“STUDY MEN, NOT BOOKS.”
Oh, but books are such safe company! They keep your secrets well; they never boast that they made your eyes glisten, or your cheek flush, or your heart throb. You may take up your favorite author, and love him at a distance just as warmly as you like, for all the sweet fancies and glowing thoughts that have winged your lonely hours so fleetly and so sweetly. Then you may close the book, and lean your cheek against the cover, as if it were the face of a dear friend; shut your eyes and soliloquise to your heart’s content, without fear of misconstruction, even though you should exclaim in the fullness of your enthusiasm, “What an adorable soul that man has!” You may put the volume under your pillow, and let your eye and the first ray of morning light fall on it together, and no Argus eyes shall rob you of that delicious pleasure, no carping old maid, or strait-laced Pharisee shall cry out, “it isn’t proper!” You may have a thousand petty, provoking, irritating annoyances through the day, and you shall come back again to your dear old book, and forget them all in dream land. It shall be a friend that shall be always at hand; that shall never try you by caprice, or pain you by forgetfulness, or wound you by distrust.
“Study men!”
Well, try it! I don’t believe there’s any neutral territory where that interesting study can be pursued as it should be. Before you get to the end of the first chapter, they’ll be making love to you from the mere force of habit—and because silks, and calicoes, and delaines, naturally suggest it. It’s just as natural to them as it is to sneeze when a ray of sunshine flashes suddenly in their faces. “Study men!” That’s a game, my dear, that two can play at. Do you suppose they are going to sit quietly down and let you dissect their hearts, without returning the compliment? No, indeed! that’s where they differ slightly from “books!”—they always expect an equivalent.
Men are a curious study! Sometimes it pays to read to “the end of the volume,” and then again, it don’t—mostly the latter!
“MURDER OF THE INNOCENTS;”
OR, HOME THE PLACE FOR MARRIED FOLKS
Happy Mrs. Emily! Freed from the thraldom of house keeping, and duly installed mistress of a fine suite of rooms at —— Hotel. No more refractory servants to oversee, no more silver or porcelain to guard, no more cupboards, or closets, or canisters to explore; no more pickles or preserves to make; no more bills of fare to invent,—and over and above all, mistress of a bell-wire which was not “tabooed” on washing and ironing days.
Time to lounge on the sofa, and devour “yellow-covered literature;” time to embroider caps, and collars, and chemisettes; time to contemplate the pretty face where housekeeping might have planted “crows feet,” had she not fortunately foreseen the symptoms, and turned her back on dull Care and all his croaking crew.
Happy Mrs. Emily! No bird let loose from a cage was ever more joyous; not even her own little children—for she had two of them, and pretty creatures they were too, with their cherry lips, and dimpled limbs, and flaxen ringlets; and very weary they grew, of their gloomy nursery, with its one window, commanding a view of a dingy shed and a tall spectral-looking distilhouse chimney, emitting clouds of smoke and suffocating vapor. Nannie, the nurse, didn’t fancy it, either, so she spent her time in the lobbies and entries, challenging compliments from white-jacketed waiters, while the children peeped curiously into the half-open doors, taking drafts of cold air on their bare necks and shoulders. Sometimes they balanced themselves alarmingly on the spiral ballustrade, gazing down into the dizzy Babel below, inhaling clouds of cigar smoke, and listening, with round-eyed wonder, to strange conversations, which memory’s cud should chew, for riper years to digest.
“No children allowed at the table d’hôte”—so the “hotel regulations” pompously set forth—the landlord’s tablecloths, gentlemen’s broadcloth, and ladies’ silk dresses being sworn foes to little Paul Pry fingers. Poor little exiles! they took their sorrowful meals in the servants’ hall, with their respective nurses, the bill of fare consisting of a rehash of yesterday’s French dishes, (spiced for the digestion of an ostrich.) This was followed by a dessert of stale pastry and ancient raisins, each nurse at the outset propitiating her infant charge with a huge bunch, that she might regale herself with the substantials!—mamma, meanwhile, blissfully ignoring the whole affair, absorbed in the sublime occupation of making German worsted dogs.
Papa, too, had his male millennium. No more marketing to do; no more coal, or wood, or kindling to buy; no cistern, or pump, or gaspipe to keep in repair. Such a luxury as it was to have a free pass to the “smoking room,” (alias bar-room,) where the atmosphere was so dense that he couldn’t tell the latitude of his nose, and surrounded by “hale fellows well met.” His eldest boy accompanied him, listening, on his knee, to questionable jokes, which he repeated at bed-time to pert Nannie, the nurse, who understood their significance much better than his innocent little lordship.
Papa, to be sure, had some drawbacks, but they were very trifling;—for instance, his shirts were quite buttonless, his dickeys stringless, and his stockings had ventilator toes;—but then, how could mamma be seen patching and mending in such an aristocratic atmosphere?—she might lose caste; and as to Nannie, her hands were full, what with babies and billet-doux.
You should have seen Mrs. Emily in the evening; with sparkling eyes and bracelets, flounced robe and daintily-shod feet, twisting her Chinese fan, listening to moustached idlers, and recollecting, with a shudder, the long Caudle evenings, formerly divided between her husband, his newspaper, and her darning-needle.
Then the petite soupers at ten o’clock in the evening, where the ladies were enchanting, the gentlemen quite entirely irresistible; where wit and champagne corks flew with equal celerity; and headaches, and dyspepsia, and nightmare, lay perdu amid fried oysters, venison steaks, chicken salad, and India-rubber, anti-temperance jellies.
Then followed the midnight reünion in the drawing-room, where promiscuous polkaing and waltzing, (seen through champagne fumes,) seemed not only proper, but delightful.
It was midnight. There was hurrying to and fro in the entry halls and lobbies; a quick, sharp cry for medical help; the sobs and tears of an agonized mother, and the low moan of a dying child; for nature had rebelled at last, at impure air, unwholesome food, and alternate heats and chills.
“No hope,” the doctor said; “no hope,” papa mechanically repeated; “no hope!” echoed inexorable Death, as he laid his icy finger on the quivering little lips.
It was a dearly bought lesson. The Lady Emily never forgot it. Over her remaining bud of promise she tearfully bends, finding her quiet happiness in the healthful, sacred and safe retreat of the home fireside.