Mary Honoria, scarlet-lipped, plump, and sweet sixteen, being fond of jewelry on her pretty person, and having stolen her mistress's watch, was waited upon by a gallant policeman, who escorted her little ladyship into court, in the presence of an admiring crowd, before whom her black eyes sparkled with a rage that but added new beauty to their lustre.
Now, I protest against this disgusting, demoralizing, and heartless mention of the sins and follies of poor wretches, the temptations of whose lot are as the sands of the sea-shore for multitude; who, ill-paid, ill-fed, worse-lodged, disheartened, discouraged, fall victims to the snares, in the shape of low groggeries, set for them by the very men who laugh over their well-spread breakfast tables, at this pitiful and revolting recital of their success. Oh, write over against the poor wretch's name, as God does, why he or she fell! or at least cease making it the subject for a jeer. Make it your son, your daughter, and then pen that flippant, heartless paragraph if you can. And yet, it was somebody's son, or daughter, or sister, or husband, unworthy it may be, (who is not?) but alas! often forgiven, and still dearly loved, to whose home that paragraph may come like a poisoned arrow, wounding the innocent, paralyzing the hand which was powerless enough before to struggle with its hapless fate; for not on the guilty does such blight fall heaviest. The young boy—the toiling, unprotected daughter—the aged mother—ah! what if they were yours?
About Doctors.—We wish doctors could ever agree. One's head gets muddled, reading their books on health, by antagonistic opinions on the same subject, from eminent sources. Experience is an excellent doctor, though he never had a diploma. What is good for you, you know is good for you although it may not be good for another. There is one point on which doctors all agree, and that is, they very rarely give physic to their own families. Why not? A friend suggests that it is from sheer benevolence, in order that they may have more left for other people.
MY NOTION OF MUSIC.
I've been defending myself from the charge of "not knowing what music is." Perhaps I don't know. But when I go to a fashionable concert, and the lady "artiste," I believe that is the regulation-word, comes out in her best bib and tucker, with a gilt battle-axe in her back hair, and a sun-flower in her bosom, led by the tips of her white gloves, by the light of a gleaming bracelet, and stands there twiddling a sheet of music, preparatory to the initiatory scream, I feel like screaming myself. Now if she would just trot on, in her morning gown, darning a pair of stockings, and sit naturally down in her old rocking-chair, and give me "Auld Robin Gray," instead of running her voice up and down the scales for an hour to show me how high and how low she can go without dropping down in a fit, I'd like it. One trial of her voice that way, to test its capacity, satisfies me. It is as good as a dozen, and a great deal better. I don't want to listen to it a whole evening. I will persist, that running up and down the scales that way isn't "music." Then if you only knew the agony I'm in, when drawing near the end of one of her musical gymnastics, she essays to wind up with one of those swift, deafening don't-stop-to-breathe finales, you would pity me. I get hysterical. I wish she would split her throat at once, or stop. I want to be let out. I want the roof lifted; I feel a cold perspiration breaking out on my forehead. I know that presently she will catch up that blue-gauze skirt and skim out that side-door, only to come and do it all over again, in obedience to that dead-head encore. You see all this machinery disenchants me. It takes away my appetite, like telling me at dinner how much beef is a pound. I had rather the ropes and pulleys of music would keep behind the curtain.
Of course my "taste is not cultivated," and moreover, the longer I live the less chance there is of it. On that point, I'm what country folks call "sot." Sometimes, when passing one of these concert-rooms of an evening, I have caught a note that I took home with me. Caught it with the help of the darkness and the glimmering stars, and the fresh wind on my forehead, and a blessed ignorance of the distorted mouth and the heaving millinery that sent it forth. But take me in, and you'll have an hysterical maniac. The solemn regulation faces, looking at that "music," set me bewitched to laugh and outrage that fashion-drilled and kidded audience. Bless you, I can't help it. I had rather hear Dinah sing "Old John Brown" over her wash-tub. I had rather go over to Mr. Beecher's church some Sunday night and hear that vast congregation swell forth Old Hundred, with each man and woman's soul so in it, that earthly cares and frets are no more remembered, than the old garments we cast out of sight.