A funeral! That is nothing uncommon in a densely populated city; so, nobody turns to look, as it winds along, slowly, as will the sad future to that young husband—that father of an hour. Sad legacy to him, those piles of tiny robes, and dainty little garments, whose elaborate and delicate embroidery was purchased at such a fearful price. Nature will have her revenge for a reckless disregard of her laws: so, there she lies, the young mother, with the long-looked-for babe upon her girlish breast. Sad comment upon a foolish vanity.
What have we here?—A carriage at the door? Ah! I recollect; there was a wedding at that house last night—lights flashing, music swelling—white arms gleaming through tissue textures, and merry voices breaking in upon my slumbers late in the small hours.
Ah yes—and this is the bride’s leave-taking. How proud and important that young husband looks, as he stands on the steps, with the bride’s traveling shawl upon his arm, giving his orders to the coachman! Now he casts an impatient glance back through the open door into the hall, half jealous of the tear sparkling in the young wife’s eye, as the mother presses her tenderly to her breast, as the father lays the hand of blessing on her sunny head, and brothers and sisters, half glad, half sad, offer their lips for a good-bye kiss.
Hurry her not away! Not even the heart she has singled out from all the world to lean upon, can love so fondly, so truly, as those she leaves behind. Dark days may come, when love’s sunshine shall be o’erclouded by cares and sickness, from which young manhood, impatient, shrinks. Let her linger: so shall your faith in her young wifely love be strengthened by such strong filial yearning for these, her cradle watchers. Let her linger: silver hairs mingle in the mother’s tresses; the father’s dark eye grows dim with age, and insatiate Death heeds nor prayer, nor tear, nor lifted eye of supplication. Let her linger.
New-York! New-York! who but thyself would have tolerated for twelve mortal hours, with the thermometer at 90 degrees, that barrel of refuse fish and potatoes, sour bread and damaged meat, questionable vegetables and antique puddings, steaming on that sunny sidewalk, in the forlorn hope that some pig’s patron might be tempted, by the odoriferous hash, to venture on its transportation. Know, then, O pestiferous Gotham, that half a score of these gentry, after having sounded it with a long pole to the bottom, for the benefit of my olfactories, have voted it a nuisance to which even a pig might make a gutter-al remonstrance. Oh! Marshal Tukey, if California yet holds you, in the name of the Asiatic cholera, and my “American constitution,” recross the Isthmus and exorcise that barrel!
Look on yonder door-step. See that poor, worn creature seated there, with a puling infant at her breast, from whence it draws no sustenance: on either side are two little creatures, apparently asleep, with their heads in her lap. Their faces are very pallid, and their little limbs have nothing of childhood’s rounded symmetry and beauty. “Perhaps she is an impostor,” says Prudence, seizing my purse-strings, “getting up that tableau for just such impressible dupes as yourself.” “Perhaps she is not,” says Feeling; “perhaps at this moment despair whispers in her tempted ear ‘curse God and die!’ Oh! then, how sad to have ‘passed her by, on the other side!’” Let me be “duped,” rather than that wan face should come between my soul and Heaven.
WHEN YOU ARE ANGRY.
“When you are angry, take three breaths before you speak.”