What I want to know is this:
Must a model housekeeper always have thin lips, thick ankles, a bolster-figure, and a fist like an overgrown beet? Need she take hold of her children as if total depravity were bristling out of every hair of their heads? Need the unhappy cat always take its tail under its arm and creep into the ash-hole whenever she looks at it? Is a sweet temper foreordained to be incompatible with sweet cupboards? Would it be unchristian to strangle such women with their own garters?
I pause for a reply.
I don't like to admit it, but there are two things a woman can't do. First, she can't sharpen a lead pencil. Give her one and see. Mark how jaggedly she hacks away every particle of wood from the lead, leaving a spike of the latter, which breaks as soon as you try to use it. You can almost forgive the male creature his compassionate contempt, as chucking her under the chin, he twitches it from her awkward little paw, and rounds, and tapers it off in the most ravishing manner, for durable use. * * * * * * *
Last week a philanthropist (need I say a male philanthropist) knowing my weakness, presented me with a two-cent-sharp-pointed-lead-pencil. My dreams that night were peaceful. I awoke like a strong-minded woman to run a race. I sat down to my desk. I might have known it; "I never loved a tree or flower," etc. Some fiend had "borrowed" it. Oh the misery that may be contained in that word "borrowed." When you are in a hurry; when the "devil" is waiting in the basement, stamping his feet to get back to the printing-office; when you've nothing but a miserable little "chunky"-old-worn-out-stub of an inch long lead pencil to make your "stet"-s and "d"-s. Shade of Ben Franklin! shall I, before I "shuffle off this mortal coil"—though I don't know what that is,—ever own another two-cent sharp-pointed-lead-pencil?
I have said that there are two things a woman can't do. I have mentioned one. I wish to hear no argument on that point, because when I once make up my mind "all the king's men" can't change it. Well, then—Secondly: A woman can't do up a bundle. She takes a whole newspaper to wrap up a paper of pins, and a coil of rope to tie it, and then it comes unfastened. When I go shopping, which it is sometimes my hard lot to do, I look with the fascinated gaze of a bird in the neighborhood of a magnetic serpent, to watch clerks doing up bundles. How the paper falls into just the right creases! how deftly they turn it over, and tuck it under, and tie it up, and then throw it down on the counter, as if they had done the most common-place thing in the world, instead of a deed which might—and, faith, does—task the ingenuity of "angels!" It is perfectly astonishing! It repays me for all my botheration in matching this color and deciding on that, in hearing them call a piece of tape "a chaste article," and for sitting on those revolving stools fastened down so near the counter, that it takes a peculiarly constructed shopper to stay on one of them.
Thirdly—I might allude to the fact that women cannot carry an umbrella; or rather to the very peculiar manner in which they perform that duty; but I won't. I scorn to turn traitor to a sex who, whatever may be their faults,—are always loyal to each other.—So I shall not say, as I might otherwise have said, that when they unfurl the parachute alluded to, they put it right down over their noses,—take the middle of the sidewalk, raking off men's hats and woman's bonnets, as they go, and walking right into the breakfast of some unfortunate wight, with that total disregard of the consequent gasp, which to be understood must be felt, as the offender cocks up one corner of the parachute, and looks defiantly at the victim who has had the effrontery to come into the world and hazard the whalebone and handle of her "umberil!" No, I won't speak of anything of the kind; besides, has not a celebrated writer remarked, that when dear "woman is cross, it is only because she is sick?" Let us hope he is right. We all know that is not the cause of a MAN'S crossness. Give him his favorite dish, and you may dine off him afterward—if you want to.
Amiable creatures are the majority of women—to each other; charitable—above all things charitable! Always ready to acknowledge each other's beauty, or grace, or talent. Never sneer down a sister woman, or pay her a patronizing compliment with the finale of the inevitable—"but." Never run the cool, impertinent eye of calculation over her dress, noting the cost of each article, and summing up the amount in a contemptuous toss, whether it amounts to fifty cents or five hundred dollars, more likely when it is the latter! Never say to a gentleman who praises a lady, what a pity she squints! Never say of an authoress, oh yes—she has talent, but I prefer the domestic virtues; as if a combination of the two were necessarily impossible, or as if the speaker had the personal knowledge which qualified her to pronounce on that individual case.
Well-bred, too, are women to sister woman.—Never discuss the color of her hair, or the style of its arrangement, her smile, her gait, so that she can hear every word of it. Never take it for granted that she is making a dead-set at a man, to whom she is only replying—"Very well, I thank you, sir." Never sit in church and stare her out of countenance, while mentally taking her measure, or nudge some one to look at her, while recapitulating within ear-shot all the contemptible gossip which weak-minded, empty-headed women are so fond of retailing.