Just at this point Mr. Doe gave a dismal groan, and doubled himself up like a jack-knife. “A touch of my old complaint,” said he, holding on to his waist-band. “Rheumatism—it will carry me off some day. Mrs. Wade, if you will be so good as to look in my carpet-bag, you will find a plaster which I never travel without; and I will trouble you, Mrs. Wade, to have my bed warmed, and a fire in the room where you intend I should sleep; and if there should be any cracks in the windows, will you have the goodness to nail up a blanket over them? and I would like a very warm comforter, if you please, and a jug of hot water at my feet, if it would not be too much trouble.”
“Of course not,” said Mr. Wade, settling himself very comfortably down into his ample easy-chair; “of course not; Mrs. Wade, won’t you attend to it?”
“And, Mrs. Wade, if you’d be so kind as to put the feather bed uppermost, and give me cotton sheets instead of linen; I should also prefer a hair to a feather pillow: I consider feathers too heating for my head; I am obliged to be careful of my head.”
“Certainly,” repeated Mr. Wade. “Mrs. Wade will see to it.” And as she moved out of the room to execute these orders, these two despondent Siamese drew their chairs closer together, to bemoan the short-comings of two of the most long-suffering wives who ever wore themselves to skeletons, trying to please husbands who were foreordained not to be pleased.
CHAPTER II.
Mother’s room! How we look back to it in after years, when she who sanctified it is herself among the sanctified. How well we remember the ample cushioned chair, with its all-embracing arms, none the worse in our eyes for having rocked to sleep so many little forms now scattered far and wide, divided from us, perhaps, by barriers more impassable than the cold, blue sea. Mother’s room—where the sun shone in so cheerily upon the flowering plants in the low, old-fashioned window-seats, which seemed to bud and blossom at the least touch of her caressing fingers; on which no blight or mildew ever came; no more than on the love which outlived all our childish waywardness—all our childish folly. The cozy sofa upon which childish feet were never forbidden to climb; upon which curly heads could dream, unchidden, the fairy dreams of childhood. The closet which garnered tops, and dolls, and kites, and whips, and toys, and upon whose upper shelf was that infallible old-fashioned panacea for infancy’s aches and pains—brimstone and molasses! The basket, too, where was always the very string we wanted; the light-stand round which we gathered, and threaded needles (would we had threaded thousands more) for eyes dimmed in our service; and the cheerful face that smiled across it such loving thanks.
Mother’s room! where our matronly feet returned when we were mothers; where we lifted our little ones to kiss the wrinkled face, beautiful with its halo of goodness; where we looked on well pleased to see the golden locks we worshiped, mingling lovingly with the silver hairs; where, as the fond grand-mamma produced, in alarming profusion, cakes and candies for the little pets, we laughingly reminded her of our baby days, when she wisely told us such things were “unwholesome;” where our baby caps, yellow with time, ferreted from some odd bag or closet, were tried on our own babies’ heads, and we sat, wondering where the months and years had flown between then and now; and looking forward, half-sighing, to just such a picture, when we should play what seemed to us now, with our smooth skins, round limbs, and glossy locks, such an impossible part.
Mother’s room! where we watched beside her patient sick-bed through the long night, gazing hopelessly at the flickering taper, listening to the pain-extorted groan, which no human skill, no human love, could avert or relieve; waiting with her the dawning of that eternal day, seen through a mist of tears, bounded by no night.
Mother’s room! where the mocking light strayed in through the half-opened shutters, upon her who, for the first time, was blind to our tears, and deaf to our cries; where busy memory could bring back to us no look, no word, no tone, no act of hers, not freighted with God-like love. Alas!—alas for us then, if, turning the tablets, they showed us this long debt of love unappreciated—unpaid!
No blossoming plants luxuriated in the windows of Mr. Wade’s house; no picture attracted attention upon the walls; with the exception of a huge map of the United States in the hall, their blank whiteness was pitilessly unrelieved. The whole house seemed to be hopelessly given up to the household god—utility. If Mrs. Wade ever had any womanish leaning toward the ornamental, she had long since learned to suppress it; and what woman, how poor soever she may be, does not make some feeble attempt to brighten up the little spot she calls home? Beautiful to me, for this reason, is the crude picture, the cheap plaster-cast, or the china mug with its dried grass, or the blue ribbon which ties back the coarse but clean white curtain under humble roofs. Who shall say that such things have not a moral influence—a moral significance? Who shall say that there is not more hope of that young man on the walls of whose bachelor attic hangs a landscape, or a sweet female head, though not “by an old master?” Who that has been so unfortunate as to sojourn in that mockery of a home, called a boarding-house, has not, when passing through the halls, and by the open doors of rooms, formed favorable or unfavorable opinions of its occupants from these mute indications of taste and character? Let no one, particularly if he has children, wait till he can command the most costly adornments; have one picture, have one statue, have one vase, if no more, for little eyes to look at, for little tongues to prattle about.