's new suit, you tell her, not only without 
 shame, but with rejoicing, how ingeniously it was fash 
 ioned out of the several birds in last years nest; but 
 during the fashioning Mrs. A's presence would have dis 
 turbed and hindered you. A great deal of house-work 
 is helped on by the knowledge that there is a room in 
 the house where that work does not go, and to which 
 the mistress may repair, leaving all her state secrets 
 behind her. So far from the parlor being an incum- 
 brance, an excrescence, it is n. relief, a safety-valve. Let 
 us bow down to Eastlake in sincerity and truth ; but to 
 arrange our houses on the pretense that our friends are 
 at all times and in all parts of them equally welcome is, 
 or ought to be, a greater sham than all the veneering 
 we can put iijto the parlor. Because I treat my friend 
 to-day to roast turkey and plum-pudding, do I mean to 
 insinuate to him that this is my every-day fare, or blush 
 to own that yesterday I dined off hash and hasty-pud 
 ding? Nay, rather, I exultantly propound to him that 
 inexorable law of succession by which chopped beef is 
 the inevitable and not unwelcome follower of roast. 
 But none the less I rejoice to do him honor and my fam 
 ily a pleasance by ministering to him a feast of fatter 
 things. It is trouble and expense, but we love trouble 
 and expense when they express affection and friendship. 
 It is not simply that my family feast in his cause it is 
 
 12
 
 286 TWELVE MILES FROM A LEMOX. 
 
 also tli.it be graces and gilds my family feast. The 
 turkey may be in his honor, but it is he that gives the 
 turkey its chief charm for us. 
 
 In discussing household art \ve are too apt to forget 
 the household artist. Many beautiful and desirable 
 things the busy wife and mother must forego. She 
 loves her translucent, vivid china, but better loves the 
 dimpled fingers that do not know how to hold it; and 
 rather than banish them from the table she exiles the 
 china to its dark closet and condescends to plainer ware. 
 But the knowledge that her closet holds that treasure 
 is a joy not to be despised, and when she spreads it 
 upon her table at a friend's coming, and the children 
 gaze upon it with solemn admiration, will you rebuke 
 her for display instead of honesty ? To many a woman 
 her parlor is her poem. The living-room must be plain 
 and unadorned, both out of regard to her purse and to 
 the careless fists and feet, the innumerable balls and 
 tops and jackknives, that keep up a constant guerrilla 
 warfare upon polish and fragility. But this parlor, of 
 which the children do not have the run, is the hunting- 
 ground of her fancies. Here her delight in color and 
 form may take shape. Whatever of delicate, of beau 
 tiful, of harmonious, of antique, of grotesque, or fantas 
 tic pleases her taste she may gather or fashion here, 
 safe from the incursions of her young barbarians, all at 
 play elsewhere. Even if she only opens her grand room 
 on high, days, the sun and air can speedily identify it 
 with the universe; and her children are not harmed by 
 having one spot barred to their license. And while it 
 is the outlet for her otherwise necessarily repressed in-
 
 SOCIAL FORMULA AXD SOCIAL FREEDOM. 267 
 
 cl illations, it is the arena of her friendships a link 
 whereby she keeps pleasant hold of the outside world. 
 Why, O purblind man ! will you insist on finding only 
 ostentation and convention and Mrs. Grundy where a 
 wiser and deeper gaze might reveal sympathies and as 
 pirations and all gracious sensibilities?
 
 268 TWELVE MILES FROM A LEXOX. 
 
 XV. 
 THE FASHIONS. 
 
 HAS any great philosopher, any original thinker, ever 
 said that no man is so wise as all men ? If not, I will 
 say it myself rather than, it should go unsaid. The 
 fools may be, as Lady Mary Wortley Montague affirm 
 ed, three out of four in every person's acquaintance; 
 the multitude seems sometimes to go blindly and per 
 sistently in the wrong track ; nevertheless the average 
 common sense of the world is immense. The course of 
 the people is wildly zigzag, yet a line following their 
 general direction probably comes nearer the right line 
 of advance than any line which the wisest philosopher 
 could mark out. 
 
 Loud and deep are the maledictions uttered upon the 
 fashions. Virtuous women denounce them by the fire 
 side. Virtuous men rail at them from pulpit and print 
 ing-press. The extravagance, the bankruptcy, the do 
 mestic dissensions, a great part of the misery that mars 
 the beauty and disturbs the peace of society, are laid at 
 the door of fashion. But what is fashion ? It is simply 
 the common way of doing things. Things must be done. 
 We all agree to that. The human animal was not sent 
 furred or hairy into the world. It must dress itself. In 
 this climate it must dress itself a good deal. The bear 
 and the beaver have no opportunity of setting or follow 
 ing the fashions. They go in a fore-ordained groove.
 
 THE FASHIONS. 269 
 
 The duck's neck and the peacock's tail are wonderful 
 specimens of splendor in attire, but neither duck nor 
 peacock has any hand in, the matter. To man alone 
 is given the high art of using taste, judgment, genius, 
 in his clothes. And high art it is, in spite of all our 
 denunciations. 
 
 Man and his Maker are the formers of all the fashions 
 of the world. Man devises his own dress. The Creator 
 devises the dress of all the beasts of the field, the birds 
 of the air, the fish of the sea. If we are to be taught by 
 example, there need be inherently no limit to variety 
 and splendor of costume. So far as usefulness is con 
 cerned,. all the birds might just as well be gray. Does 
 a fish taste any better because his scales shimmer like 
 opal in the sunshine? Man may wreak himself on in 
 vention, but he can never hope to surpass the splendor 
 of the beetle and the butterfly. Why is the cut of a 
 coat, the tint of a gown, unworthy of the human mind, 
 when the Creator has so clothed the grass of the field 
 which to-day is and to-morrow is cast into the oven ? 
 A woman trims her hat, but God made the feather. If 
 the Almighty and All-knowing could find His good 
 pleasure in spreading the blue of the heavens and the 
 green of the meadows if He enjoyed strewing the eartli 
 with blossoms, and filling these autumn woods with ev 
 ery fantasy of color and brilliance, shall we disdain to 
 follow Him with unequal steps, and weave His textures 
 and mingle His hues for the adornment of what He has 
 chosen to be the perfect flower of His world, the crown 
 of His creation man, little lower than the angels? 
 
 Dressing is not a mere whim, arbitrary, superficial,
 
 270 TWELVE MILES FROM A LEMON. 
 
 frivolous. Frivolous men and women will develop and 
 display their frivolity in dress as in all other matters; 
 but the fashion of dress is founded on deep principles, 
 shaded by delicate distinctions, fruitful of great results. 
 It is not simply that the sorrow of France drapes all the 
 world in dun ; but climate, vigor, nationality, progress, 
 droop the folds or tighten the wraps, blend or blazon 
 the colors. Dress is, indeed, so important, so vital a 
 matter, that it has been thought dangerous for one na 
 tionality, though never so superior, to tamper with the 
 costume of another, however inferior. Mr. Charles 
 NordhofF, an outgrowth of the highest civilization of 
 New York, thinks that " the deleterious habit of wearing 
 clothes has done much to kill off the Hawaiian people." 
 Our missionaries, good and great men as they were, had 
 not sufficiently studied fashion. They probably thought, 
 as most of us think, that "fashion " is the device of some 
 "scarlet woman" some emanation from the Evil One 
 that lies in wait to devour and never considered that 
 in their own black coats and white chokers they were 
 as rigidly following the fashions as the most gayly 
 dressed lady at the midnight ball. They did not con 
 sider that "fashion," prescribing its scantiness and sim 
 plicity to the Hawaiian, had its foundation in the require 
 ments of soil and climate, or was any thing but barba 
 rian, and to be supplanted at the earliest possible mo 
 ment by the hat and coat and trowsers, the shoes and 
 bonnet and gown, of New England's rigorous skies. 
 
 There is something almost awful in the revolutions 
 of the fashions. Periodicity is of itself nn'sterious. 
 Why does one winter's pneumonia repeat itself the
 
 THE FASHIONS. 271 
 
 next winter? Why do the chills and fever shake you 
 and burn you every twenty-one days? Why do the 
 canker-worms bury themselves on the tenth of June, 
 and the cattle go to pasture on the twentieth of May? 
 Why should the hoops that moved Addison's ridicule 
 rise and round and vanish in our own day ? What 
 wonderful working of the inner world brings up again 
 the Josephine waist, the Pompadour hair, the Grecian 
 skirt? It is not the whim or the caprice of one man 
 or woman any more than is the birth and death of a 
 language, the creation and adoption of a word or a song. 
 Eugenie in Paris could friz the forehead of Christen- 
 
 O 
 
 clom, but Eugenie at Chiselhurst has no more power 
 than the Tuilerics can give to Madame Thiers. 
 
 A little while ago a lady presented herself in the 
 house of a friend, dressed in a gown just thirty years 
 old. The corsage was pointed in front, full of close 
 gathers at the point and loose gathers on the shoulders, 
 open behind. The skirt was straight and full, without 
 gore or over-skirt. The sleeves would pass very well 
 for modern flowing sleeves, and the muslin under-sleevos 
 were sufficiently fashionable to escape observation. At 
 the time when that dress was made mothers used to en 
 tertain their daughters with accounts of the narrow 
 gored skirts which they wore in their youthful days. 
 When those daughters grew up they wore skirts gored 
 and narrow as their mothers had done before them. 
 
 Why do the revolving years thus put down one and 
 bring up another? Or would it be better that we should 
 have either the one or the other constantly? Is there 
 intrinsic advantage in either? To my eye the gored
 
 272 TWELVE MILES FROM A LEJfOX. 
 
 narrow umler-skirt with the short draped over-skirt is 
 prettier than the plain full skirt; but if next year the 
 over-skirt should disappear, and women go back to sin 
 gle blessedness, no doubt the lovely forms of wearers 
 and the nimble fingers of seamstresses would give it the 
 grace and beauty which seem to inhere in the present 
 style. 
 
 It is not whether you shall or shall not follow the 
 fashion ; it is what fashion and whose fashion shall you 
 follow. It is whether you shall follow nnintelligently 
 or intelligently, moderately or extravagantly. Mr. 
 NordhofT's party came across a man at work in very 
 scanty attire. Out of respect to his visitors, the man, 
 after receiving them, slipped into the bush, and re-ap 
 peared clad in hat and shirt, confidently believing, no 
 doubt, that he had thus approved himself a e^smopoli- 
 tan. But in rejecting Hawaiian attire he had not be 
 come wholly American, and while the first mny have 
 been somewhat startling, the second was ridiculous into 
 the bargain. And when to this you add that the gen 
 tle and gracious Hawaiians are dying out at the rate of 
 sixty per cent, in forty years, and partly, at least, under 
 the weight of their clothing and in the heavy shade of 
 their close houses, it is surely time to pause and consid 
 er whether fashion, in Hawaii and elsewhere, may not 
 have its own sufficient reasons for being. 
 
 "If life and death are the same, why do you not kill 
 yourself?" asked a rash man of a Stoic. 
 
 " Because they are the same," replied the Stoic. 
 
 Fashion is of no account; why should we follow it? 
 
 But if it is of no account \ve may just as well follow
 
 THE FASHIONS, 273 
 
 it as frown on it. A woman and a man too must 
 be dressed. Why not, then, dress like other people? 
 Why not dress like the people who are alive and will 
 make remarks, rather than like the people who are dead 
 and tell no tales? It is certainly pleasanter to be in 
 conspicuous than conspicuous. We do not begrudge 
 the toga to the Romans, but Cicero himself would not 
 like to dine in it where every one else wore his dress- 
 coat. Truth and loyalty are due to the absent ; polite 
 ness should be paid to the present. A girl should stand 
 up for her grandmother against all comers, but no in 
 terpretation of the fifth commandment makes it incum 
 bent upon her to wear the "calash" which sheltered 
 that good lady from the sun during her earthly pil 
 grimage. 
 
 AVhen we see Nilsson and Kellogg acting Margaret 
 in simplest, finest muslin or crape, whose white folds 
 fall and sweep with statuesque grace, we are charmed 
 with the garb, and would fain dispense with paniers and 
 rufflings and doublings. But presently a lady appears 
 in the drawing-room splendid with sheen of satin, the 
 fairy frost-work of lace, the white repose of pearls, or 
 the dazzle of diamonds; the little country girl flits 
 among her flowers, fresh as the} 7 , with the morning red 
 upon her cheeks, the heaven's blue in her eyes, and ev 
 ery seam of her cambric gown and every puff of her 
 fluttering ribbons modeled upon the last fashion plate, 
 and at once the ancients go down before the moderns. 
 The flowing lines of crape and muslin, you say, may 
 answer for the stage may have answered well for Hel 
 en, with a maiden to every fold, for Aspasia entrancing 
 
 12*
 
 274 TWELVE MILES FROM A LEMOX. 
 
 the youths and the philosophers of Athens; but they 
 would fare but hardly in the scrimmage of modern life- 
 in the daylight of gardens, or the glitter of evening 
 splendors. 
 
 We can hardly find words strong enough to express 
 our disapprobation of the cramping bodies of modern 
 dress. Our ladies would be disgusted, says the fashion 
 denouncer, to see their Venus, their Psyche, their Cly tie, 
 tricked out in nineteenth -century corsage. But no 
 more, I imagine, than would the critics to see the nine 
 teenth-century ladies dressed in Venus's array. Clytie's 
 mantua- making is perfectly hygienic, but her loose 
 robe, 
 
 "Slipping down, leaves bare 
 Her bright breast, shortening into sighs." 
 
 Yet Clytie followed the fashions of her day and sinned 
 not, and Anna Maria follows the fashions of her day, 
 "close-buttoned to the chin," with equal innocence. 
 If the close waist fits well, it is a healthful waist. It 
 may be clumsy and uncomfortable, pinching here and 
 bagging there, and then it is a trial to health and tem 
 per. But the master of arts among dress-makers knows 
 that a dress too tight is a misfit; that to be perfect it 
 must be comfortable. The really elegant dress admits 
 full play of all the muscles that a woman has any oc 
 casion to use while she is wearing it. And surely the 
 American woman of our age would be no better equip 
 ped for her work by adopting the costume of Helen. 
 
 It is to be said, moreover, that in our day fashion is 
 to the last degree accommodating. If one has consti 
 tutional objections to the plain waist, the polonaise is
 
 THE FASHIONS. 275 
 
 reach r , with every degree of fullness. If corsets are re 
 pugnant, they can be dispensed \vitb, and no one be the 
 wiser but the dispenser. If skirts are too long, what 
 doth hinder that they be shortened ? If they ought to 
 hang from the shoulders, go hang them. None of these 
 things move the world from its equipoise. One can ac 
 complish them all, and yet live and move and have her 
 being without rebuke nay, even without notice from 
 fashion. 
 
 Some of our prophets predict a return to the sandal' 
 of antiquity; and if fashion were a matter of will, we 
 might perhaps advocate' the change. If sandals could 
 be so arranged as to keep the feet warm and dry in 
 winter, they would be cool and charming in summer, 
 and neat and pleasant all the year round to the foot, 
 which they would protect without confining. But our 
 various little side issues of foot-drawings and broad 
 soles avail but little. In shoes as in gowns neither the 
 large nor the small has any advantage; but the shoe 
 that fits you is the right shoe. You make much ado 
 with models and measurements, and after weeks of 
 waiting are put to pedal torture. You step into the 
 next shoe shop, and in ten minutes are shod with sup 
 pleness and strength. 
 
 It is a most wise and benign arrangement of Provi 
 dence that we can follow the fashions, and are not forced 
 to lead them even our own. Here and there rises a 
 sovereign of style who by some inward genius seizes, 
 combines, produces, creates the artist of costuming. 
 The rest of us, the common herd, copy with what close 
 ness we may, in such fabrics as we can command. Of
 
 TWELVE MILES FROM A LEMOX. 
 
 ourselves we have no originating power. Left to our 
 selves, we should be in sorry pligbt. Yet we recognize 
 beauty when it is presented to us. We detect harmo 
 ny; we shun discord and glare and violence. To de 
 sign our own costume would exhaust our ingenuity 
 without satisfaction. To follow our leaders is half a 
 pastime. We have the pleasure of selection with the 
 minimum of fatigue, and the great bulk of time left for 
 other and more strenuous occupations. After a day's 
 shopping or an hour under the dress-maker's hand, a 
 woman bemoans herself for her Paradise Lost; yet it 
 is really surprising to see how short is the time which 
 she \sforced to spend on clothes in order to be very 
 well dressed. Could Charles Sumner deliver orations 
 in a sash, or Mr. Longfellow write poetry in paniers? 
 Certainly not. Nor would Mrs. Stowe have better 
 moulded Uncle Torn in coat tails, or Mrs. Browning 
 sung in trowsers. Suum cuique. A woman spends 
 hours in embroidering a gown, when she might have 
 learned a language or saved a soul. True; but there 
 
 O O 
 
 are times when she does not feel like either learning a 
 language or saving a soul. Then the growth of silken 
 leaves and buds under the busy fingers is no task, but 
 a solace. I know a woman who 
 
 "Can speak Greek 
 As naturally as pigs squeak ; 
 To whom Latin is no more difficile 
 Than to a blackbird 'tis to whistle;" 
 
 who dreams in German and thinks in French, and when 
 it comes to soul-savins; is a savor of life unto life who
 
 THE FASHIOXS. 277 
 
 yet embroiders her own cnpes and gowns and those of 
 her friends. 
 
 There are follies and whimsies in fashion. There is 
 opportunity for individual taste and choice. Neverthe 
 less, the wisest thing for people in general to do is to 
 follow the fashion that prevails. It is only in excep 
 tional cases that they will obtain a larger result of sat 
 isfaction at a less outlay of trouble by setting up their 
 own standard. Dress is too important to be denounced, 
 too significant to be neglected, but too pliable to found 
 a fight on ! 
 
 What we want is strong-minded and large-natured 
 women .who will not be the slave of dress, or of reform, 
 or of any one idea; who will understand the philoso 
 phy and recognize the beauty and adopt the necessi 
 ties of dress without straining its possibilities; who will 
 neither dwarf nor magnify its importance, but will know 
 how to follow fashion with moderation and discrimina 
 tion, to lead it with beneficence, and make it in all 
 things a minister of grace. If the woman is subordi 
 nate to the dress, it is not the fault of the dress, but of 
 the woman. 
 
 Alas! that not only a servile but a dignified follow 
 ing of the fashion imposes the disagreeable duty of fol 
 lowing them into the shops! It is not simply for their 
 exemption from toiling and spinning that we envy the 
 lilies of the field, but that they should be arrayed more 
 magnificently than Solomon in all his glory, and not 
 even have to go up to town to buy material ! 
 
 Shopping would be divested of half its horrors if drv- 
 goods clerks would be kind. Is it too much to ask?
 
 278 TWELVE MILES FAOM A LEJIOX. 
 
 They liavc all the advantage of situation. The;/ are 
 familiar with the locality. They know exactly where 
 the black silks are to be found, what is the lurking- 
 place of the sheetings, what corner is haunted by the 
 hosiery. The quality, the price, the style of goods 
 they have it all at their fingers' ends. They are barri 
 caded by the counters and supported by ranks of ac 
 quaintances. You, constitutionally timid, full of mis 
 giving concerning your own skill and taste, with but a 
 vague idea of what you ought to want, enter a palace 
 of splendor and confusion, to encounter, single-handed, 
 these veterans of the yard-stick. If they are civil, 
 friendly, re-assuring, it is as much as you can do to keep 
 your wits well in hand, and choose from the distracting 
 variety the one little supply that you demand. If they 
 are insolent, curt, indifferent, what remains but retreat? 
 There are different species of objectionable clerks. 
 One is voluble, familiar, and altogether abominable. 
 You never willingly approach him, but, accosting him 
 unawares, you feel as if you were instinctively and con 
 stantly holding him by a tight rein to keep him from 
 open impertinence, and not always successfully. To 
 the severest simplicity of address he will sometimes re 
 spond rudety. In novels, ladies are majestic, impress 
 ive, all-powerful. They repress manifestations of ill- 
 breeding in others by the overpowering grandeur of 
 their own ladyhood. But in real life real ladies arc 
 quite as likely to be modest, shrinking, easily subdued 
 by brutality, and capable of offering to aggression no 
 resistance but flight. Such swiftly succumb to the bold 
 and blatant clerk succumb by flying, not buying.
 
 THE FASHIONS. 279 
 
 There is the teasing clerk, who leaves you no quiet for 
 reflection and no space for comparison, but imagines 
 the way to secure your custom is to urge you without 
 intermission. There is the indifferent clerk, who says 
 he has not the goods you want before you know your 
 self what you do want; who throws the parcel down 
 on the counter as if it were to take or to leave, but 
 manifests not the slightest interest in ascertaining your 
 wish or accommodating or assisting you. There is the 
 snapping -turtle clerk, who brings you to the point, 
 re-adjusts your somewhat incoherent question, and an 
 swers you with a quick, impatient directness that quite 
 humiliates you. Him, though some condemn unmeas- 
 u redly, I can tolerate. Honest human petulance, born 
 of fatigue, is the least unpardonable of mercantile ill 
 manners. Consider that the man has been the target 
 for all sorts of questions, wise and foolish, through long 
 hours. If we had been in his place, doubtless by this 
 time we should greet an angel with a growl. But re 
 member thJs, O long-suffering dry-goods man ! you 
 have made your bed, and you must lie in it. You are 
 tied by the tape-measure of your own free-will. It is 
 your business to answer questions. You are paid to 
 display goods. Doubtless there may often be before 
 the counter stupidity, selfishness, unreasonableness, lack 
 of principle; but these do not justify or excuse the 
 display of such traits behind the counter. Still less 
 do they excuse their outlay upon the modest, the mod 
 erate, the upright. When clerks have been teased by 
 women who do not examine gqods with frank intent, 
 but simply to idle away a superfluous hour, to gratify
 
 280 TWELVE MILES FROM A LEMOX. 
 
 a morbid and frivolous taste, to bear off surreptitiously 
 some imported idea for domestic manufacture, it is not 
 absolutely unnatural or impossible that they should be 
 betrayed into irritation ; but it is unbusi ness-like and 
 unwise. They will never thus repress the idle or the 
 curious, but they will often offend the unoffending. 
 Let them remember that the shopping as well as the 
 selling world is a much-tried and long-suffering world. 
 Does the woman, under pretense of buying a gown, 
 merely take note of its style that she may make her 
 own flounces after the same pattern ? Be not too harsh 
 upon her, outraged dry-goods clerk, who will have no 
 percentage from your sales to her. Doubtless she 
 would be only too glad to buy your robes outright, but 
 her husband can not or will not furnish the means, 
 and she is forced to use her own fingers. Do not be 
 grudge her the small help of your lay figure. It would 
 be, indeed, far better that she should be honest and 
 frank, and express her intention, not attempt to carry 
 it out by deceit. Probably no one ever asked permis 
 sion to examine goods without receiving a courteous 
 and prompt assent. But the poor thing is not unused 
 to brutality, and has unhappily learned too much indi 
 rection. You, dry-goods clerk, are young and strong, 
 and a man. Do you, by kindness and helpfulness, fur 
 ther her aims, and so win her over to confidence, ease, 
 and outrightness, not repel, frighten, and wound her by 
 your demeanor. 
 
 By far tho great majority of women shop honestly. 
 They go to many places, they overturn many goods, 
 they postpone and hesitate ; but they have a serious
 
 THE FASHION'S* 281 
 
 object in view. One little ingrain carpet does not 
 amount to much. In a great warehouse piled with the 
 wealth of the loom it seems ridiculously small, and the 
 clerk naturally wishes my lady would buy her strip 
 and be done with it. Softly, magnificent sir! The 
 poor little ingrain will lie before her eyes for many a 
 year. Her husband's tastes are to be consulted. Her 
 purse is of cast-iron. Her children are to grow up on 
 that carpet, and learn from it color and contour. Will it 
 harmonize with the paper and the chintz lounge ? AYill 
 it fade prettilj*, and will it cut over well into a bedroom 
 carpet when its race is run in the sitting-room? To 
 the purchaser the cheap ingrain is a more momentous 
 matter than the costly Moquette, for it must last longer 
 and be more looked at: so let her hesitate and compare 
 nnd reflect without impertinent haste, urgency, or impa 
 tience from you. And even if she makes up her mind 
 to nothing, and leaves the carpet on your hands, let her 
 not be condemned for insincerity or vacillation. The 
 probability is that she knows her own business a great 
 deal better than you do, and the doubts she expresses 
 are but feeble representatives of the doubts she feels. 
 Moreover, if she does not buy the carpet now, be you 
 sympathetic, obliging, patient with all questioning and 
 objections, and very likely in three or four weeks she 
 will come back to you and buy one twice as good ! 
 
 There is a prevailing faith in the country districts 
 that the urban dry-goods clerk is a being of preternat 
 ural acuteness, that he can detect character at a glance, 
 and discern instantaneously between the righteous and 
 the wicked. If this is a correct opinion, it must be
 
 282 TWELVE MILES FROM A LEMON. 
 
 admitted that there are exceptional cases of outrageous 
 stupidity, and that these exceptions are liable to make 
 a greater ado and deeper impression than the shrewd 
 and keen majority. It would seem, sometimes, as it' 
 clerks understood dry -goods, and nothing else. Silk 
 and velvet, flowers and flounces, they appreciate, but 
 words, modulations, manners, they count for nothing. 
 If a woman's culture shows itself in elegant, elaborate, 
 expensive dress, that they comprehend, to that they 
 defer. But culture that has of choice or by force of 
 circumstances been expended in other directions they 
 know nothing about. They can not see it. They do 
 not miss it. Long companionship with dry -goods seems 
 to have given them a sense of dry-goods, and to have 
 stripped them of every other. 
 
 A plainly but perfectly dressed lad} 7 -, with the best 
 blood of the world in her veins, and what is more 
 imposing to the haberdashing heart with plenty of 
 money in her pocket, went not long since into a shop to 
 buy napkins. The potentate of the counter showed her 
 such napery as he thought suited to her social position. 
 "These are rather coarse," she suggested. "Have you 
 none finer?" " Oh yes," said the gentleman, "but they 
 arc more expensive." It is ever to be regretted that 
 the lady turned in silence and left the shop, because that 
 clerk will never know that it was his own idiotic ef 
 frontery, and not the expense of the napkins, which lost 
 him the customer. 
 
 A lady who never made any great figure in the world, 
 and certainly not in a water-proof cloak on a rainy dny, 
 was seeking a parasol. The clerk showed her some
 
 THE FASHIONS. 283 
 
 very common, not to say shabby, specimens, which she 
 declined. A little further down the counter she bought 
 a whole piece of fine and costly linen, observing which, 
 the knight of the parasols came down and begged her 
 to re-examine his assortment, of which he had contrived 
 to unearth an altogether different and better collection. 
 She, too, fell below the requirements of the occasion, and 
 bought her parasol without enlightening him upon her 
 discovery of his stupid mistake. 
 
 A lady, large and lovely, a serene Quaker goddess, 
 made some benevolent casual remark to the clerk with 
 whom she was trafficking, just as she would have patted 
 the head of a strange dog who might have run up and 
 sniffed at her gown, and the little whipper-snapper clerk 
 followed her to the door, and winked at her! And 
 while she stood staring at him in her first amazed con 
 sciousness of his individual existence, he winked again! 
 Thus vacuous do the gods make a human skull, yet 
 furnish it with all the ganglia of life. 
 
 Happy those merchants who can secure the right sort 
 of clerks! for a right sort there is. I bought a table 
 cloth of him yesterday. I had forgotten to take the 
 size of the table, or a pattern of the color to be matched. 
 Patiently he evolved my probable needs from my frag 
 mentary facts, discussed pleasantly the presumptive ev 
 idence, and seemed as much interested in the harmonies 
 of my dining-room as if he had expected to eat there 
 thrice a day for the remainder of his natural life. Did 
 he deceive me? Not a bit. I know of a surety that 
 my dining-room was no more to him than the peanut- 
 stand on the common opposite. Me and it has he al-
 
 284 TWELVE MILES FOM A LEJIOX. 
 
 ready alike forgotten. None the less was his moment 
 ary and friendly, but not familiar, assumption of inter 
 est in me and mine altogether winning and encouraging ; 
 and doubtless also was it, for that- moment, altogether 
 sincere. His sympathetic and refined nature does un 
 questionably and spontaneously ally itself for succor and 
 good cheer to all who appeal to him. May his kind 
 heart, his welcoming face, and his engaging manners be 
 a mine of wealth to himself and all his employers and 
 dependents ! 
 
 Not to all men are given that grace and gracionsness, 
 serviceable, not servile, which distinguish a seller of 
 sacques in a warehouse I wot of. A sacque, rich and 
 fine, but not overloaded with trimming, nor grotesque 
 in cut, requires the quest of a Sir Galahad, and Sir Ga 
 lahad was there to make it. "With indescribable deftness 
 and swiftness he overturned pile after pile of garments, 
 making running comments as he went: "This is good 
 material, but too low on the shoulder; this has too 
 deep a collar; this too loud a trimming. If this were 
 a quieter shade ! Ah ! here it is ! and here ! Or you 
 may like this." And out they came, shapely and sober. 
 And if they had been gorgeous, I suspect the lady would 
 hardly have known it, so won over was she by his read)* 
 helpfulness. And when he brought a brush, and assist 
 ed her in disengaging her folds from the dust of our 
 long drought with a dexterity wholly free from officious- 
 ness, he needed but to speak the word, and she would 
 have bought every sacque in the shop. 
 
 Drv-2foods clerking is bad business. There needs no 
 
 / Cj O 
 
 ghost to tell us that. It is petty and showy. It takes
 
 THE FASHIONS. 285 
 
 women at their \veakest when they are self-centred 
 and eager. It would seem to give men scarce any play 
 of mind or muscle. They have only to stand, white and 
 waiting, busy to irritation, or frenzied with idleness 
 forever babbling the price of a ninepenny calico or a 
 spool of cotton. But it is not a business made any bet 
 ter by brazen ness and bullying. Modesty, courtesy, gen 
 tleness, patience toward the good, and also toward the 
 froward, serve as excellent a purpose here as elsewhere. 
 Among his mantles and his wimples and his crisping- 
 pins, as truly as among shattering trumpets and splin 
 tered spear-shafts, will Sir Galahad keep fair, through 
 faith and prayer, his manly and upright heart. 
 
 After all, this matter is not so wholly one-sided as it 
 seems. True, the Country goes up to the City to shop, 
 but the City goes down to the Country for the substance 
 of shopping. The City knows only its shop-windows. 
 The Country drinks at the fountain-head whence the 
 shop-windows derive their splendor. Is it new colors 
 that inventors are bending all their ingenuity to create? 
 A late essayist suggested that there are colors which 
 the eye can not yet perceive, and which it never will 
 perceive without more exquisite powers the result of 
 line and elaborate training. I wish the writer would 
 look down into my swamp, and see if we have not al 
 ready as many colors as there is any call for. 
 
 It may not be generally known that the world was 
 never so beautiful as it is in this year of our Lord, 
 eighteen seventy-three. Nature is infinite, not simply 
 in colors but in shades. We speak of "grass green," 
 ns if every blade of grass had been plungod into one
 
 286 TWELVE MILES FROM A LEMOX. 
 
 dye-pot. But in a single pasture stretching before my 
 eyes, close-cropped by browsing cows, the ground is 
 mottled and many-hued as a Persian carpet, yet never 
 other than green. There are little dimples of deep ver 
 dure, and one hollow, bent above by an old apple-tree 
 nearly blown down, but recovering itself at the last 
 moment, and transfixed at an acute angle. Into that 
 hollow all the summer rains settle and all the spring 
 snows drift. On it the ice sparkles and shelters, and 
 now its soft slope is a velvet sward, thick and fine and 
 vivid, and wholly unlike the yellow-green of the up 
 land and the bare, bronzed, faded verdancy of the 
 bumps that one can hardly call hillocks. Close by is a 
 field of cabbages, or turnips, or some such homely es 
 culent; but there is no homeliness in its level sweep of 
 pallid green, which is far removed from the hues of my 
 pasture land. Then the brown lines of the railroad 
 dart across the landscape, adding force and law to beau 
 ty, th?ir unerring precision a pleasant foil to nature's, 
 wildness. Beyond, the fields, too, are turning brown, 
 and the river lounges lazily by, and the long low woods 
 skirt its banks; and my swamp ah, the splendor of 
 those trees! Every clump is a bouquet, selected and ar 
 ranged as if with the view of bringing out the strength 
 and glow of each : bright flaming scarlet and cypress 
 green, wine-hued and perfect amber, warm jcrimsons, 
 and yellows of the brightest and the softest gradations 
 and blendings of a marvelous delicacy and an endless 
 variety. 
 
 Yet sometimes, for all the gold and scailet, I think 
 nothing is quite so lovely as brown. The swamp is
 
 THE FASHIOXS. 287 
 
 bordered with ferns. The old stone walls, rough and 
 tumbling, that mark the road are overcrept and over- 
 swept with blackberry vines and tansy and golden-rod, 
 with sunflower and the purple endive, wild brake, and 
 gowan, the dandelion of the fall a tawny tangle ; but 
 the rich ferns prevail, lending their deep, soft russet, all 
 mellow, yellow tints, to the afternoon sun, to be shot 
 through and through with his golden fire. Then does 
 Nature's true worshiper long for a brown silk gown to 
 wear in these autumn days, and be in harmony with the 
 earth a brown sillc, russet and lustrous and shimmer 
 ing, gold in the sun, grave in the shade, pliant to Na 
 ture's moods, like the fern and the blackberry vine, that 
 scorn to glow and glitter when their lord, the sun, goes 
 down. 
 
 I saw a bird yesterday in an elegant steel-colored 
 polonaise of two shades, with black trimmings. It was 
 perfect in cut and combination; and if he would but 
 have stayed twittering on my apple-tree long enofigh for 
 an artist to catch his style, I would have sent to -the 
 city a fall fashion which should have bewildered even 
 the belles of Broadway. There is nothing to be com 
 pared to the quiet elegance of birds. The fields and 
 the trees are inexhaustibly ingenious, but their taste is 
 hardly chastened enough for minute and accurate imi 
 tation. A maple-tree walking down street would be in 
 danger of being followed by gamins; and even the so 
 berer elm and the presently-to-be-crimsoned oak would 
 run the risk of being called garish and gay. But the 
 little birds hop up, dainty and delicate. Is it mode 
 color your suits shall be? No gray is so soft, no nap
 
 288 TWELVE MILES. FROM A LEMOX 
 
 so smooth, as theirs, and the brightness comes in little 
 dashes dots and tips and fringes, in sheen and quiver 
 and evanescence an effect rather than a vision. 
 
 But when I saw near Calistoga the flower which the 
 old Spaniards named mariposa butterfly with its 
 broad, apricot-tinted, wing-like petals, dashed with a 
 maroon velvet as soft in tissue as the purple of the 
 heart's-ease, I saw at once where Monsieur Worth found 
 the great first cause of Madame Nightingale's gown. 
 No wonder he has made his name illustrious, if he has 
 gone to the birds and the butterflies and the blossoms 
 for his patterns! Why not follow him, though with 
 unequal steps? Why puzzle over color complications, 
 when a pansy in your garden will tell you what goes 
 with what? Why pay to a foreigner untold heaps of 
 money for his dictum, when a bird of the air shall carry 
 the voice, and that which hath wings shall tell the mat 
 ter? We cry out against the ugliness of the rough 
 earthen jars in which our plants are potted. Rough 
 and ugly they are, but have we mended the matter 
 when we store our slips in glazed vases, painted a bright 
 and shining green, which kills all the color out of the 
 plants? Nature puts all her brightness into leaf and 
 blossom, and makes the boles of her trees as rough and 
 brown as possible, dowered only with their rugged 
 strength, which bears all the beauty aloft. Let us also 
 be rough and rugged as to the bases of our flower-pots, 
 for 'tis our nature too. 
 
 I will go down into my swamp and study. It is rain 
 ing delightful showers, but I love the drip of the leaves 
 and the saucy slap of wet boughs, and the artists say
 
 THE FAsmoxs. 289 
 
 that gray days are the days for color. We have had a 
 surfeit of sunshine for three weeks of hazy delight. Let 
 us go out to welcome this delicious rain, and come home 
 laden with leaves more ruddy than the rose petals of 
 our last lost June, with golden boughs more lovely than 
 that whose variegated gleam shone through the Sibyl 
 line grove into the eyes of pious JEneas. 
 
 " Oh, you can't get leaves !" cries Faintheart. " They 
 are so high up. You must have a man and a ladder." 
 A man and a ladder! Bring hither a water-proof and 
 a pair of rubber boots, and leave your ladders and men 
 to their own destruction. Is not rny swamp amply sup 
 plied with hassocks on purpose to step on? Are there 
 no branches to cling to, that one must bring men and 
 ladders? Nay, has not Nature herself leveled a tree 
 for our climbing? There lies he, a prostrate monarch, 
 but so strong that from the uptorn earth still clinging 
 to his roots he extracts the juices of life, and still nur 
 tures all his tender lejnves, and still drinks for his au 
 tumn glory the mystic blood-red wine. Safe seated on 
 liis fallen trunk, safe housed among his supporting 
 branches, what need of men or ladders? Here is the 
 musical tinkle of the rain on the leaves, the soft rustle 
 of the leaves in the wind. Here is a carpet which the 
 Shah might strangle his ministers for, and a canopy 
 which might task the fairies' wand. Here life gathers 
 its forces for a final stand against wintry death, and here 
 shall victory prevail, for in these hidden nooks green 
 grow the rashes O through all the furious winter's 
 rages. 
 
 13
 
 290 TWEL VE JIILES FROM A LEXOX. 
 
 XVI. 
 
 SLEEP. AND SICKNESS. 
 
 THE one requisite to good health, good looks, sweet 
 temper, prosperity in business, and general success in 
 life, is sleep. I do not know whether we shall be able, 
 as Matthew Arnold says, to " hit it off happily " with 
 Solomon. It is, perhaps, not quite easy to tell exact 
 ly what he had in his mind ; but if he meant that people 
 should try to cut down their sleep to the smallest pos 
 sible allowance, it may be superfluous, but it is certain 
 ly irresistible, to remark that I do not agree with him. 
 But he probably did not mean that He certainly 
 would not be likely to differ from me. 
 
 The necessity of sleep, it may be admitted, is a dis 
 agreeable necessity. To turn aside from all the pleas 
 ures of life, from the sweet consciousness of existence, 
 to give over thought and love and memory and hope 
 all plans and pursuits and go down into forgetfulness 
 or unconsciousness, is, or seems to be, an unspeakable 
 loss. It is a death, temporary, but imperious and ever- 
 recurring. Yet it is so universal, so gradual, so natu 
 ral, that we yield to it not only without dread, but with 
 delight. In the silent splendor of star-lit nights, which 
 seem to put us on a brotherly footing with the whole 
 universe, in the blackness of nights that know no star, 
 when we seem to be standing alone in the solitude of 
 eternity, life is too fascinating, nncl we begrudge a mo-
 
 &LEEP ASD SICKNESS. 291 
 
 ment lost; but even then, without will, against will, the 
 heavy eyelids droop, and, all unhindered, the sly soul 
 slips away into some remote recess of the brain to lie 
 in ambush for the rising dawn and the strong new 
 world. 
 
 If we could have been made to get along without 
 sleep, I should like it better, but since sleep we must, 
 why should we quarrel with fate? Our ancestors, 
 stanch men in many regards, have yet done the world 
 harm by their indiscriminate abuse of sleep. One would 
 think, to read some books, that slumber was an inven 
 tion of the Evil One, to.be repressed and snubbed con 
 tinually.- On the contrary, sleep comes nearer being a 
 panacea than any pill or potion ever concocted. 
 
 In the country, people sometimes become so demoral 
 ized on the subject that early rising takes on the pro 
 portions of a vice. I have an inward conviction that 
 the farmers from the outskirts snap their whips with 
 fresh unction as they go by our village houses in the 
 early morning, exulting in the thought that they are 
 up and about while we sluggards have scarcely rubbed 
 our eyes open. I have heard a family admiringly 
 spoken of because it rose, breakfasted, and had prayers 
 before the dawn had fairly reddened the east. Can such 
 prayers be acceptable? Our people do, indeed, yield 
 to the truth of history so far as to tell children of 
 beauty-sleep, and bid them go to bed early; but they 
 forget all about it in the morning, and stimulate them 
 to early rising. Indeed, ignorance and folly sometimes 
 go so far as to awaken children for the purpose of get 
 ting them up, which is just not murder in the first de-
 
 292 TWELVE MILES FJWM A 
 
 gree. Lay it down as the rule of family life that no 
 body is to be waked by external means. There may 
 be extraordinary circumstances which justify a viola 
 tion of the rule. If the house is on fire, and hand and 
 steam engines fail to extinguish the flames, sleepers 
 must be aroused; but even then begin with those near 
 est the fire, and bestir others only as the danger advan 
 ces. I suppose it is absolutely certain that when a man 
 has slept long enough he will wake of his own accord. 
 
 The time at which sleep is taken is of less account 
 than the amount of sleep. If it can be had in dark 
 ness, doubtless that is best; but sleep by daylight is a 
 good thing too. Some people take credit to themselves 
 for accomplishing much before breakfast, but after 
 breakfast are constantly found napping on the sofa or 
 nodding in the lounging chair. What superior virtue 
 is there in sleeping by installment to sleeping in the 
 lump? Some people are called lazy because they take 
 a nap after a noonday dinner; but the efficiency of their 
 waking hours is a sufficient justification for their mid 
 day repose. Sleep anywhere and everywhere is good. 
 Ministers complain if here and there a member of their 
 congregation grows drowsy ; but as I look around and 
 see the hard-working men and women, all clean and 
 fresh and smooth in their Sunday suits, sheltered from 
 sun, released from toil, and soothed by the pleasant voice 
 of a well -beloved pastor into a slightly unsteady but 
 richly earned repose, I bless them unaware. Not the 
 least of the many benefits wrought us by the clergy is 
 the sweet somnolence which so gently and benignly 
 broods over a weary and happy congregation on a sul-
 
 SLEEP A.SD SICKNESS. 293 
 
 try Sunday afternoon. Fore-ordination and free-will 
 may be bard to reconcile; moral and natural responsi 
 bility may be difficult of discrimination ; the bearing of 
 election on duty is not easy to see ; but no man can go 
 into an airy, pleasant church, sit down in peace among 
 his friends and neighbors, and fall softly asleep to the 
 sound of holy words from holy lips, without great gain 
 to the, life that now is, and, I believe and trust, with no 
 loss to that which is to come. 
 
 As for Napoleon and the others who are brandished 
 over us as having wrought their great deeds on four 
 hours' sleep, in the first place I do not believe a word 
 of it, and in the second place, if they did, it was but an 
 exception ; and we might just as well put our eyes out 
 because Homer wrote the "Iliad" without any, as to 
 rub open our eyes at four o'clock in the morning be 
 cause Napoleon slept four hours in his saddle. One 
 man's need is no rule for another man's life. There is 
 but one infallible rule for the sleepers, that every one 
 sleeps till he wakes of himself; and for the awake, that 
 they shut the doors softly, so as not to disturb those 
 who are asleep. This is the whole duty of man. 
 
 If one should desire a few little secondary rules, it 
 might be well to warn him against self-glorification. 
 Neither rising early availeth any thing, nor rising late. 
 The wise man who used to rise with the sun or before 
 it in our copy-books may have been foolish in so doing, 
 but must have been foolish if he based his wisdom on his 
 early rising. The question is, What does he do after he 
 is up? The early bird has been catching the worm for 
 many generation?, but I never heard that the late bird
 
 294 TWELVE MILES FROM A LEMON. 
 
 starved for lack of worms; and what of the owl and 
 the bat, who do not get up at all till honest folks are in 
 bed? 
 
 Ah, no ! Solomon's sluggard was doubtless a worth 
 less fellow, who slept as lazily as he wrought, and did 
 every thing by halves. When a sound soul craves a 
 little more sleep, a little more slumber, it is a sign that 
 lie needs it, and his first duty is to take it. Nature 
 knows when there has been sleep enough, and makes us 
 aware by the clear brain and the steady nerve and the 
 blood alert; and then there needs not bell nor voice, 
 but only the inward prompting, to set our life astir. 
 
 Sleep is the preventive and the cure of disease. 
 Lack of sleep opens the door to every malady under 
 heaven. Sleep, the shadow of death, is the minister of 
 life. Plunder of sleep may give a phantom of life, but 
 it is the herald and the preparer of death. 
 
 Yet I suspect there is a great deal of dread and sym 
 pathy wasted on illness. Health should be the habit of 
 life, but sickness, too, has its sunny side. I am inclined 
 to think it is the friends and attendants of sick peo 
 ple who have the worst of it, and not the sick people 
 themselves. This is certainly the case in some forms 
 of illness. "When you are in the depths, you do not 
 .know it. When you can not breathe, other people are 
 alarmed, and forecast possibilities; for yourself, you 
 think neither of past nor future, but only of breathing. 
 There have been people who in moments of great dan 
 ger had great thoughts, as if the soul bloomed in the 
 sudden eternal light to wondrous power. I must con 
 fess to only the most commonplace experiences. Once
 
 SLEEP AND SICKNESS. 295 
 
 I was thrown, from a carriage directly under the horse. 
 I heard I might almost say felt his fierce pawing 
 close to rny head, and all that my stupid soul could say 
 to itself was, " He has not hit me this time, but perhaps 
 he will the next, and it will kill me. Nor this time ei 
 ther/' May not the final transit be in itself as common 
 place, as little momentous? In spite of all the terrors 
 of the theologies and the mysteries of the metaphysics, 
 death is as natural as birth. Who can tell that we do 
 not pass through the one as through the other, all un 
 aware? Life opens before the little one bright and 
 beautiful, wrapped around with love and tenderness, 
 but whence and how he came he knows as little as the 
 pink-petaled rose-bud opening to the June sun. So 
 may it not be that Death clasps close the parting soul 
 in dreamless natural repose, leaving to the living all 
 the pain, while the dead, forever alive, wakes wonder- 
 ingly to the glory that shall be? 
 
 We hear of illness around us every day. Nay, in 
 some dim and distant past, some vague remote Egyp 
 tian antiquity, we seem to see a vision of scarlet fever 
 arid whooping-cough, of chicken-pox and measles, and 
 vaccination and pennyroyal tea, and housing and pet 
 ting, iu which we ourselves have played a prominent 
 part. But strong with inherited vigor and country air, 
 and wholesome lack of training, and free, wild, generous 
 living, you have grown up, dear friend, in robust, not 
 to say defiant, health, and have carried all along your 
 manhood or womanhood an indomitable, irrepressible 
 physical force and activity which have, perhaps, even 
 surged over upon }'our mental characteristics, and made
 
 296 TWELVE MILES FliOJf A LEMOX. 
 
 you -the least in the world arrogant, scornful, exacting, 
 exultant, where you otherwise would have been, let us 
 hope, the very pink of meekness and modesty. 
 
 Ah ! good friend, exult no more. Even for you Ne 
 mesis waits. Even you are approaching your bound 
 ary lines, though you know it not, or even were aware 
 that for you existed limitations. 
 
 So you go plunging into the swamp and paddling 
 through the "slush" of our unrelenting weather, and 
 never heed the obstacles. Obstacles are made not to 
 be counted, but surmounted. Each day has its visit, 
 its business, its excursion, its engagement, and if the 
 day cqmes with blinding sleet, or whirling snow, or icy 
 rain, so much the worse for rain and sleet and snow, 
 but away you go. There has never occurred to you 
 the possibility of being beaten in any contest whatever. 
 What said General Upton when the committee suggest 
 ed that in his work on tactics were to be found no rules 
 for the arrangement of a surrender? "That, sir, is a 
 thing which should never be provided for in an Ameri 
 can army !" Bravo, General Upton ! 
 
 But there comes a night on which you go to bed 
 with the delightful consciousness of aims accomplished, 
 and in fifteen minutes are surprised that, instead of its 
 being morning, it is still the same day you went to bed, 
 and you are, moreover, aware of your left shoulder. 
 Unhappy ! the only health is unconsciousness. Your 
 intangible idea develops into a distinct ache in the top 
 of that dreadful left shoulder, which no change of po 
 sition, no determination to fix your mind on some other 
 subject, will remove. You make Herculean efforts to
 
 SLEEP AND SICKXESS. 297 
 
 forget that shoulder, but in vain. The ache resolves 
 itself into a well-defined pain, and the pain becomes ad 
 venturous, and organizes exploring expeditions north 
 ward and southward, eastward and westward, and your 
 time is beguiled by the lively interest you take in its 
 progress and enterprises. Now your chest seems a great 
 cave full of stalagmites and stalactites, and the stalag 
 mites and stalactites are all luminous, brilliant, crystal- 
 ized pain. Now it is a little imp alight on your shoul 
 der, clutching it harder and harder, and a whole legion 
 of little imps pour after him, and spin down your nerves, 
 and follow along every avenue of sense and blood and 
 breath, gnawing, gnawing, gnawing with monotonous 
 persistence and ever-growing power. From force of 
 habit you full asleep, and are startled awake again, and 
 still those imps are at it. It was amusing for a while, 
 but it presently becomes tiresome, and then exaspera 
 ting. There is a point beyond which even novelty ceases 
 to interest, and the ice-cold night was never so mighty. 
 It broods over you like a pall, discouraging, deadening. 
 And the little imps have so possessed themselves of you 
 that, they have fairly driven you out of your strong 
 holds. You dare not go down into your own lung?, 
 but only Jiang on to breath by your eyelids, and every 
 short, shallow gasp is a sharp pain. But you battle' 
 through the night with fitful sleep, and weary, won 
 dering waking, thinking longingly of sunshine and the 
 register, and promising } r ourself to give the imps a 
 sweat if ever daylight comes. Daylight does come and 
 sunshine, and the register and the blazing wood fire, 
 and mustard and hot iron, and those little maliernant 
 
 D 
 
 13*
 
 298 TWELVE MILES FROM A LEX OX. 
 
 fiends carry the day over them all, dancing and raving 
 and raging through your astonished blood. 
 
 Till somebody suggests the doctor. The doctor! It 
 is an absurd idea. A doctor is for sickness. Can a 
 doctor cast out devils? Sickness is well, you do not 
 know exactly what, seeing you never had it, but cer 
 tainly not this. This is a horde of minute, riotous evil 
 spirits, reckless, spiteful, mocking morsels of demons, 
 that have entered into you, and are holding high carni 
 val. But they so occupy your time and attention that 
 you make no effective opposition to any plans or pro 
 posals of the outside world ; and presently the doctor 
 appears upon the scene, and the outside world somehow 
 begins to buzz and darken into a dream, a twilight, a 
 sea of unreality, over which the phantoms of familiar 
 friends loom un really, but whose doubtful expanse is 
 broken by solid islands of mustard and poultice, and 
 batting and bitterness, and across whose sombre silence 
 shoot gleams of drollery and grotesque, demure, fantas 
 tic fun. And there is time no longer, nor any division 
 of day and night, until a time, times, and the dividing 
 of time. 
 
 And this is a "fit of sickness." You were never 
 more amazed in your life. Out of the dark, doubtful 
 sea you are dragged to the dry land of faint but real 
 life, and behold the little imps are beaten off, shut and 
 sealed in the caverns whence they swarmed, and there 
 never were any imps, and their name was Pneumonia: 
 and you see the light that it is good, and you can divide 
 the light from the darkness, as in the beginning, and 
 von call the lishtDav, and the darkness vou call Ni<rht
 
 SLEEP AND SICKXESS. 299 
 
 But to think that you, the unassailable, have had "a 
 fit of sickness!" And that this is it! And that this 
 strange, bewildering, absorbing, altogether unimagina 
 ble experience has been going on around you from the 
 foundation of the world, and you had no more idea of 
 it or what it was like than if you had been founded in 
 another world ! 
 
 Then comes the weary waiting of convalescence, the 
 impatience to up and about, the hunger that may not 
 be appeased. Not a bit of it. That is the way people 
 talk, but it is not so. Convalescence is a delightful 
 border-land between death and life, a Beulah in which 
 you love to linger, whose grapes go down sweetly. It 
 is a condition in which a perfect consciousness of exist 
 ence is combined with an absolute negation of duties. 
 You know that you are a nuisance, a cumberer of the 
 ground, 
 
 "Whom none can love, whom none can thank, 
 Creation's blot, creation's blank," 
 
 and you do not care. The furnace fires may go out, 
 the wine-cellar run dry, the tank overflow, the barrel 
 of meal waste, and the cruse of oil fail ; but you are 
 certain that your thermometer will be cared for, that 
 your sherry-glass will never be empty, and you lie in a 
 line though feeble disdain- for all these carking cares. 
 People can not find things: let them hunt. The dray 
 men are swearing outside, but it is no business of yours 
 to show them how to get the coal into the cellar. The 
 world is going on, and you have no responsibility what 
 ever about the order of its going. This is the true joy 
 of convalescence. This is the way to make illness a
 
 300 TWELVE MILES FROM A LEMOX. 
 
 means of grace. If you go caring for other people, 
 you might as well be well. But to lie in tranquil and 
 luxurious inertia, absolutely devoid of energy, without 
 purpose, without conscience, without thought, wholly 
 selfish, and unpricked in your selfishness it is no 
 mean paradise. Life is so full that it is an exquisite 
 satisfaction for once, and for a time, to find it empty. 
 The hours and the days lapse languidly, and you have 
 had a fortnight of bliss in the process and blank in the 
 memory, and by that time, ten to one, your soul is astir 
 again but the pause was delicious. 
 
 Hungry, did you say ? There are terrible traditions 
 of fever-parched lips which ignorance forbade to moist 
 en, and fever-wasted frames which food might not up 
 build. Who has not his story to tell of some conva 
 lescent ancestor who escaped his keeper and devoured, 
 clandestinely, but with impunity, a whole mince-pie be 
 fore he was discovered by horror-smitten friends? But 
 we have changed all that. The doctors nowadays are 
 n friendly folk, and prophesy smooth things. Water? 
 Yes, indeed, as much as you like. Milk? The more 
 the better. Eat whatever you wish, and whenever you 
 choose, and as long as you can. The Old School Pres 
 bytery stand around astonished ; but, strong in the law, 
 you eat steadfastly on with mild convalescent defiance, 
 and climb steadily back to strength. Against such proof 
 there is no law. And the neighbors send in their best 
 canned strawberries, and apple jellies, and currant wine, 
 and you swallow them all with only moderate gratitude, 
 not to say placid indifference. So far from being in a 
 hurry to go back into the world again, yon want nothing
 
 SLEEP AND SICKNESS. 301 
 
 but to be let alone. The turmoil, the eagerness, the busy 
 ness seem to you so aimless. A and B and C go by ev 
 ery day regularly to meet the morning trains. What 
 folly ! as if it made any difference whether they met 
 the train or not. But your exclamation-point is a very 
 small one. You are not to be disturbed by deep emo 
 tions of any sort. The din of the outside world comes 
 softly to your ears. Since the din is not unmusical, 
 very well ; but the world might as wisely be silent. 
 Why should you get up? It is easier to stay in bed. 
 But who wants to be strong ? It is just as comfortable 
 to be weak. 
 
 "Far or forgot to me is near ; 
 
 Shadow and sunlight are the same ; 
 The vanished gods to me appear ; 
 And one to me are shame and fame." 
 
 Ah ! Providence has wisely ordered it. Sickness is 
 too luxurious a thing to last. Canned strawberries for 
 ever would eat the life out of immortality itself. Peace 
 and tranquillity and unruffled seas are not of this world. 
 For this world, whatever come hereafter, activity and 
 endeavor, research and doubt, and balancing and adjust 
 ing, house-guiding and money-earning, social service, 
 dress-coats, and a thousand narrow ruffles to be lined 
 and bound with the same in a different shade. Why, 
 here you are, clean out of dry-dock, under full head of 
 steam, plowing mid-ocean through the surf and spray 
 of sundered metaphors as aforetime, and all that past of 
 silence and serenity, and grass-grown streets and mossy 
 walls, is already as a dream, when one awaketh. 
 
 Mr. Bachelor the Chevalier Bayard of our age, as
 
 S02 TWELVE MILES FROM A LEMOX. 
 
 one foolishly and fondly saitli ; but tliat I must disallow : 
 I have a private Bayard or two of my own who must 
 not be discrowned. All the honors of the indefinite ar 
 ticle I freely grant, nay, gladly pay you. In a republic 
 of Bayards you shall hold a high place, or, if a king 
 dom there must be, you shall salute with royal grace 
 messieurs mes fibres ! 
 
 Chevalier Bayard, you have been ill, say the newspa 
 pers, in curtife?mc phrase. A brother in unity reaches 
 forth to you the right hand of fellowship in that good 
 ly and gracious experience. You are just beginning to 
 sit up, they report, and mean thereby only a symptom. 
 But I know how the foundations of the world drop 
 away beneath your feet under that first feeble rising. 
 Courage, my brother, I do not say. I rather counsel 
 cowardice! Be weak, if you would quit yourself like 
 n man! Your great prototype, no doubt, in typhoid 
 fever called for drink like a sick girl. Do not control 
 yourself. Let the well people do that. Be petulant, be 
 querulous, be imperious and exacting. It is a sign that 
 you will recover. And above all things, do not hurry 
 matters. You may never be ill again as long as you 
 live. It is your one chance for leisure and luxury and 
 absolute despotism. Be wise to-dn} r , 'tis madness to de 
 fer. If .they force you from the friendly couch, cling 
 to the almost as friendly lounge. Battle, then, for the 
 reclining chair. Make a stand on dressing-gown and 
 slippers. Go not out-doors till the last gun is fired. 
 Who breathes the outside air is lost to all the privileges 
 and immunities of illness. Onewhohasbeenthereatura 
 te salutnt !
 
 303 
 
 XVII. 
 
 DINNERS. 
 
 WISDOM is justified of her children. What is best 
 for the soul is best for the body, and the good of the 
 body is the good of the soul. Self-denial has its own 
 sphere ; but, in the long run, that which is most pleas 
 ant is most salutary. Certainly, then, we make some 
 mistakes iii our domestic arrangements. Our dinners 
 are not proof of mortal infallibility. It is not necessary 
 to advocate abstemiousness. The notion sometimes pro 
 mulgated that we should rise from the table as hungry 
 as we sat down may be consistently advocated by board 
 ing-house keepers, but is tolerably sure to receive from 
 the rest of the world the neglect which it merits. The 
 only creed for rational beings embraces what is called 
 "a square meal" plenty of food, varied and agreeable, 
 and freedom to eat till you are satisfied. But do we 
 not give undue prominence to puddings and pies, while 
 the superfluity and unwholesomeness of dinners lie in 
 the pudding and pie department more than in any oth 
 er? In the country the temptation is strong. Milk 
 and eggs, sugar and raisins, are alwaj^s at command, and 
 a pudding, therefore, is a steadfast friend. But meat, 
 though spasmodically abundant, is somewhat precarious, 
 both in quality and appearance. Beefsteak may be had 
 for the asking, if you speak in season, but a juicy and
 
 TWELVE MILES FROM A LEUOX. 
 
 tender steak is a gift of the gods vouchsafed at uncer 
 tain intervals. As for vegetables, they are a lost art. 
 According to Hume, no testimony should be allowed to 
 establish an occurrence which is contrary to our expe 
 rience. In spite, therefore, of horticultural tradition, I 
 believe that vegetables do not grow from the soil, but 
 flourish only in the city markets. Meat and vegetables, 
 however, are far more wholesome than pies and pud 
 dings, and, moreover, an abundant and varied supply of 
 them dispenses with the call for sweetmeats. A dinner 
 of beefsteak and potatoes leaves something to be de 
 sired ; but if corn and beans, succotash, macaroni, squash, 
 and onions, pickles, apple-sauce, and cranberry, be pro 
 vided in judicious installments, the dinner becomes a 
 sufficient meal without further foraging. A cup of Cof 
 fee or tea, bread and cheese and fruit, are all that the 
 epicure need further ask. In Sweden and Northern 
 Europe generally we are told that far greater simplici 
 ty obtains than among us. Heavy and elaborate des 
 serts are dispensed with, and hard black bread and 
 cheese crowning the dinner is a dish to set before a 
 king. And so sure is Nature to be true to herself that 
 even our own pampered compatriots learn to love this 
 simplicity, and write home abusive letters about Amer 
 ican tables that are no more heavily laden than were 
 their own up to the moment of their departure. I have 
 even known Americans to become so enamored of for 
 eign frugality as to import casks of brown bread from 
 Sweden wherewithal to garnish the family board. But 
 who ever heard of a Danish pie or a Norwegian pud 
 ding on its travels?
 
 ZHXXERS. 305 
 
 Vegetable food is not only more wholesome than 
 sweets, but far easier to prepare. It is more simply 
 cooked. The ignorant servant can learn its processes 
 far sooner than the more labored combinations of cake 
 and pastry. And when she has mastered the eternal 
 harmonies, and knows what goes with what, she needs 
 only general orders, and not constant surveillance. The 
 barrel of bread and cheese does the rest. Talk of a 
 horn of plenty ! 
 
 When we country folk hear of the state dinners cat- 
 en by city folk, wherein a dozen courses follow each 
 other in brief and brilliant succession, we are wont to 
 thank Heaven that ive are not as this Prodigal. But if 
 just balances could be procured, I more than half sus 
 pect the "heavy feeding" would be found on the side 
 of American rather than French dinners. Look, for 
 example, at the regulation state dinner of the farm 
 house and the rural community. Turkey as the head- 
 centre, fattened and stuffed to the last degree of rich 
 ness ; all available vegetables, sauces, and sweet pickles ; 
 plum-pudding; mince, apple, and squash pie; cranber 
 ry tart; sweet cider always siceet cider coffee, tea, 
 and cheese. There are people still living who think 
 the Thanksgiving board incomplete without a boiled 
 dish at the head ; often a goose and a turkey hunt in 
 couples down its laden level. Now you have only to 
 drive this team tandem instead of abreast, and immedi 
 ately you have a twelve-in-hand as antic as any French 
 man can display. But because you choose to marshal 
 your tidbits all at once and all o'er with a mighty up 
 roar, I do not know that you are any more frugal, sim-
 
 306 TWELVE MILES FROM A LEMON. 
 
 pie, or democratic than your neighbor who prefers to 
 have his in relays. When we add to the city dinner 
 the time devoted to eating it, the interspersed wines, 
 which are an aid to digestion if not to devotion, the su 
 perior attractiveness of its dissolving views to the whole 
 solid Sebastopol before which we sit down at our 
 Thanksgiving festival, there is surely something to be 
 said on both sides. 
 
 The time consumed in dinners is often spoken of as 
 if it were a burden which neither our fathers nor we 
 are able to bear. So it would be if we gave the two or 
 three hours to solid eating. But, as things go, dinners 
 may be, and often arc, one of the most agreeable forms 
 which social intercourse takes on. There is always 
 or at least there can be a degree of fitness and harmo 
 ny in the guests. There are order and tranquillity, and 
 a field for all sorts of verbal entertainment. Even an in 
 different neighbor is tolerable if the company be not so 
 large as to forbid general conversation ; if it be, of course 
 the dinner loses its saving clause, and }-our salvation 
 depends upon your vicinage. But compared with the 
 crush and clamor of evening parties, their wear and 
 tear of voice and vesture, or the insipid ruralities of the 
 picnic, where Nature and Life meet and rnock each oth 
 er, dinners seem a diversion worthy of human beings. 
 
 I should be sorry to seem to advocate the use of wine 
 at dinner. But if we banish wine, we ought also to 
 banish the profusion for which wine is the only pallia 
 tive. No doubt it would be healthier for us all to use 
 such moderation in our feasts that there would be no 
 call for any stimulant. But the country deacon just as
 
 DINNERS. 307 
 
 often as the city merchant sets before us a task to which 
 unassisted nature is wholly incompetent. Yet temper 
 ance in eating is just as truly a Christian duty as absti 
 nence in drinking. Probably, indeed, the number of 
 those who fall into the temptation of eating too much 
 at our overladen tables is far greater than of those who 
 fall into the temptation of drinking to excess. The city 
 and country alike, then, put a knife to their neighbor's 
 throat, knowing him to be a man given to appetite 
 the country, I maintain, whetting it a little sharper, 
 holding it a little closer, and pressing it a little harder 
 than the city. Is the city, providing a remedy for its 
 wrong, though at some hazard, a sinner beyond the 
 country, which does the same wrong, but provides no 
 remedy at all ? AVe are in Holy Writ no more strenu 
 ously warned against wine-bibbers than against riotous 
 caters of flesh. The glutton and the drunkard are 
 reckoned as yoke-fellows, and bound to the same goal. 
 Let us, therefore, be simple and natural, eating our meat 
 with gladness and singleness of heart, adding to it all 
 the native vegetables and fruits that wise forethought 
 and an honest income can command, remembering that, 
 though better is a dinner of herbs where love is than a 
 stalled ox and hatred therewith, the best thing of all is 
 stalled ox garnished with herbs, and presided over by 
 a love so wise as not to seek out many inventions of 
 sweets and pastry. 
 
 Yet one would not willingly so far depart from the 
 faith of his fathers as not to have mince-pies at Thanks 
 giving. Remembering the shelves that of old time used 
 to stand loaded with these portentous sweets, the jnrs
 
 308 TWELVE MILES FROM A LEMOX. 
 
 of mince-meat that were wont to await in silence and 
 darkness the hour that should bid them give up their 
 juicy store to join the innumerable caravan that, with 
 stately and majestic step, trod its eternal circle in and 
 out of those closet doors beginning with Thanksgiv 
 ing, if circles can begin, filing slowing past Christmas, 
 past New-year, and reaching well into, and sometimes 
 beyond, the depths of midwinter who am I that I 
 should set up a new standard, and fly in the face of 
 Providence ? Now that we have brought the nation to 
 .our way of thinking, now that we have set our New 
 England festival firm in the affections of the whole peo 
 ple, shall we rob it of one of its chief accompaniments? 
 True, mince -pie is not a characteristic of the feast. 
 Pumpkin -pies which the refinements of these later 
 days have transformed into squash are rather the na 
 tive growth of Thanksgiving, while mince-pies are the 
 offshoots of Christmas and Merrie England. But long 
 habit, common speech, and the Treaty of Washington 
 have changed all that; and no Yankee housewife would 
 feel that she had made her calling and election sure un 
 til she had garnished her larder with goodly rows of 
 flaky and fearful pies. 
 
 I am the more strenuous on this point because I sus 
 pect we are somewhat inclined to take on airs regard 
 ing the past. Am I deceived in fancying that I detect 
 a flavor of condescension, not to say of mild contempt, 
 toward our ancestors even in our very act of celebra 
 ting their feast? We are not simply and devoutly 
 grateful for mercies vouchsafed, but we thank thee, O 
 Lord, that we are not as other men are even these
 
 309 
 
 grandfathers. It would seem as if we needed the dis 
 comfort and disadvantage of their lives for a foil to the 
 comfort and brilliance of our own. We can not be 
 quite happy wifhout assuming that they were misera 
 ble. 
 
 But were our fathers as badly off as we think ? They 
 had fewer of the arts and contrivances than we. They 
 brought their water from wells outdoors, and they shiv 
 ered somewhat before their great fires in their great 
 rooms. But they never experienced the anguish of 
 waking on a winter morning to find an icicle hanging 
 stiff from each little silver water-pipe, and the plumber 
 twelve miles away, and engaged twelve houses ahead ! 
 They drew their water in honest buckets, with honest 
 well-sweeps, and drank and thanked God, and were 
 never bewildered with the various demerits of various 
 metals. We send hot air-pipes through our houses like 
 veins through the body, and we shelter ourselves with 
 double windows and storm-doors, and wonder how they 
 of old times survived the winters ; but a house near 
 by, whose building no man remembers, is a marvel of 
 warmth and snugness even to our modern notions. It 
 is low -roofed and 'small -windowed, with panes many 
 and minute ; but its walls are admirably contrived to 
 keep out the cold which is an excellent thing in North 
 ern houses and delicate plants, which die in the frosts 
 of a modern furnace -heated drawing-room, laugh to 
 scorn the long winter nights in this low, large, wood- 
 warmed parlor. Our forefathers may never have known 
 what it was to be thoroughly comfortable from Decem 
 ber to April, but if they were a little cold around the
 
 310 TWELVE MILES FROM A 
 
 shoulders, as they sat before their blazing fires, they 
 were surely warm around the heart. There is some 
 thing glowing to the imagination in the leap and flick 
 er of flames, and we do not need so much fire to keep 
 us warm, if we can see what fire there is. The straight- 
 backed chairs and sanded floors of old were not so lux 
 urious as our easy lounges and heavy carpets ; but for 
 those very chairs, all stiff and straight as they are, we 
 are ready to pay fabulous prices to-day, and the latest 
 effort of science, the conclusion of her closest investiga 
 tions, is an urgent request for us all to discard our car 
 pets, which gather dust and shelter miasms, and cher 
 ish, if they do not breed disease, and return to bare 
 floors, and health, and vigor. So it seems that in many 
 things we have but boxed the compass, and come around 
 to very nearly the same point where we found our 
 grandfathers. Be sure, those excellent and ever-to-be- 
 revered gentlemen had a far more tolerable time of it 
 than we usually suspect. 
 
 Yes, and a far more cheerful and jolly time of it. 
 
 "We count them good soldiers, devout church-goer?, 
 prim, virtuous, but rather ascetic ; seldom mirthful, nev 
 er freakish or gamesome, doing even their courting in 
 solemn Scriptural phraseology. Fie upon you, narrow- 
 minded modern ! Our fathers and mothers, nay, even 
 our great- great grandfathers and grandmothers were 
 young men and women in their day, who ate and 
 drank, and made merry, who sang and danced, and 
 shall we say it? flirted as outrageously as do you, 
 3*ouths and maidens, in gay neck-ties and bouffant pan- 
 icrs. They may have written, not spoken, "ye meet-
 
 DINNERS. 
 
 ing-house," where we should say " the church;" possi 
 bly they were a little more demure than we, but in ev 
 ery generation, in every garb, youth is high-hearted, and 
 love is eager, and our grandmothers were only the more 
 winsome with their demure looks, and their ways a lit 
 tle coy. 
 
 Here is a letter written sixty years ago by a girl in 
 her early bloom. The paper is rough and yellow, but 
 is it any more rough and yellow than some of the tinted 
 note-sheets of our last invoice from Paris? It is at least 
 barred in precisely the same fashion, and must have 
 been easier to write on than is much of our smooth and 
 slippery elegance, which deceives the pen and repels 
 the ink. This letter opens quaintly and didactically 
 with dignified reflections on the sweets of friendship, 
 and the uncertainty of life ; but the fresh young blood 
 bounds anon, and we are presently in the midst of jests, 
 and compliments, and blushes, and teasings, and all the 
 light artillery of girls. "Go and see mother as often 
 as you can," says the merry maiden, spending her first 
 winter in the city, "and tell her I never was so wild in 
 my life as I now am." It is not the message of an au 
 stere daughter to a grim parent, but surely of love ta 
 love, on both sides cheerful, happy, sympathetic. 
 
 Nor, on the other hand, do we render our ancestors 
 justice when we make their merry-making consist in 
 gross and heavy overfeeding. True, they did pile their 
 tables high, but with their active outdoor work they 
 could not live by bread alone. Life with them was, 
 moreover, it must be admitted, rather limited in the 
 wny of operas, and concerts, and lectures, in the way of
 
 312 TWELVE MILES FROM A LEXOX. 
 
 easy roads and luxurious carriages. How could they 
 express their hospitality but by flowing bowls and 
 smoking boards? Have we improved so much upon 
 them that we dare make a note of it? Have we 
 wrought all the brittleness out of our houses that we 
 dare throw stones at theirs? How many householders 
 are there whose first, or at least second thought at the 
 advent of a friend is not of what shall we eat, what shall 
 we drink? We do not reckon it in ourselves gross or 
 vulgar. We set before our friends four or five, or a 
 dozen courses, where the family table is amply fur 
 nished with two or three, and is sometimes content with 
 one. It is not that we fancy our friends given to ap 
 petite, or that they have come to us for the sake of eat 
 ing and drinking; but we long always in all ways to 
 do them honor even beyond service, and love is justi 
 fied in ministering even to material wants in its own 
 lavish and delicate fashion. It is not profusion, it is 
 not even prodigality that makes vulgarity; it is the 
 motive which underlies them. In the overabundance 
 of our ancestral hospitality shall we find any thing more 
 utterly coarse and debasing than our modern custom of 
 parading "The Presents" at wedding -feasts? If Em 
 erson says truly, " The only gift is a portion of thyself" 
 who gives of his love the most refined token ; he who 
 sets before his friend the fatlings of his own flock, the 
 white wheat of his own fields, the dainty viands of his 
 own devising, or he who coolly reckons up his own in 
 come, the circumstances of his friend, the degree of their 
 acquaintance, and on a mathematical calculation buys a 
 plated milk-pitcher of the nearest jeweler, and is mor-
 
 DLVXJSSS. 313 
 
 tified by seeing "solid silver" nppended to bis neigh 
 bor's cake-basket in the printed list of presents, while 
 his own, being uncharacterized, is open to the dreadful 
 suspicion of being what it is a sham? We believe 
 that the world has never seen a hospitality more ge 
 nial, more hearty, or even more appropriately express 
 ed, than that which was dispensed, primarily to their 
 friends, but practically to all comers, in the spacious 
 and plenteous farm-houses of those valiant, tender, man 
 ly, and many-sided men who are known to us mainly 
 as stern and somewhat forbidding ancestors. 
 
 But I have got on only so far in my dutiful prepara 
 tions for Thanksgiving as to cut from the newspaper a, 
 rule for making mince-pies. There I obey Mr. Sum- 
 ner's injunction to Mr. Stanton, and "stick." When 
 you read the rule, you find so much beef suet, and chop 
 ped stuff, and grated things, and commingling and con 
 fusion, that you lose heart at the outset. For Cinder 
 Ella knows naught of mince-pics; and the only advan 
 tage I have over her is that I know one when I see it. 
 I have but to sigh, "Mince-pie!" and rny angel will 
 move heaven and earth ; but she will bring about some 
 wonderful combination of fire and flour monstrum hor- 
 rendum malformum which she will set on the table 
 triumphantly, and will never suspect that it is not a 
 mince-pie of the most straitest sect. I shall know that 
 it is incomestibility and indigestibility raised to the 
 fourth power; but I shall not know what makes it so. 
 
 No. If mince-pies are indispensable to Thanksgiv 
 ing, I must go into the kitchen myself. I must study 
 up the whole subject. I must buy the goods, and su-
 
 TWELVE MILES F30X A LEMON. 
 
 pervise all their boilings and weighings and flavorings 
 which things I hate. And after all my trouble I 
 shall have on my hands a vast array of viands, which 
 will be to me for a temptation and a torment; for van 
 ity and vexation of spirit and body. 
 
 Is there no way by which I can serve two masters? 
 Can I not honor a. godly ancestry without ravaging my 
 own domestic peace and personal comfort? To meet 
 the duties of filial piety, must I sacrifice myself on the 
 altar of mince-piety? If I could buy half a dozen 
 mince-pies just to celebrate with! I shall have friends 
 enough at my board that day to share the primal curse, 
 and we could divide and conquer. But a bake-house 
 pie! 
 
 "Oli, whr are bakers made so coarse, 
 
 Or palates made so fine ? 
 On pies that might appall a horse 
 Shall man be made to dine?" 
 
 COWPEB (with variations). 
 
 Why, when the principle of co-operation is fairly dis 
 covered, are we so slow of heart to make the most of 
 it? It is cheaper to hire the factory to weave your cal 
 ico than it is to weave it yourself. But, also, the fac 
 tory calico is finer and smoother than your home-made. 
 It must be cheaper to hire the factory to make your 
 mince-pies than to make them yourself. But, alas! the 
 factory will not make good pies. The crust is sour and 
 heavy and hateful; the body of the pie is tough and 
 dry and stringy and lumpy. A miserable pretense, an 
 exasperating hypocrisy, is the average bought pie, the 
 restaurant pic
 
 DINNERS. 315 
 
 "Which none can love, which none can thank, 
 Creation's blot creation's blank." 
 
 So is the " baker's loaf," a light, dry, sour shaving, good 
 for nothing but to be cast out and trodden under foot 
 of men. If there were no such thing as a pie or a loaf 
 to be bought, one would take courage and exhort to 
 combined action ; but every day or so the bakers' carts 
 go jingling by to tell us that the principle of co-opera 
 tion is adopted only to be abused. 
 
 "Pancakes and fritters, 
 Say the bells of St. Peter's ; 
 Fools and wiseacres, 
 Say the bells of the bakers." 
 
 How gladly in the country would we buy all our 
 bread, at least through the summer months! and the 
 bread peddlers make it as feasible as the city shop 
 make it even more convenient, for they come to our 
 very doors; but the bravely labeled carts bring only 
 mockery and an inflated chip; so we build our fires 
 and heat our houses, with the thermometer already ra 
 ging up into the nineties, for bread we must have, and 
 not a stone, even with its specific gravity left out And 
 so, instead of a good genius sending us sweet, light, 
 wholesome pies to our own great relief and its reason 
 able profit, an ogre will .continue to concoct malevolent 
 abominations, and we must turn every peaceful home 
 into a toiling, moiling pie-factory on a small, and there 
 fore on an extravagant scale. 
 
 And yet there is a ray of light. I do not hope whol 
 ly to reconstruct the nation, but might I not insert. my 
 small wedge into the log? All my neighbors will be
 
 316 TWELVE MILES FROM A LEMOX. 
 
 making delicious pies. Suppose I engage one of them 
 to make me a certain number. They will be home 
 made pies, and yet they will be bought pies. When 
 Solomon! a is making her own batch, she will hardly 
 feel the exertion or the cost of half a dozen more. I 
 will offer her baker's price, or her own if she prefer it, 
 and possibly I may inoculate her with a love of trade, 
 and she will be permanent pie-maker to my majesty. 
 To be sure, I shall be the town-talk for incapacity and 
 unthrift; but think of the " week before Thanksgiving'' 
 free from suet and the sound of the chopping-knife 
 and the dread ordeal of raisin-stoning! Come ridicule, 
 scorn, contumely ! I will arise and go to my neigh 
 bor! 
 
 Ah! but my neighbor comes to me! and 
 
 "Now gentle gales 
 
 Fanning their odoriferous wings dispense 
 Native perfumes," 
 
 and all Arabia breathes from yonder basket Arabia 
 and the creamy iatness of New England harvests, 
 and the Yule-tide cheer of mcrrie England, and the 
 fruits find spices of the Golden Year. Oh, absti 
 nence! where arc the charms that sages have seen in 
 thy face ? 
 
 Peace on earth, good-will to men! It is the senti 
 ment that underlies all feasting, whether we name it the 
 Thanksgiving of the sons or the Christmas of the fa 
 thers, whether we celebrate it with song and dance or 
 psalm and prayer. 
 
 With wars many, and disasters many, with battle, 
 and murder, and sudden death, we are often and again
 
 317 
 
 tempted to think that there is no peace on earth, and 
 that the heavens bear an ill-will to men. Our holidays 
 are clouded with the smoke of a burning city, of vil 
 lages laid waste, of a land desolate and death-smitten. 
 Peace on earth, good-will to men, with hundreds of 
 families swept out upon a winter prairie, homeless by 
 night, homeless through bitter months? Good-will to 
 the aged and the sick, to women and little children 
 rushing through burning woods from a devouring flame? 
 Good-will to friends forever separated and desolate, to 
 little ones suddenly orphaned, and mothers bereaved, 
 and men robbed in a moment of the fruits of lifelong 
 love and toil? Peace on an earth plundered of beauty 
 and dignity, and doomed to ashes and ruin ? Yes, peace 
 on earth, good-will to men, in spite of fire and flood. 
 Nay, the little one has not forgotten the thrill of that 
 wonderful hour when the sorrow of Chicago came pul 
 sating over the land. One moment of stunned and 
 speechless shock, and then the world moved. From 
 the scattered hamlet under the bill, from the teeming 
 cities beyond the sea, rang one voice of sympathy and 
 succor. The ruin of Chicago was great, but of all the 
 flames fed on, nothing was so priceless as that which 
 rose up out of the flame the stately, stainless flower of 
 human sympathy, of universal brotherhood. 
 
 But "ah !" sighs Fastidia, born under the shadow of 
 Boston State-house, and with the intensest pride of Bos 
 ton quickening all her bright blood, while she berates it 
 with a lover's fond abuse. " It is all very well for a dap 
 per little city, pert and upstart like Chicago, to be burn 
 ed; but staid old Boston!" And indeed it does seem
 
 318 TWELVE MILES FROM A LEMON. 
 
 an, unparalleled audacity. That the flame sbould lick 
 along the streets of the Hancocks, and the Otises, and 
 the Thajers, and the Appletons as greedily as if they 
 were but vulgar paths, this indeed may well spread dis 
 may. But if staid Boston will discard ancestral sense, 
 and rear its roofs of pine and paper, the destroying an 
 gel will not stay his hand for the storied names of yes 
 terday, nor even for the solid men of to-day. Yet to 
 all the living, peace and good-will ! Christmas has to 
 nil one song, if our ears can only be attuned to the sing 
 ing. Better than granite piles especially with .tarred 
 roofs above them is the energy that built them, the 
 spirit that survives them. On. Saturday a man was 
 rich, and increased in goods, and had need of nothing 
 enriched by his own sagacity and industry. On Sun 
 day the fire has swept him back to the starting-point of 
 his youth. " Will you shake hands with a poor man ?" 
 is his undaunted greeting. On Monday he is off to be 
 gin life anew. 
 
 ''All night long the noise of battle rolled" the bat 
 tle between human power and elemental force. All 
 the long, bright autumn Sunday, the sweet, serene In 
 dian summer day, the smoke of that fierce fight rose and 
 rolled, column upon column, stretching across the wide, 
 level horizon, heaping up beauty for the brilliant sun 
 set; through the plains below us the telegraph wires 
 were flashing tidings, calls, responses, orders, and over 
 the long lines of railroads from all quarters dashed the 
 laden trains, bearing eager crowds. "Poor old Bos 
 ton !" "Dear old Boston!" we sighed with heavy hearts, 
 forgetting all her pride, and remembering only her
 
 319 
 
 peril ; yet most pathetic of all, unspeakably touching 
 and tearful, was the far, faint sound of Boston bells call 
 ing through the second midnight for help in her deadly 
 need. And how nobly help came! From North and 
 South, from near and far, men rushed to the rescue, nor 
 were there wanting those who dared to die. Shall we 
 fail in holiday greetings? Shall we distrust peace on 
 earth ? Shall we doubt the coming of new and golden 
 years while thus, even now, their feet are beautiful upon 
 the mountains? 
 
 The best things of this world are imperishable. En 
 ergy, resolution, courage, a dauntless persistence fire 
 can not destroy them. Gentleness, unselfishness, ten 
 derness, magnanimity floods can not overwhelm them. 
 In order to have happy festivals, it is not necessary to 
 transact affairs in a five-story warehouse with marble 
 facings. He alone holds a happiness worth the having 
 who holds the trust of those who live with him. Whose 
 click at the gate is music, whose voice at the door is 
 solace, whose face at the fireside is rest, whose presence 
 everywhere is sunshine he it is to whom Christmas 
 is truly the Christ-day, whose year is ever happy and 
 ever new. To you for it is you I mean, oh gentle and 
 friendly reader, I proffer heart-felt salutations. As sim 
 ple, as noble, you do not suspect what strength goes in 
 the clasp of your hand, what force, and sustenance, and 
 good cheer are voiced in -your welcoming words ! It is 
 you who make life sweet and wholesome. It is you 
 who soften the rigors of its inevitable frosts, -who tem 
 per its raging heats, and moisten its parched noondays 
 with the dew-drops of the morning. To you, thought-
 
 320 TWELVE MILES FMOM A LEMON. 
 
 ful and grateful husband, wise and sustaining wife, 
 pleasant and steadfast friend, upright and honorable in 
 all things, in love and life alike tried and sure, to you 
 I give glad greetings of the sacred and merry Christ 
 mas, and the fruitful, fair New Year. 
 
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