So I say, if only one wretched little young one gets his dangling legs put up on the seat; or his hot woollen tippet unwound from his strangled neck, or is refused candy and lozenges, or is fed wholesomely at proper intervals, instead of keeping up a continuous chewing all through the day; or don't get spanked afterward for the inevitable results; or if I have dissuaded but one individual from buying a book with "Fern" on its covers, my object will have been accomplished!
PETTING.
In the course of my reading, I came upon this sentence the other day:
"I have thought a great deal lately upon a kind of petting women demand, that does not seem to me wholesome or well. Even the strongest women require perpetual indorsement, or they lose heart. Can they not be strong in a purpose, though it bring neither kiss nor commendation?"
It seems to me that this writer cannot have passed out of sight of her or his own chimney, not to have seen the great army of women, wives of drunken and dissipated husbands, who, not only lacking "kiss and commendation," but receiving in place of them kicks and blows, and profane abuse, keep steadily on, performing their hard, inexorable duties with no human recognition of their heroism. Also, there are wives, clad in purple and fine linen, quite as much to be pitied, whose husbands are a disgrace to manhood, though they themselves may fail in no wifely or motherly duty. Blind indeed must that person be who fails to see all this every hour in the twenty-four.
So much for the truth of the remark. Now as to "petting." That woman is no woman—lacks woman's, I had almost said, chiefest charm—who does not love to be "petted." The very women who stifle their hearts' cries, because it is vain to listen for an answer where they had a sacred right to look for it, and go on performing their duty all the same—if it be their duty—are the women who most long for "petting," and who best deserve it too; and I, for one, have yet to learn that it is anything to be ashamed of. If so, men have a great sin on their souls; for they cannot get along at all—the majority of them—without this very sort of bolstering up.
Read any of the thousand and one precious books on "Advice to Women," and you will see how we are all to be up to time on the front door-step, ready to "smile" at our husbands the minute the poor dears come home, lest they lose heart and doubt our love for them; better for the twins to cry, than the husband and father. Just so with advice to young girls. They must always be on hand to mend rips in their brothers' gloves and tempers, and coddle them generally; but I have yet to see the book which enjoins upon brothers to be chivalric and courteous and gentlemanly to their sisters, as they take pleasure and pride in being to other young men's sisters.