“A man will own that he is in the wrong—a woman, never; she is only mistaken.”—Punch.
Mr. Punch, did you ever see an enraged American female? She is the expressed essence of wild-cats. Perhaps you didn’t know it, when you penned that incendiary paragraph; or, perhaps you thought that in crossing the “big pond,” salt water might neutralize it; or, perhaps you flattered yourself we should not see it, over here; but here it is, in my clutches, in good strong English: I am not even “mistaken.”
Now, if you will bring me a live specimen of the genus homo, who was ever known “to own that he was in the wrong,” I will draw in my horns and claws, and sneak ingloriously back into my American shell. But you can’t do it, Mr. Punch! You never saw that curiosity, either in John Bull’s skin or Brother Jonathan’s. ’Tis an animal which has never yet been discovered, much less captured.
A man own he was in the wrong! I guess so! You might tear him in pieces with, red-hot pincers, and he would keep on singing out “I didn’t do it; I didn’t do it.” No, Mr. Punch, a man never “owns up” when he is in the wrong; especially if the matter in question be one which he considers of no importance; for instance, the non-delivery of a letter, which may have been entombed in his pocket for six weeks.
No sir; he just settles himself down behind his dickey, folds his belligerent hands across his stubborn diaphragm, plants his antagonistic feet down on terra-firma as if there were a stratum of loadstone beneath him, and thunders out,
“Come one, come all; this rock shall fly
From its firm base, as soon as I.”
FERN MUSINGS.
I never was on an august school committee, but, if I was, I’d make a sine-qua-non that no school-marm should be inaugurated who had not been a married mother; I don’t believe in old maids; they all know very well that they haven’t fulfilled their female destiny, and I wouldn’t have them wreaking their bilious vengeance on my urchins, (if I had any.) No woman gets the acid effectually out of her temper, till she has taken matrimony “the natural way.”
No; I don’t believe in spinster educational teaching any more than I do in putting dried up old bachelors on the school committee. What bowels of mercies have either, I’d like to know, for the poor little restless victims of narrow benches and short recesses? The children are to “hold up their hands” (are they?) if they have a request to make? What good does that do, if the teacher won’t take any notice of the Free Mason sign? “They are not to enter complaints.” So some poor timid little girl must be pinched black and blue by a little Napoleon in jacket and trowsers, till she is forced to shriek out with pain, when she is punished by being kept half an hour after school for “making a disturbance!” They are “not to eat in school,” are they? Perhaps they have made an indifferent breakfast; (perhaps they are poor, and have had none at all, and A, B, C, D, doesn’t digest well on an empty stomach;) but the spinster teacher can hear them recite with a tempting bunch of grapes in her hand, which she leisurely devours before their longing eyes.