In regard to early marriages, I cannot, in view of my own experience and long life of contentment and domestic happiness, say aught unfavorable, though there is another side to the question and modern custom tends increasingly towards marriage at a later period. As it is true that the progeny of immature plants and animals do not equal in vigor and capacity for endurance the offspring of fully developed specimens, so human beings who desire to establish a home and intend to bring up a family, should not be children, but full-grown, matured men and women; yet, all things else being equal, it is surely better they should unite to make up a perfect life before the season of youth has passed away, and the man became blasé, the woman warped. Men are much concerned about our sex and the duties and peculiar functions belonging thereto. It is my opinion that they too need some instruction in regard to the exercise and regulation of their own relations and responsibilities toward the future welfare of the race. They have decided that brain work is detrimental to the full development of the organization of the female; but they do not worry over the effects of tobacco, whisky and certain vile habits upon the congenital vigor of both boys and girls. Fathers and medical men ought to look well to the hygienic duties of their own sex; then both sexes would be born with better capacity for life and growth, and the poor mother would not be obliged to spend so much care and trouble in rearing the offspring of debilitated manhood. Nature does not work in a hurry. She is patient, persistent and deliberate, never losing sight of her own great ends, and inexorable as to her rights.
If study could check and thwart a child’s growth Margaret D’Ossoli would have been a case of arrested development instead of a large-souled woman. It was her father who kept her little head all day over Greek and Latin exercises at the age of seven years, when she should have been playing with her dolls and romping in the fresh outdoor air. It was her father, M. Necker, who trained Madame de Stael into a woman whom the great Napoleon hated and even feared so much that he insulted her childless wifehood by telling her that what France needed was mothers, and sent her into banishment.
It is useless to get up a lamentation that the race will die out and children be neglected because woman is going to college and becoming informed and intellectual. Nature will take care that she keeps to her principal business, which is to become a willing (or unwilling) medium to continue the species.
CHAPTER III.
HOME LIFE.
My home during my early married life was in the town of Clinton, La. While I never coveted the ownership of many slaves, my comfort was greatly promoted by the possession of some who had been carefully trained to be good domestics, and who were given to me by my father on my marriage. I always liked to go into the kitchen, but sometimes my cook, who had been for twelve years in training, scorned my inexperienced youth, would say emphatically, “Go inter de house, Miss Carrie! Yer ain’t no manner er use heah only ter git yer face red wid de heat. I’ll have dinner like yer wants it. Jes’ read yer book an’ res’ easy till I sen’s it ter de dining-room.” I like just as much to go into the kitchen to-day, and am accounted a “born cook,” by my family, being accredited with a genius for giving those delicious and elusive flavors that are inspirations and cannot be taught. The artist cook burns neither food nor fingers, is never hurried or flurried, and does not reveal in appearance or manner that the table is indebted to her handicraft.
The common idea of tyranny and ill-usage of slaves was often reversed in my case, and I was subject at times to exactions and dictations of the black people who belonged to me, which now seem almost too extraordinary and incredible to relate. I made periodical visits to our plantation in Point Coupe parish, over fifty miles distant from Clinton. En route I would often desire my coachman to drive faster, and he would do so for the moment, then would fall back into the old pace. If I remonstrated he would say: “I’s ’sponsible fer dese yeah horses, an’ dey got ter fotch us back home, an’ I ain’t er gwine ter kill ’em gettin’ ter whar we gwine ter; an’ I’d tell Marse Edwin de same thing if he was heah.”
Gardening has always greatly claimed my heart and time. I have taken prizes at horticultural exhibits, and have been no little vainglorious in this last year of the century to be able to show the public the only blooming century-plant in New Orleans, or indeed in the State, so far as I know, and for whose blossoming I have been waiting thirty years. There is a “mild and gentle” but indissoluble sympathy between the human soul and the brown earth from which we have sprung, and to which we shall return. There is no outward influence that can be compared to that of living, growing, blooming things. The resurrections of the springtime cause an epidemic of gardening fever that prevails until intenser sunshine discourages exertions. When buds are bursting and color begins to glow on every bush and trellis I do not see how any one can be wholly miserable. The great season of hope and promise stirs into fruitfulness of some sort the blood that has been marking time for many years. This ever renewed, undiscouraged passion of making the earth produce seems a proof that man’s natural occupation is husbandry. He keeps at it through love as well as necessity, and every springtime he, as little subdued as nature, renews the contest. It is his destiny.