And now night comes on, and travellers one by one—or two by two, which is far better—disappear in those purgatorial state-rooms, and peep like prisoners through the grated windows, and try to sleep to the monotonous plash-plash of the waves, while male nocturnal pedestrians walk very slowly past the hurricane-deck state-room windows (innocent of curtain or blind), while denunciatory epithets are being muttered at them by their fair occupants.
Morning comes at last, and—Albany. I would respectfully inquire of its "oldest inhabitant," if it always rains torrents at Albany, at four o'clock in the morning, on the arrival of the boats? Also, if all their roads are as "hard to travel" as that through which steamboat passengers are furiously bumped and thumped, by drivers who seem to be on contract to Macadamize the bones of their passengers as well as the roads. It takes one of mine host of the ——'s very good breakfasts to christianize one after it.
Victimized Babies.—Nothing is more distressing to contemplate than a young baby in the hands of an ignorant mother. The way she will roast it in warm weather with layers of clothes, and strip it in cold weather, if fashion bids, and wash it when it is sleepy and tired, and put out its eyes with sun or gas, and feed it wrongly, or neglect to feed it at the proper time, and in every way thwart Nature and outrage common-sense, is so harrowing a sight to the stranger who dare not intermeddle, that a speedy retreat is the only course left, till he is perhaps summoned to the poor little thing's funeral, not mine.
"WHY DON'T I LECTURE?"
The true reason is, that I've nothing to say, and no ambition to say it. But as nobody ever gives the true reason for anything, why should I? Well, then, it is owing to several other becauses. In the first place, never being able to learn the multiplication table, how can I study Time tables? How could I find out, without getting the headache, how long it would take me to travel from Pumpkinville to Turnipville? How could I tell whether it would rain or shine that day? and not knowing this, how could I tell what to wear? As to what a woman lectures about, that is a minor consideration; but as to what she wears, ask the reporters if that does not constitute the staple of their newspaper accounts of her public appearance. Then I am afraid of "committees." Committees are composed of men. If I arrived late, and the expectant audience were just on the point of exploding, I couldn't ask the committee how my "back hair" looked. You see at once the difficulty of the thing, also its importance, because they would be the fellows that would have to look at my back hair from a plat-form view, you see. Well, then, again, I couldn't lecture because I can't breathe without fresh air; and that is a luxury that is always denied to lecturers. They'll applaud him, and they'll ask him "what he'll drink," and they'll take him to execution in a carriage, and take his corpse back in a carriage, but they won't let him breathe, at least till they've done with him, and I shouldn't long survive such politeness. Then the stereotyped pitcher of water would close my lips instead of helping to open them. I hate a pitcher of water. I got a boxed ear for saying that once; but I've got two ears, that's a comfort, so I'll say it again. Then, I couldn't lecture because I should feel cold shivers down my back, when that awful chairman rose and said, "Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to introduce to you the speaker for this evening, Fanny Fern." I hate that. I should want to hop up and speak when I got ready—say—while the lovers in the audience were whispering to each other, and the old ladies settling where to put their "umberils," and the old gentlemen hunting their pockets for their "spettacles" which they had left at home, and the old maids trying to find a seat where "a horrid man" wasn't too near. I'd like to pounce on them, like a cat, just then, and give my first scratch and draw blood; and then they'd let me go on my own way; because, you see, I am one of those persons who can't do anything "to order." I often see in the papers advertisements of "shirts made—to order," but I never yet saw an advertisement of a corresponding female garment made that way. Did you? Well, that's a hint that females shouldn't be hampered by stupid rules and precedents. But this is a digression.
Again, I couldn't lecture because I can't bear saleratus, and I suppose all my engagements wouldn't be in cities. Then, nextly, I couldn't lecture, because, after the lecture was over, I should be "dead beat;" and that is just the time everybody would hurry into the committee-room to tell me that I was; and to use a dozen dictionaries, to advise "me not to talk," but to go right straight home and go to bed as soon—as they had got through talking with me!