Young mothers are very experiment-y. Do you know what that means? Well, they worry a baby out of a year's growth, for fear it will worry; your mother knows all about it—ask her if she didn't do just that way with you till Grandma and Aunt Charity taught her better? First babies are poor little victims. I can remember how I used to be plagued! Stifled alive for "fear I should get cold;" trotted up and down when there was a great pin sticking into my shoulder—and held so close to the candle to be looked at, that I came near being blind as a mole. It's a wonder to me that I am here now, writing this juvenile book; if I hadn't been a baby of spirit, I should have keeled over, and died of sheer torment long before I got into short clothes.
Well, there's another window. An old lady sits at it; not so very old, either, for she's as brisk as a musquito. Her head flies round if any one opens the door, as if it were strung on wires. I don't believe she has any fire in her room, for she keeps hitching round after the sun all day—and when he bids her good afternoon, she comforts her shoulders with a blanket shawl; then, her lamp is always out long before I go to bed, and nobody who has a good fire, ever wants to go to bed and leave it; they'll find a thousand things to do—a letter to write, or a book to read, or some chestnuts to eat; or, if they haven't anything else to do, they will sit and look at the fire. I am sure I've been forced to look at more disagreeable objects than that, for many an hour.
There's a woman at another window, writing, or rather she has got her table before her, and her inkstand, and the pen between her fingers; all that she wants is a few ideas; see, she rolls up her eyes like a pussy in a fit, and looks up, and looks down, and makes a love knot on the paper with her pen, and coaxes her temples with her fingers; but it's no use, there's nothing there! So she may as well get off her stilts and darn her stockings.
There are two little girls at another window playing with their dollies. Now I like that—it's a good thing—it teaches them how to sew, and to cut out little garments, and to contrive and fix up things, so that when they have live dollies it will come handy to cut out their frocks. I always like to see little girls play with dollies, and big girls, too, if they want to; it is better than a novel; better than a thousand other things that girls do now-a-days, who fancy themselves ladies as soon as they twist up their ringlets with a comb. Heigh-ho, it makes me sigh to think there are so few children in 1853.
Over there at another window in the same block, is a very sad sight. A drunken husband! See how patiently his poor wife is trying to coax him not to go out. She is fearful he may fall in the street, and get hurt, and then she feels ashamed to have him seen in such a plight; now she gently removes his hat—then he puts it on again; now her arm is about his neck—but only to have it rudely pushed aside, poor woman. I hope she believes in God, and knows how to lean upon Him.
Now her husband has gone, and she sits down and covers her face with her hands, and weeps. They are bitter tears—she thinks of the time he took her proudly away from a happy home, and promised she should be dear to him as his own life blood. Perhaps she cannot go to that home now—perhaps her father and mother (happily for them) have not lived to see her joy so soon turned to sorrow; or, if she could go there, she loves her husband still too much to leave him. She hopes each morning that he will come home and love her at night—and she tidies up the hearth, and makes the fire bright, and keeps his supper warm, and wipes away her tears, and braids her hair in shining plaits as he once loved to see it, and looks often at the little mantel clock, and then out the window. By and by she hears his step; oh, it is the same old story—he reels, cursing, into her presence—perhaps aims at her a blow.
Her little child lies there sleeping. She is glad he is not old enough to know his father's shame. Sometimes she even prays the babe may die. She knows, were she taken away, how much it must suffer. Then, she remembers the time when its father was steady and kind and industrious, and she thinks of those who roll about in carriages, on the money taken from her husband's pocket, and that of other poor victims like him. And then the angry flush mounts to her temples, and she says, "Is there no law to punish these wicked rumsellers?" Poor thing! that wailing cry has gone up from Maine to Georgia—from many a houseless wife and shivering child!
God hears it! I had rather be in their place than the rumseller's.
Well, now it is quite dark, and I must light my lamp and shut my shutters, or some of those folks may be peeping in and taking notes of me!—who knows? Wouldn't that be a joke?