[SOME GOSSIP ABOUT MYSELF.]
FIRST—my unfortunate NOSE! I think life would be a different thing to me had I no nose. When you consider that there are twenty disagreeable odors to one sweet one, you will be at no loss to understand my meaning; and yet, after all, when we come to definitions, your pleasant smell might be a very noisome one to me. Your tobacco, sir, for instance; or your "patchoule," madam, or your musk. Then turnips, or cabbage, in process of cooking, may not cause you to throw up—the window! Beefsteak smoke, or mutton-chop smoke, or buckwheat-cake smoke, may render you quite happy in prospect, while I only sigh for that far-off millennium when cooking shall be inodorous. Stay! I meant to except coffee. Hail coffee—rain coffee, if you will. Ah! I would keep a perpetual pot of coffee steaming on my kitchen range. Tea smells nice and tastes well, I suppose, to its lovers, for whom I have little respect. In truth, when I reflect how my nose curtails my daily bill of fare, I am lost in wonder, and my butcher no doubt also marvels at its monotony. The whole family of Frys, for instance, except a gentleman I once knew of that name, are odious to my olfactories.
In the millennium I speak of, no cook will allow a bone to be singed on the fire, or milk to boil over upon the stove; for let her know that up three, four, yea, five pair of stairs, I shall immediately be apprised of the same by this my watchful member. Let her not dream that her cousin, or uncle, or male "follower" of any degree, can smoke, or even light his pipe, in the kitchen, without giving me an impulse toward the bell-wire. Let no grocer boy or ice-man fondly hope to retain the celestial spark, while he briefly deposits his wares in my kitchen; and if Terence O'Flaherty thinks he can shovel coal into my cellar and smoke at the same time, although I may be knee-deep in an "article" at the top of the house, Terence has reckoned without his host-ess.
I know you are sorry for me. I am sorry for myself, because it is obvious that forty times a day I must suffer nasal crucifixion. I get a comfortable seat in church, or concert-room, or lecture-hall. In comes Apollo, and sits down at my elbow, in that close, unventilated place, and finishes the process of strangulation, with dead tobacco smoke in his clothes and hair. I am quite willing some other lady should admire him.
But there is a bright side to this nose question. I defy you, who don't mind tobacco, or the odor of a cooking cabbage, which is much the same thing, to revel in a rose, or violet, or lily, or a sprig of heliotrope, or mignonette, as I shall. I defy you to go into a wood after a rain, and detect, as I shall, every delicate and individual odor; from the scores of little unseen flowers hiding away under roots of trees, and in patches of moss, and in crevices of old gray rocks. There—I have the better of you, for that too brief heaven.
Alas! I am very unfortunate. There are my ears, too. The squeaking of a door, the drumming of idle fingers on a table, or tapping of idle feet on the floor, the scraping of a knife on a bad pencil-point, the clipping of one's finger-nails with scissors, the continuous biting of an apple in my presence, the humming of the same idle tune, the sharp winding of a clock or watch—I fear you will cease to respect me when I say that I have meditated murder in "the first degree" for the perpetrators thereof.
If it is any palliation of my crime that I am cold from head to foot when I hear sweet music; or that the trill of a little bird sends a tear to my eyes and a prayer to my lips, I confess also to this weakness. I am quite willing, too, you should ask, as does Mr. Smith, fifty times a week, "Fanny do you think there ever was a woman born into the world exactly like you?" whatever condemnation that question may imply for me or—the rest of my sex.
It is said that a certain great statesman, owed much of his popularity to the fact, that he never forgot the name of a person out of the thousands who had been presented to him, and would always in shaking hands say, "I recollect you perfectly; I saw you in such a year, at such a place, on such an occasion." Of course, his constitutent, from the village of Frogtown, was immensely flattered, and went home satisfied that there must be something remarkable about him, which he had never before found out, that he had made so indelible an impression on so great a man, with such a press of public care and business; and didn't this statesman get his constitutent's votes and good words after that?
Now it is very certain I never should do for a statesman, notwithstanding my very palpable qualifications apart from this. I—who persisted for months in calling Mr. Smith Mr. De Peyster although little pieces of flesh were nipped out of my arms by dismayed friends, and my toes were trodden on, till there was great danger I should be crippled for life.