How Easy to Say "be Cheerful"!—"Be cheerful," says the man who is easy in his circumstances, missing no loved face at the table, nor by the hearth. But does he ever consider how hard it may be to be "cheerful" when the heart aches, and the cupboard is empty, and there are little fresh graves in the churchyard, and friends are few or indifferent, and even God, for the time being, seems to have forgotten us, so desolate is our lot? How difficult for one man to understand another, in such different circumstances! How easy to say, "Be cheerful!" How hard he would find it to practise it, were he stripped of all life's brightness!
DOG-DAYS IN THE MOUNTAINS.
To whomsoever human nature is a pleasant study, I would recommend as an inviting field a summer boarding-place. Wood, rocks, and lakes are nothing beside human nature. We can form some sort of an idea on geological, aquarian, and other principles, why they exist. We quite indorse the Scriptural statement at creation that they are all "very good." But I am puzzled to know why a woman who can do nothing but simper and fold her hands should be married and have children without number, and another beneath whose large motherly heart no little one ever has or ever will nestle, should go mourning all her days on account of it. Why a man whose every impulse and feeling and purpose are unswervingly in the right direction should have an empty pocket; and a mean, narrow-minded, ignorant, miserable apology for a man, have his tight fist on a full one. Why consumptives and scrofulous people should insist on industriously increasing the census, and men and women made physically on the right principles pertinaciously cling to celibacy. Why the serving-maid should have more womanliness, intelligence, and goodness, than the mistress whose irate voice makes her tremble. Why the clergyman should pay such undeviating attention to the soul of his child that he cannot spare time to see that his body at twelve years of age is "standing from under." Why a man marries a woman merely for her beauty, and is disgusted in two weeks that she has not turned out an intellectual companion. Why a good man, but not an intellectual one, marries a "strong-minded woman," and instantly sets about teaching her that obedience and silence are the first duties of wives. Why young men should decline marriage on the score that "they cannot afford it," when they spend more than would support a family, on their vices. Why a man with the proportions of Hercules should have a voice like a squeaking door-hinge, and a lovely girl deafen you every time she opens her rosebud mouth. In short, why, when men and women are such natural curiosities—singly or in groups, married or celibate—should showmen, at such cost of outlay, stock their premises with anacondas and giraffes, when their fellow-critters "would be so rich" an exhibition?
But think as long and as industriously as I may on these vexed questions, no solution comes. I turn them over to some philosopher who will unravel the skein while I take an evening sail upon the lake. In fact, when I get there, I don't care what becomes of my kind so that my sunset sail is not denied me. Nor is this as selfish as it seems, since I should not be safe company for them in the dog-days without this soothing process. Keep close to the shore now, oh, boatman: and above all, keep silence. Pickerel are good in their way, but bony; and I would fain listen dreamily to the plashing oar, and the twit-twit of the little birds as they seek their nests in the trees, while my eye rests on the changing clouds and their reflections in the smooth mirror below. Vex me not with talk of "dead swells" and "whitecaps." I would sail here till midnight in silence, and thence straight into the other world, before a ripple of earthly fret came over my spirit.
But it is not to be. One of our party "wants to pick pond-lilies," slimy and smell-less; not like the dear old pond-lilies in Massachusetts, though mockingly like in form and color. Another is yelling at an echo, which answers back as persistently as if it were of the feminine gender; but, unlike the feminine gender, always agrees colloquially. Another pokes me up from my reverie to know "why I am so stupid?" And now when the shadows are loveliest and the moon beginning to silver the lake, the universal voice is "to land." Let them go. Good riddance! Two of us stay with the boatman. Now flash up the Northern lights! Now appears the evening star, crowning yonder hill, and twinkling defiantly in the very face of the new moon. Plucky star! That's right! to take for your motto that of America—Room and freedom for all.
"What will we ever do when we get back to New York?" dolefully asked little Bright Eyes of me, the other day, as she came in with her apron full of mosses and flowers. That's just it. That's what I want to know. No cool lake awaits me there at eventide, on whose broad expanse one can float into serenity. But instead, gas-lighted, unventilated public assemblies, where vexed questions are agitated: and in place of bird-singing, inodorous streets, full of children whose "childhood" is a myth. And for the lovely fresh morning, with its aromatic odors, the whoop of milkmen, the rush of street cars, and the old mäelstrom whirl of business, folly, and sin. My very soul sickens to think of it. I won't think of it. I'll lay off and dream.
Every summer vacation I ask myself, why people who have no relish for country life doom themselves to yawn through six or eight weeks of it? People who never move from a certain chair on the piazza save to migrate to their beds, or to the dining-table; who have neither eyes to see earth's glory, nor heart to be grateful for it, or ears open to its myriad musical voices—living discords amid all its harmony. If invalids, I can understand and pity their misfortune; but your fat, well-to-do, buxom men and women, who have no earthly impediment to their locomotion, and yet who live weeks in the vicinity of grand natural objects, and are just as dead to them as the ox in the meadow—why do they travel thousands of dusty miles to get to them? People who look pityingly at you, as you return exhilarated from your delicious rambles, as if to say, "Poor lunatics!" One turns from them to the children, to whom every daisy and blade of grass is a bright heaven, and counts sadly over their lost years. Also, I would like to ask, is there anything in the climate of Vermont which turns out such huge trees, mountains, and men, that dwarfs nearly all its womankind? Again: Do preserves and pills, flapjacks and ipecac, plum-cake and castor-oil, jelly and jalap have a natural affinity, that they are so often found in each other's company? In other words: Why do the country-women of New England waste their time in concocting the indigestible richness which everybody is better without, and which renders these drugs necessary? Half the time thus spent, if devoted to the manufactory of that rare commodity—sweet, wholesome bread—or to the best way of cooking meat so as to preserve its juices, would shut up the drug-shops, prolong their own lives and good looks, and make them a credit to the glorious country in which they are born. Give us good bread, my dear country-women. What else soever you pass over, don't slight the bread. It is the crying sin of the country, that if there are cakes and pies in plenty, the bread may be sour, or filled with saleratus, or so stale that a dog would not swallow it, or so "slack-baked" that one might as well eat dough. Now the digestion of an ostrich would fail on such fare as this. A healthy stomach revolts at it, and refuses to be put off with sweets and preserves. It is a crime to set such bread before little children, even if adult digestion were equal to it, which it is not. A great reform is needed here, and if I can help it on, I care not who boxes my ears for the attempt. To see human beings making and swallowing such messes, and then sending physic after it, like a detective, to clear it from the system, is a proceeding which should give them all a free pass to the Lunatic Asylum. There—now I feel better! While I am catechising, do you suppose there was ever an invalid who didn't button-hole everybody, to recapitulate his or her symptoms, exhibit their tongues, and discuss patent medicines? It gets monotonous after a while, particularly when you know that they are bound personally to experiment on every pill, powder, and plaster that any heartless quack may invent to make a living. If half of them were to stop taking physic entirely, live on wholesome food, take plenty of fresh air and sleep, they would never know pain or ache. Don't the doctors know this, and laugh in their sleeves at it? And does a doctor ever give drugs to his own family? I think I have asked questions enough for the present, so we will consider the meeting adjourned.