The Kitchen.
The art of managing the kitchen is what every wife should thoroughly understand; and all those girls, who have any chance of becoming wives, should be careful to complete this important part of their education. Even those who are rich, and who can afford to hire people to perform the work of the kitchen, should still understand it, for the following reasons:
In the first place, if the lady of the house knows how work ought to be done, she is competent to direct her assistants; she knows what they should do, and how they should do it. If they fail, she can be just in bestowing the degree of censure, which is truly merited. If, on the other hand, she is ignorant, she is as likely to find fault for what is well done, as for what is ill done. A lady who is ignorant on the subject of household duties, is very apt to be unreasonable in the direction of her helpers: they therefore learn to despise, and perhaps to deceive her; thus making themselves and their mistress very unhappy. In this way things pass for a time; but they go on from bad to worse, till they are beyond endurance, and the lady’s help leaves her.
In this way, owing to the ignorance of the lady, many a household is rendered miserable, many a home is a scene of disorder and confusion. It is in part owing to this ignorance, and the want of judgment and discretion that attend it, that we hear of so much changing of servants, and so much trouble with them, in families. The truth is, that servants are human beings; they are rational creatures, and have their rights; when they are ill treated or find themselves uncomfortable, they will change their condition. It is a blessed thing, that, in our country, even those who are in humble circumstances are independent, and need not submit to oppression, even in a kitchen. They are as much entitled to have their feelings duly considered, as any others. If they are honest and faithful, they are as well entitled to respect as others; and it is a pleasing thought, that, when they do not thus obtain their rights and privileges, they can go away, and seek a place where they may find them.
Now ignorance of the duties of the kitchen, on the part of a lady, implies ignorance of the proper way of treating her servants; and it frequently happens that the servant is more wise, more reasonable, more respectable, in the sight of God and man, than the ignorant lady of the house. As ignorance of household duties is thus degrading and hurtful—bringing contempt upon the subject of it, and misery to all around—I beseech all the black-eyed and blue-eyed little lasses, who pretend to be the friends of Robert Merry, to beware of it.
I know that some young ladies fancy that it is degrading thus to work in the kitchen. Alas, what miserable delusion! Degrading to do that which contributes to the comfort of home, that which makes a family happy, that which enables a wife to discharge her duties well and wisely! Oh, do not let any of my readers indulge such folly! It is never degrading to do our duty—but it is degrading to despise it. Even if a person is so rich as to render labor unnecessary, yet it is impossible to enjoy even riches without some toil, some industry; and when my young friends grow up, if I should live so long, I hope to see those who are girls now, industrious, skilful housewives then. If they can reign well over the little kingdom of the kitchen, I am sure they will preside successfully over the parlor. One thing should be remembered—and it is this: home is seldom happy where housewife duties are neglected; home is seldom miserable where they are wisely discharged!
The Voyages, Travels, and Experiences
of Thomas Trotter.
CHAPTER XIX.
Visit to Herculaneum.—Singular position of that city.—Account of the manuscripts discovered there.—Visit to Pompeii, and description of the curiosities of that place.
No traveller can visit this region without being attracted to those remarkable places, Herculaneum and Pompeii, two Roman cities, which, as every reader of history well knows, were overwhelmed by an eruption of Vesuvius in the year 79, and, after lying buried, totally forgotten, for seventeen hundred years, were accidentally discovered about a century ago, by digging a well.
I first visited Herculaneum, which is nearest to Naples. This city lies seventy or eighty feet under ground, and the towns of Portici and Resina are built over it. I went down a dark passage with steps, like the descent into some enormous dungeon, till I reached an open space resembling a cavern, very wide and lofty, but as dark and dismal a spot as one would desire to visit. On examining the side of this great chamber by the light of torches, we could discover the stone walls and other masonry of the structure, all showing it to be an ancient theatre. In this place were originally found three fine marble statues, which are now to be seen in the museum at Naples. Round about the building are various dark passages and galleries dug through the hard earth; but the whole city of Herculaneum lies at such a depth below the surface, that very little of it besides the theatre has been explored, on account of the labor and expense attending the operation. The city was overwhelmed first by a shower of ashes, and then by a torrent of hot water. The ashes and water have hardened into a compact mass, which, after a consolidation of seventeen hundred years, is found very difficult to dig through.
There is very little to be seen in Herculaneum; but it causes the strangest sensations to stand in that gloomy subterranean theatre, once enlivened by the bustling throngs and noisy gayety of a city populace. Now all is silent and dreary, and no sound falls upon the ear save the echoing footstep of a lonely visiter, or the rumbling of a carriage-wheel overhead! It is not probable that the city will ever be laid open to the light of day, as this could hardly be done without serious injury to the territory above it.
The most remarkable objects hitherto found here have been the manuscripts. These were rolls of papyrus, but so completely charred by the hot ashes, that they could not be handled without danger of crumbling to pieces. By very delicate management, however, assisted by machinery, a series of these have been unrolled. They contained a treatise, in the Greek language, on music, by Philodemas. Most of the others that have been examined are also in Greek; but no writings of any great intrinsic value have yet come to light.
A few miles further along the shore of the Bay of Naples brought me to Pompeii. This city was buried under a shower of ashes, but was not covered so deep as Herculaneum; and as no town was built over it after the catastrophe, there has been no difficulty in excavating it. About a third part has now been opened, and the work is still going on. The excavated parts are not subterranean, as at Herculaneum, but completely uncovered to the sky; so that the visible portion of the city presents the appearance of a succession of deserted streets and roofless houses, as if a violent storm of wind had suddenly blown away the house-tops and the inhabitants with them. Before coming to the gate of the city, I passed through long lines of tombs;—the grave-yards of the Romans being always outside the city walls. Many of these tombs were adorned with beautiful sculptures in marble; and the interiors were painted with pictures of gladiators fighting, and other subjects. Just before reaching the gate, I saw a niche in the wall, which served as a sentry-box for the soldier who stood sentry at the gate. It is a most striking proof of the strictness of military discipline among the Romans, that the skeleton of this sentinel was found on the spot:—the terrible convulsion which destroyed the city could not drive him from his post, and he remained faithful to his trust to the last moment of his life!
The main street, on entering, is about as wide as Washington street, with sidewalks two feet high. The buildings are mostly of brick, and commonly not more than one story high. The main street is full of shops, with the names of the shopkeepers coarsely painted over the doors. There is a baker’s shop, which contained a great many loaves of bread, rather overdone. The loaves are stamped with the baker’s name. The shop also contained a hand-mill, which shows that the labor of grinding was also done by the baker. In one of the liquor-shops you may see on the stone counter the marks of the glasses which were thumped down by hard drinkers. I went into the cellar of one of the houses, where I found the wine-jars left standing just as they were in 79; they were dry, of course. Some of the houses had upper chambers, but without windows. The large rooms, dining-halls, parlors, &c., have the walls painted with landscapes, flowers, drapery, and figures like our paper-hangings. Many of these are of great beauty; and in all of them we are struck with wonder to observe the freshness and brilliancy of the coloring, which, after a lapse of 1700 years, appears as bright as the day it was laid on. These paintings are executed upon plaster, and the composition either of the paint or stucco appears to contain borax, which is known to be one of the most indestructible of all substances. The prevailing colors are bright red and yellow.
A great many of these paintings have been cut out of the walls and carried to Naples, where they may be seen at the museum. This indeed is the fact with regard to almost all the movable articles that have been found at Pompeii. In the gateway of a yard to one of the houses is a bolt in the pavement, to which a dog was chained, and on the stone is sculptured the words, Cave Canem—“Beware of the dog!” In another part is an apothecary’s shop, which contained a great number of glass bottles and phials, with knives, lancets, and other instruments of surgery. These latter are not of steel, but bronze; and it is singular that hardly any other metal than bronze has ever been found here, which shows either the scarcity of iron at that period, or a great want of skill in working it.
Many of the halls and courts are adorned with splendid mosaic pavements, and other ornamental stone-work. There is an immense building, containing a great number of apartments, used for a public bath. Some of these apartments were heated by flues passing between the walls;—a device which was formerly thought to be an invention of modern days. But there are many things at Pompeii which show ingenuity equal, and sometimes superior, to that of our own age. I was struck with a very simple contrivance for making a door swing to, without springs or weights, which I have never seen imitated anywhere.
The public buildings at Pompeii are numerous and striking, but cannot be properly described without drawings. At the door of the theatre was found one of the tickets of ivory, with the number of the box marked upon it. On the walls of the houses may still be seen the theatrical announcements, such as with us are pasted up at the corners of the streets. Those at Pompeii are written with a brush on a ground of stucco, and were washed off as often as the bill was changed. The last one stood a little longer than the writer expected. Pliny tells us the people were in the theatre when the eruption broke out.
It is impossible to specify half the curious and interesting objects to be seen here without writing a volume. Temples, theatres, amphitheatres, porticoes, fountains, arches, tombs, and the private dwellings of thousands of men, who appear to have left them but yesterday, all make a strange and most exciting impression on the feelings. You almost expect the owners of the houses to step back and ask your business there. It is curious to observe that the objects which, in their own day, were the most trivial and unimportant, are now precisely those which are beheld with the greatest interest. We cannot pass without curious attention the cart-ruts in the streets, or the charcoal scrawlings made by idle boys upon the walls, or the names of Mr. A, B, and C, who lived in this, that, and the other house. There is a place where a mason was at work, putting on mortar; he had just laid on a trowel-full, and was drawing a stroke to smooth it down, when the alarm of the eruption was given, and he left his work and ran. There stand the stone and mortar to this day, with the mark of the unfinished stroke! He would have made all smooth in one second more—but 1700 years have passed, and it is not done yet. An hundred volumes written on the uncertainty of human purpose could not make the fact half so striking as this little incident!
CHAPTER XX.
Journey towards Rome.—Vineyards.—The olive season.—Beautiful scene at Mola di Gaeta.—A shepherd among the mountains.—The robbers of Fondi.—The Pontine marshes.—Velletri.—The nightingale.—First sight of Rome.
On the first day of April I set out for Rome. For ten or fifteen miles beyond Naples, the country appeared to be nothing but one great vineyard. The vines are not propped by poles, as I found them in Sicily, but are trained to poplar trees. I passed many wells by the roadside, furnished with water-wheels turned by oxen: these are used for irrigating the fields in summer, from which I judged that the country often suffers from drought. All along the road were guard-houses with gens-d’armes at regular intervals, a security against robbers, according to the design; but we generally found these valiant fellows fast asleep! We might have stolen their muskets and made them all prisoners before they were well awake. The roads in this quarter are covered with a fine white dust, which in the unclouded season of midsummer must have a bad effect upon the eyes. The great number of blind people we saw, confirmed the impression. About noon we reached Capua, famous for having once been the most luxurious city in the world, but now a decayed town, where everybody seems to be fast asleep. Beyond this place the road began to run among the hills. At night we stopped at the village of St. Agatha, where we found a tolerably good inn. We set out early next morning, and passed through fields covered with olive trees. The peasants whom we met had sprigs of olive stuck in their hats. This was the olive season, and we saw the women and children picking up the fruit under the trees. When the olives are ripe, they turn black and drop from the trees. The oil is squeezed from them by a common press. The olives used for pickling are taken from the tree before they are ripe.
At noon we arrived at Mola di Gaeta, one of the most delightful spots I ever beheld. It stands on the sea-shore, and is skirted by a range of lofty hills covered with orange groves. The trees were laden with fruit as bright as gold. The fresh green foliage, the clear sky, the blue sea, and the white towers of Gaeta which appear on a promontory stretching out into the ocean, all combine to form a most enchanting prospect. I do not wonder that Cicero chose this spot for his country-seat; here they showed us the spot where, according to Plutarch, he was killed. Further on we continued to find the same abundance of olive trees: this appears to be a great oil district. A range of rocky mountains at a distance seemed to consist of nothing but naked crags; but the plains and low hills are under good cultivation. The soil in most parts is very rich, and the country wants nothing but a good government and an industrious people, to make the kingdom of Naples one of the most flourishing territories on the face of the earth. In the afternoon we traversed a steep, narrow mountain pass, and entered upon a wild, rugged country. I got out of the carriage and trudged along on foot, for the road was so hilly that I could keep ahead of the horses. The country exhibited quite a solitude; there was neither house nor human being to be seen for miles. Suddenly the notes of a wild kind of music fell on my ear, and looking down a rocky glen, I discovered a shepherd tending his flock, and piping on a reed in the true Arcadian style. It was the first genuine spectacle of pastoral life that I had ever seen, and I halted some minutes to take a view of him. Very pretty poems have been written about pastoral manners, in which shepherds and shepherdesses make fine romantic figures. The sight of a real shepherd, however, is enough to dissipate all the romance of this subject. This fellow wore the true pastoral dress, jacket and leggins of sheepskin, with the wool outside!—a more ragged, scarecrow-looking object never met my eyes. I would give a round sum of money to get one of these Neapolitan shepherds to show himself in the streets of Boston. An Indian sachem would be nothing in comparison to him.
The country continued wild and broken till we reached Fondi, a town among the mountains, once notorious for its robberies. These were carried on so openly and to such an extent, that the government were obliged to surround the town with troops, and threaten to batter every house to the ground with cannon, unless the leaders of the banditti were given up. Since these fellows have been hanged, and the roads guarded with soldiers, travelling has been pretty safe. But nothing except force prevents the inhabitants of Fondi from resuming their old habits of robbery. I never saw so villanous-looking a set of ragamuffins anywhere else. Every man and boy in the town has the genuine countenance of a cut-throat; and the women do not look much better. We stopped here just long enough to get our passports examined; but that was long enough. Though the people are not allowed to rob, they almost make up for it in begging; for their impudence and obstinacy in this business nearly amount to violence. The whole population were either crowding around us, begging, or lying in crowds about the church steps, lazily sunning themselves. I longed to stir up the louts, and set them to work. From laziness to begging, and from begging to robbery, is a regular and almost inevitable progress.
The road beyond Fondi ran along the shores, and in the afternoon we reached the territory of the Pope. The first sight we saw here was a herd of buffaloes in a field. These animals are tame, and used the same as oxen. They are not like the buffalo, or, more properly, bison of the western prairies, but a distinct species of quadruped. At night we reached Terracina, the first town in the papal dominions. It stands on the seashore, at the foot of a lofty, precipitous rock. During the night the wind was high, and drove a heavy surf upon the beach. A bright moonlight made a stroll along the shore very pleasant. In the morning the wind had gone down, and we recommenced our journey. Here we entered upon the famous Pontine marshes, over which the road passes nearly thirty miles in a straight line, and a great part of the way bordered by trees. These marshes consist of swampy and boggy tracts, with lagoons of water and patches of dry pasture-land interspersed here and there. Herds of buffaloes and black swine were roaming about in the dry spots, and the lagoons were covered with flocks of wild ducks and other waterfowl; but not a human being or a house was to be seen. These marshes breed so pestilential an air in summer, that the neighborhood is uninhabitable. They are bordered by a range of mountains on one side, and on the other by the Mediterranean.
There were no thick woods anywhere to be seen; a few scattered cork and ilex trees were all that met the eye. The mountains were bare to their very summits. The country, after passing the marshes, became very beautiful, and as we approached the town of Velletri we beheld the most enchanting landscapes. Here, for the first time, I heard the nightingale. He sings in the most lively and voluble strain, and is well worthy of his great reputation among the feathered songsters; but there is no American bird whom he resembles in tone or manner. We stopped for the night at Velletri, which stands on a commanding eminence, with an almost boundless prospect toward the south. On the other side, you look down a deep valley and up the side of a mountain beyond, covered with verdant fields, gardens, vineyards, and every variety of cultivation.
Rome was now but twenty-four Italian or eighteen English miles distant. The morning broke delightfully, and my impatience to see the great capital of the world was at such a height, that I would not wait for the carriage, but set out on foot. Long strings of wagons were coming from Rome, having left that city late the preceding night. It was amusing to notice that the drivers were nearly all fast asleep. The horses were eating all the way, each one having a bundle of hay tied to the head of the shaft in such a manner that he could help himself. The road over which I was passing was the celebrated Appian way, and is paved neatly and durably with square stones laid diamond-wise. As the day drew on, I met the country people going to their work. The women have a curious head-dress, consisting of a square fold of cloth, starched stiff and laid flat on the top of the head, often fastened with a silver pin as big as a kitchen skewer.
Two or three more small towns on the road could not induce me to slacken my pace towards the great object of my curiosity. At length, about the middle of the forenoon, as I ascended a steep hill, I caught sight of a lofty dome at a distance, which I instantly knew for St. Peter’s! Rome indeed was before me!—a sight which no man can behold for the first time without emotions impossible to describe. I stopped involuntarily. A wide plain extended from the foot of the eminence on which I stood to the walls of Rome. Long lines of aqueducts, ruined towers, and broken masses of walls and other architecture, chequered the surface of the plain; and the whole exhibited a striking spectacle of ruin and desolation. This was the Campagna di Roma, which, in the day of its prosperity, was covered with houses and gardens, the suburbs of the great city. Now, everything is still, solitary and lifeless. As I approached the city, I saw nothing around me but fields without fences, overgrown with brambles; not a house nor a garden, nor a human being, except here and there a ragged shepherd watching his sheep, which were browsing among the ruins! Nearer the city, I passed occasionally a field of wheat, and now and then a house; but hardly any people were to be seen, and nothing of the hurry, life and bustle which indicate the neighborhood of a populous city. This spectacle of solitude and desolation continued even after passing the gates of Rome; for half the territory within the walls is an utter waste.
Rattlesnakes.—Two men, Egbert Galusha and Reuben Davis, residing in the town of Dresden, on the east side of Lake George, recently killed, in three days, on the east side of Tongue Mountain, in the town of Bolton, eleven hundred and four rattlesnakes! They were confined to rocks and uninhabited places. Some of the reptiles were of an enormous size, having from six to twenty rattles. They were killed for their oil or grease, which is said to be very valuable. We will turn out Warren county against the world for rattlesnakes!—Glenns’ Falls Clarion.
