ESSAYS AT ESSAYS
XXXVI
THE BULL, THE GIRL, AND THE RED SHAWL
There is no incident in all the realms of literature, from the “penny dreadful” up to the three-volume novel, that has afforded so much material for the pen of the writer of fiction as the delightful episode of the bull, the young girl with the red shawl, and the young girl’s lover. Sometimes the cast includes the lover’s hated rival, but the story may be told without using him.
It is thirty-odd years since I first came across this thrilling adventure in the pages of a child’s book, very popular at the time. How well I remember how my young blood—to be exact, my seven-year-old blood—thrilled as I mentally watched this frail girl, with a start of just three feet, lead the tremendous and horribly savage bull in a three-hundred-yard sprint, only to trip at last on the only obstruction in the ten-acre field; how, just as the bull reached her, she flung her red shawl a few rods to the right; how the bull, leaving her, plunged after it; how she, weak and trembling, ran to the stone wall and managed to vault it just as her lover, a brawny blacksmith, who had seen the whole affair at too great a distance to be of immediate service, reached the wall and received her in his arms. “Oh, Kenston,” she murmured, “you have saved my life!” And then she fainted, and I believe the bull ate up the shawl; at any rate, its part in that particular story was ended.
I have always felt that, thrilling as this scene was, it had not been worked for all it was worth; but an extensive reading since then has brought me to the conclusion that, first and last, it has been worked for its full value.
The next time that I read the enthralling narrative I was some years older, but the memory of the other telling was still fresh within me; and so, when, in the second chapter, I read about a savage old bull, one Hector, the property of Squire Flint, the meanest man in the county,—not that his meanness had anything to do with the story, but it is one of the conventions that a savage bull shall be owned by a cross, crabbed, and thoroughly stingy man,—I say, when I had read thus far my pulse quickened. Inexperienced as I was, I somehow sensed the coming situation. I seemed to know as by clairvoyance that, however limited the heroine’s wardrobe might be in some respects, there was one article of apparel that she surely possessed, or would possess in time to meet the exigencies. True enough, in the very next chapter her maiden aunt, a saintly old lady of ninety, died and bequeathed to her sorrowing niece a red pongee shawl of great value—as a bull-enrager. The book had seemed prosy at the start, but now that I knew what was coming, and that it was that that was coming, I read on breathlessly.
Needless to say that in the next chapter the young girl fell in love with a strapping young fellow, who immediately proposed that they take a walk. How well I knew, though they did not, where that walk would lead them! The mad bull—in this case it was mad, although any old bull will do, mad or not—was rampant in a lot a mile south of the young girl’s house, and they started to walk due north; but I knew full well that they would need to cross that particular pasture before they got home, and a few pages later found them climbing over a stone wall into the bull’s domain, and then they walked along, intent only on their new-found happiness. The day was chilly,—in the middle of a particularly hot July,—so that the girl could have an excuse to wear her red shawl. Now, having brought two of the actors upon the stage, the cue was soon given to the bull; and in a moment the happy lovers, feeling the ground tremble beneath their feet, turned and saw Hector, his horns gyrating with rage, his eyes bulging out, and his head lowered as he thundered along straight for the pongee bequest. To take her under his strong arm and to rush forward were the only things for the young man to do, and he did them; and then the rest ran as per schedule. I believe that in this case the young man threw the girl into a tree and then plunged down a woodchuck’s hole. At any rate, the girl was unharmed. That is the one unalterable formula in constructing these bull stories: save the girl unharmed. You may break the young man’s leg or arm, and you may do what you will with the bull, but the young girl must come through unscathed.
It was years before this moving incident ceased to hold me, and in that time how many changes were rung on it! Once only was the red shawl absent, and I wondered how in the world the bull was to be infuriated, as he was a singularly mild beast in the earlier chapters, and on Maydays had been festooned with garlands. Then, too, the girl was in deep mourning—for her lover! But the ten-acre lot was all right, and as the author was a clever man, I felt that he would find a way to run the act with a small cast and no properties. So I read on, and after wondering, together with the girl herself, what could have caused the peaceful old bovine to chase her, tail up and head down, the full length of a particularly long pasture, she and I found out when she realized that, the day being sunny, she had picked up her cousin’s parasol, which was necessarily of a brilliant scarlet. She had no lover, for, as I say, he had died—two chapters before the book was begun; but she did have presence of mind, and so she inserted the point of the parasol in the bull’s mouth, and then opened it, and while he was extracting it with his fore paws, she reached the fence and vaulted it in the usual way.
The possibilities of the incident are by no means exhausted, and so far from “Amos Judd” being the last story in which it was used, I saw it in a tale published this month, and this time with the full paraphernalia of hated rival, lover, red shawl, and all; but for me it had lost its zest. To be sure, if they would make the hero an athlete, and have him bravely stand his ground while the girl climbed to the top of an enormous elm, and then, just as the bull lowered his head to toss him, have the hero jump high in the air and make the bull pass beneath him, and as he reached ground again seize the bull, not by the horns, but by the tail, and, swinging it three times around his head, dash it against a tree and stun it,—that is, if its tail were securely welded to its body,—there would be an original treatment of the subject. And if its tail were but loosely fixed to it, the hero could pull it out, and the bull, filled with chagrin, would walk off, dismayed and humiliated.
But, pending that form of the story, I am studiously avoiding all novels that contain heroines with red shawls, or that make early reference to fierce bulls, or that speak of a certain ten-acre lot peculiarly adapted for lovers’ peregrinations; for, like the successful burglar, I know the combination.
XXXVII
CONCERNING DISH-WASHING
Has the reader ever considered how much time is wasted every day by busy women in the work of washing dishes? Of course, if a man has plenty of money and, from philanthropic motives, engages a girl to perform this unpleasant—I had almost said “duty”—this unpleasant task, I suppose we cannot, strictly speaking, regard her time as wasted, for she might else be loafing in an intelligence-office without gaining a scrap of that article. I refer to the lives led by weary housewives who, having no aid from a hired housemaid, day out and day in will make themselves thin by the never-ceasing and perfectly useless grind of dish-washing; for the dishes don’t stay clean for more than a few hours.
For years I ate my meals in selfish content, little recking at what cost the clean service was gained, until I discovered that my sister, who is also my housekeeper, had sold her piano, not having time to play upon it. I was shocked to think what a power this custom of dish-washing had over the minds of the feminine portion of our public.
But this dreadful waste of time that is going on in thousands of homes in this country every day was brought home to me in a still more striking manner not long after. My sister went away to visit a friend, and left me to keep bachelor’s hall. I had always had a good taste for cooking, although hitherto my practice had been confined to boiling eggs and buttering hot toast on a plate at the back of the stove. The first meal that I prepared, a breakfast, consisted of oatmeal, steak, fried potatoes, bread, butter, milk, and water. We will pass over the meal itself, as its discussion is foreign to our purpose. Indeed, the less said about it the better. It was nine when I had finished eating, and dumped my dishes and knives and forks into tepid water. I am a fast worker, but the clock in the neighboring church had ceased striking twelve when my last dish was wiped and put away.
I had hoped to do a little writing that morning, but it was now time to get luncheon. Luckily, that meal called into play very few dishes, and by two, or half-past, I had made an end of my second stint. Feeling elated that I had a whole afternoon on my hands, I prepared a course dinner. I found some cold soup in the refrigerator, and I bought a bluefish, five or six pounds of beef for roasting, some Parker House rolls, and a lemon-pie for dessert. There were lettuce and eggs in the house, and plenty of canned vegetables. I also made some good coffee, with the aid of a French coffee-pot, that indispensable adjunct of a well-ordered household. I found that the courses were very hard to manage so that they would follow in their proper order. They weren’t even satisfied to finish together like evenly matched racers, but the roast was burned five minutes before I thought of warming up the soup, and ten minutes before I had scaled the fish. Then the latter wouldn’t broil readily until most of it was in the fire. The vegetables I forgot entirely, and I decided at the last moment to deny myself the salad, as dinner was waiting and I was hungry. I might add that I inadvertently cut the pie with the fish-knife, and that cast a damper on the dessert. However, as I said, the coffee was good—and, anyhow, I am digressing.
It was seven when I emptied my dishes into the water, and I worked with a will, as I had a very exciting novel that I was desirous of finishing. It was a few minutes past eleven when I emptied my dish-pan for the last time, and then I was ripe for bed.
As time wore on I became more dexterous in the use of the dish-cloth and -towel, and the day before sister returned I devoted but six hours to dish-washing. To be sure, I had given up course dinners, because they took too many plates, and for other reasons that need not to be quoted here.
As I say, I am a fast worker, and yet it took me over six hours a day to clean the crockery. Assuming that a woman can do it in eight hours, she wastes half of her waking moments in drudgery beside which the making of bricks without straw would be a pastime.
There is absolutely nothing in the dish-washing habit to recommend it. It is ruinous to hands and temper, and, indeed, I do not see but that it is immoral. Anything that puts us in the proper mood for swearing is immoral, and there is nothing in the whole housekeeping routine so conducive to highly spiced language as dish-washing.
And to what purpose is this waste of time? I won’t go so far as to advocate a return to the fingers that were used before forks for the purpose of conveying food to the mouth, for that would but relieve us from the washing of cutlery; but I will say that the man who will invent a cheap yet very ornate dinner service that may be destroyed after once using will have earned the undying gratitude of the women of this country and a princely fortune besides.
And when he has invented it, sister may go on another visit.
XXXVIII
A PERENNIAL FEVER
The world hears much of the dangers of typhoid and yellow and scarlet fever, and the skill of physicians is ever employed to reduce those dangers to a minimum; but in every country, at all seasons of the year, there is a fever that numbers its victims by the thousand, and yet no doctor has ever prescribed for it, nor is there any drug in the pharmacopœia that will alleviate it.
The malady to which I refer is hen fever.
If a city woman intends marrying a city man, and then moving out a little way into the country, as she values her peace of mind, let her make sure that he is immune. Unless, indeed, both are prepared to come down with it at once. For it is unlike all other fevers in that a man and his wife may have it together and be happy; but if he or she have it alone, then woe be to that house.
The germs of hen fever are carried in a chance conversation, in a picture of gallinaceous activity, in the perusal of a poultry-book. A man hears or looks or reads, and the mischief is done. The subtle poison is in his blood, although he knows it not.
Hen fever takes various forms. With some it is manifested in a desire to keep a few blooded fowls and breed for points; with another, to keep a few birds for the sake of fresh eggs and broilers: but in whatsoever form it come, it will cause the upheaval of its victim’s most cherished plans and habits.
He may have been an ardent admirer of Shakspere, and in the evenings it has been his wont to read aloud to his wife while she knitted; but now, little recking what she does, he reads to himself “Farm Poultry” or “The Care of Hens,” or—and this is the second stage of the disease—he reads aloud to her that hens cannot thrive without plenty of gravel, that cracked wheat is better than whole corn for growing pullets, that the best way to cure a hen of eating her own eggs is to fill one with mustard, etc.
Time was when he had an opinion on politics, on finance, on literature, on the thousand and one things that make for conversation, and his neighbors dropped in to hear him talk engagingly of what he had read or seen; but now, when they come, he tells them that his brown Leghorn hen laid twenty eggs in twenty-five days, while his buff Cochin laid only eight in the same time; that his white Plymouth Rock is crop-bound, and his Wyandotte rooster has the pip.
Lucky indeed is his wife if he stick to the good old way of hatching chickens by hens instead of kerosene-oil; for if he get an incubator she had better get a divorce. How many homes have been wrecked by patent incubators will never be known.
But even if the fevered one stick to the natural method of hatching, there will be many times when his wife will wonder why she left a comfortable and sociable home to spend her evenings alone; for he will be in the hen-house, setting hens, or washing soiled eggs, or divesting nestlings of the reluctant shell, or dusting his whole flock with the snuff-like insecticide, or kerosening their roosts.
With some the fever never abates; with some it is intermittent; some have it hardest in the spring of the year, when hens are laying their prettiest, and profits may be figured in money as well as on paper. But whether it be light or heavy, hen fever will run its course without let or hindrance; and, as I have hinted, happy is the wife who comes down with it simultaneously with her husband; for, though their neighbors will shun them as they would a deadly pestilence, yet they will be company for each other, and will prate ceaselessly, yet cheerily, upon the best foods for laying hens, the best exposure for coops, how many hens can live in one house with best results, when a chicken should be weaned of bread, what breed of hens is least idiotic, and kindred topics.
As for me, I am free to come and go among hens; to look on their markings with unmoved eye; to view their output with normal pulse; to hear “the cock’s shrill clarion” without pricking up my ears; to read of the latest thing in incubators without turning a hair: for I have survived the fever; I am an immune.
XXXIX
“AMICUS REDIVIVUS”
Josephus says, “Post hoc ergo propter hoc,” and it might well be applied to the concerns of this day, for what one of us has not at some time or other felt a “pactum illicitum,” a “qualis ab incepto,” as it were, permeating his whole being, and bringing vividly before the retina the transitory state of all things worldly? As Chaucer said:
For who so wolde senge the cattes skin,
Than wol the cat wel dwellen in here in.
For it cannot be gainsaid that, despite the tendency toward materialism, the cosmic rush and the spiritual captivity that lead so many brave souls into the martyrdom of Achiacharus, there is in all of us a certain quality that must and will assert itself.
It seems but yesterday that Shelley, in his poem on “Mutability,” said:
We are as clouds that veil the midnight moon;
but how pat is the application to-day! We are as clouds. You who boast yourself of your ancestry, you whose dignity is as a cloak of ermine, ye are but clouds. How well Goethe knew this! We all remember those lambent lines of his—I cannot translate adequately, so I will quote from the original German:
Fräulein Anna, das Papier in Deutschland ist wie das Papier in Amerika.
Ages ago Sophocles had worded it in almost the same phrase:
Oh, race of mortal men oppressed with care!
What nothings are we, like to shadows vain,
Cumb’ring the ground and wandering to and fro.
The greatest poets, from Le Gallienne down to Shakspere, have been aware of this evanescent property in the cumbrous and exsufflicate prowlers amid these “glimpses of the moon.” Well may we say with Cæsar, “Quamdiu se bene gesserit.”
There is always a touch of ozone in the words of Horace, and we find him saying of this very thing, “Precieuse ridicules pretiosa supellex.” Could it have been said better? How airily he pricks the bubble of man’s self-esteem! “Dressed in a little brief authority,” man plays his part amid mundane happenings tremelloid and sejant, and with a sort of innate connascence, a primitive conglutinate efflorescence, he approaches nearer and nearer, day by day, to that time when, as Shakspere hath it, “the beachy girdle of the ocean” will resolve itself into its component parts, and man as man will cease to exist.
But, to pass to a more inchoate view of these things,—to the “opum furiata cupido” of the ancient Latins,—what is there in all this that tends to lessen a man’s self-glorification, his auto-apotheosis? Victor Hugo can tell us:
Petit bourgeois père La Chaise
Pour prendre congé tour de force
Connaisseur tout Thérèse
Façon de parler Edmund Gosse.
The author of “Les Misérables” was himself a man, and he knew. And no less a man was Coplas de Manrique, and in his beautiful lyric, “Caballeros,” he says:
Tiene Vd.-Usted mi sombrero
Tiene Vd.-Usted mi chaleco
No lo tengo, no lo tengo
Tiene Vd.-Usted mi.
“Noblesse oblige,” and it behooves all of us, however mighty our positions in life, to unbend a little and try to mollify these manducable and irresoluble phases of molecular existence, to the end that we may accomplish a “vis medicatrix naturae” and a “vade mecum” that shall be valuable to us in our journey to the tomb and through nether space.
So, then, may we “with an unfaltering trust approach our grave,” and, as Schiller says so musically:
Ich kann nicht mit der linken Hand schreiben.
XL
THE PROPER CARE OF FLIES
It is a fact beyond cavil that ninety-nine flies out of a hundred perish every year for lack of proper care on the part of housewives; that the attention that is lavished upon the house-cat, if expended upon the house-fly, would cause him to stay with us throughout the twelvemonth.
I have devoted years of patient study to the busy buzzers, and I speak as one having authority. Flies need warmth as much as humans do—nay, more than their biped brethren, for we can stand the early autumn frosts without a fire, but it is those few days that kill off the little fellows that have been our winged companions through the summer season, singing in the new day, sampling our butter and meats, and tickling us half to death with their erratic pilgrimages and divagations. A little forethought on our part, a speedier lighting of the furnace fires, and flies in midwinter would no longer be a rarity.
This well-nigh universal carelessness is due to a woeful ignorance as to the habits of the fly, and not to intentional cruelty. Why, we know more about the ways of the wapiti than of the most common occupant of our houses. To give an instance, most people refer to the fly as a scavenger, a lover of tainted meats and vegetables. This is only because he is so often forced to eat tainted meat or go without altogether. There are fresh milk and fish for the cat, dainty tidbits for the dog, millet and rape for the canary; yet how many Christian people think to provide something tempting for the flies? But too often we begrudge them the crumbs that fall from the table.
So far from flies loving “high” meat, it is an acquired taste with them. This had long been a theory with me, but it is only a year since I proved it by an interesting experiment. I secured a setting of flies’ eggs,—not thoroughbred eggs, but just the ordinary barn-yard variety,—and I set them under a motherly bluebottle fly, after I had made her a comfortable nest in a pill-box. I saw to it that she had the proper food for a setting fly—not mush and milk, but flakes of hominy and grains of sugar once a day. I also dusted her nest thoroughly with insecticide and covered her with a tea-strainer so that she would be secure from molestation from other flies. For three weeks she was faithful to her duties, and then, one morning, I saw that she had experienced the sweet joys of motherhood, for there, on the edge of her nest, sat thirteen—mark the number—cunning little flies, pluming and preening themselves with innate skill. I could scarce keep back the tears.
For a few days I let the little flock follow their mother, and then I shut them up away from her in my guest-chamber and began their education. The sweetest milk was theirs from the start, and after a week of bread diet, that their feathers might be strengthened, I began to give them small scraps of porter-house steak and Southdown mutton. It was wonderful to see how the little beggars throve. One night I slept in the guest-chamber, and they awoke me before the robin’s matin song, although they were not three weeks old. Their tread had a firmness, a titillating power, that never comes to a tramp fly or to one improperly nurtured. Then, their buzzing was so sonorous that sleep was impossible once they tuned up, so I was in no danger of becoming a drowse-abed.
When they were two months old I determined to test my theory. I procured some meat from the larder of a gormand friend of mine, and brought it into my guest-chamber in an air-tight box. Then I opened the box and awaited developments. If flies are natural-born birds of carrion, then they would rush upon this stuff with avidity. I hid behind the arras—if I am quite sure what arrases are—and watched my little pets with some concern. They flew over to the meat, sniffed it disdainfully, buzzed with ire for a few seconds, and then flew to the ceiling with every appearance of disgust. Then the largest one signaled to his fellows, and they flew down once more, lifted the “condemned beef” in their talons as firemen seize a life-preserving net, and sailed to the open window, where they dropped it. In five minutes’ time it was black with flies that had not received proper nurture. Was I pleased? I was delighted. I set forth a feast of sugar on top of my bald head, and sat in the guest-chamber until my pets had made an end of eating.
The nineteenth century is nearing its close, and the house-fly is not a perfect insect; but, housekeeper, it lies with you to improve the breed. Exercise a little care in the choice of their food, and when the biting days of early fall come upon the land, make provision for warming your little guests of the summer days, and if the winds of winter whistle sharp they will be answered by the hot little buzz of myriads of flies.
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE
Contractions such as “he ’s” and “she ’d” (with a space) have been changed to “he’s” and “she’d” (without a space).
Obvious typographical errors and punctuation errors have been corrected after careful comparison with other occurrences within the text and consultation of external sources.
Except for those changes noted below, all misspellings in the text, and inconsistent or archaic usage, have been retained.
[Pg xii]: ‘Harper’s Bazar’ replaced by ‘Harper’s Bazaar’.
[Pg 124]: ‘what the concensus’ replaced by ‘what the consensus’.
[Pg 237]: ‘dainty titbits’ replaced by ‘dainty tidbits’.