CONTENTS.
| PAGE | |
|---|---|
| Shadows and Sunbeams | [1] |
| Aunt Hepsy | [18] |
| Thoughts at Church | [21] |
| The Brothers | [23] |
| Curious Things | [28] |
| The Advantage of a House in a Fashionable Square | [29] |
| Winter is Coming | [36] |
| The other Sex | [38] |
| Soliloquy of Mr. Broadbrim | [40] |
| Willy Grey | [41] |
| Tabitha Tompkins’ Soliloquy | [54] |
| Soliloquy of a Housemaid | [57] |
| Critics | [59] |
| Forgetful Husbands | [60] |
| Summer Friends | [61] |
| How the Wires are Pulled | [62] |
| Who would be the Last Man? | [65] |
| Only a Cousin | [66] |
| The Calm of Death | [68] |
| Mrs. Adolphus Smith sporting the Blue Stocking | [69] |
| Cecile Vray | [70] |
| Sam Smith’s Soliloquy | [71] |
| Love and Duty | [75] |
| A False Proverb | [79] |
| A Model Husband | [80] |
| How is it? | [81] |
| A Morning Ramble | [83] |
| Hour-Glass Thoughts | [86] |
| Sober Husbands | [87] |
| Boarding-House Experience | [88] |
| A Grumble from the (H) altar | [93] |
| A Wick-ed Paragraph | [94] |
| Mistaken Philanthropy | [95] |
| Insignificant Love | [97] |
| A Model Married Man | [99] |
| Meditations of Paul Pry, jun. | [100] |
| Sunshine and Young Mothers | [102] |
| Uncle Ben’s attack of Spring Fever, and How Cured | [103] |
| The Aged Minister voted a Dismission | [106] |
| The Fatal Marriage | [108] |
| A Matrimonial Reverie | [112] |
| Frances Sargeant Osgood | [113] |
| A Punch at “Punch” | [116] |
| Best Things | [117] |
| The Vestry Meeting | [119] |
| A Broadway Shop Reverie | [122] |
| The Old Woman | [124] |
| Sunday Morning at the Dibdins | [126] |
| Items of Travel | [128] |
| Newspaper-dom | [130] |
| Have we any Men among us? | [132] |
| How to cure the Blues | [134] |
| Rain in the City | [136] |
| Mrs. Weasel’s Husband | [138] |
| Country Sunday v. City Sunday | [140] |
| Our Street | [142] |
| When you are Angry | [147] |
| Little Bessie | [148] |
| The Delights of Visiting | [151] |
| Helen Haven’s Happy New Year | [153] |
| Dollars and Dimes | [157] |
| Our Nelly | [158] |
| Study Men, not Books | [161] |
| Murder of the Innocents | [163] |
| American Ladies | [166] |
| The Stray Sheep | [167] |
| The Fashionable Preacher | [170] |
| Cash | [172] |
| Only a Child | [174] |
| Mr. Pipkin’s idea of Family Retrenchment | [175] |
| A Chapter for Nice Old Farmers | [177] |
| Madame Rouillon’s Mourning Saloon | [179] |
| Fashion in Funerals | [180] |
| Household Tyrants | [182] |
| Women and Money | [184] |
| The Sick Bachelor | [186] |
| A Mother’s Influence | [188] |
| Mr. Punch mistaken | [193] |
| Fern Musings | [194] |
| The Time to Choose | [196] |
| Spring is Coming | [197] |
| Steamboat Sights and Reflections | [199] |
| A Gotham Reverie | [201] |
| Sickness in the City and Country | [202] |
| Hungry Husbands | [205] |
| Light and Shadow | [207] |
| What Love will Accomplish | [209] |
| Mrs. Grumble’s Soliloquy | [212] |
| Henry Ward Beecher | [214] |
| An Old Maid’s Decision | [217] |
| Father Taylor, the Sailor’s Preacher | [219] |
| Signs of the Times | [222] |
| Whom does it concern? | [225] |
| Who Loves a Rainy Day? | [230] |
| A Conscientious Young Man | [233] |
| City Scenes and City Life, No. 1 | [234] |
| Do. do. 2 | [238] |
| Do. do. 3 | [242] |
| Do do. 4 | [245] |
| Two Pictures | [248] |
| Feminine Waiters at Hotels | [250] |
| Letter to the Empress Eugenia | [252] |
| Music in the Natural Way | [254] |
| For Ladies that go Shopping | [255] |
| The Old Merchant wants a Situation | [259] |
| A Moving Tale | [261] |
| This Side and That | [267] |
| Mrs. Zebedee Smith’s Philosophy | [270] |
| A Lance Couched for the Children | [272] |
| A Chapter on Housekeeping | [273] |
| A Fern Reverie | [275] |
| A Brown Study | [278] |
| Incidents at the Five Points House of Industry | [280] |
| Apollo Hyacinth | [286] |
| Spoiled Little Boy | [288] |
| Barnum’s Museum | [289] |
| Nancy Pry’s Soliloquy | [292] |
| For Little Children | [293] |
SHADOWS AND SUNBEAMS;
Being a Second Series of “Fern Leaves.”
CHAPTER I.
I can see it now: the little brown house, with its sloping roof, its clumsy old chimneys, and its vine-clad porch; where the brown bee hummed his drowsy song, and my silver-haired old father sat dozing the sultry summer noons away, with shaggy Bruno at his feet. The bright earth had no blight or mildew then for me. The song of the little birds, resting beneath the eaves, filled my heart with a quiet joy. It was sweet, when toil was over, to sit in the low door-way, and watch the golden sun go down, and see the many-tinted clouds fade softly away (like a dying saint) into the light of heaven, and evening’s glittering star glow, like a seraph’s eye, above them. ’Twas sweet, when Autumn touched the hill-side foliage with rainbow dyes, to see the gorgeous leaves come circling down on the soft Indian summer breeze. ’Twas sweet, when the tripping, silver stream lay still and cold in Winter’s icy clasp, and the flowers fainted beneath his chilly breath, and the leafless trees stretched out their imploring arms, and shook off, impatiently, their snowy burthen, and the heavy waggon-wheels went creaking past, and the ruddy farmer struck his brawny arms across his ample chest, for warmth, and goaded the lazy, round-eyed oxen up the icy hill. Even then it was sunshine still in the little brown house: in the ample chimney glowed and crackled the blazing faggots; rows of shining pans glittered upon the shelves; the fragrant loaf steamed in the little oven; the friendly tea-kettle, smoking, sang in the chimney corner, and by its side still sat the dear old father, with the faithful newspaper, that weekly brought us news from the busy world, from which our giant forest-trees had shut us out.
Ah! those were happy days: few wants and no cares! the patriarch’s head was white with grave blossoms, yet his heart was fresh and green. Alas! that, under the lowliest door-way, as through the loftiest portal, the Guest unbidden cometh. The morning sun rose fair, but it shone upon silver locks that stirred with no breath of life; upon loving lips for ever mute; upon a palsied, kindly hand that gave no returning pressure. Soon, over the heart so warm and true, the snow lay white and cold; the winter wind sang its mournful requiem, and from out the little brown house the orphan passed with tearful gaze and lingering footstep.
CHAPTER II.
Oh, the bitter, bitter bread of dependence! No welcome by the hearth-stone: no welcome at the board: the mocking tone, the cutting taunt, the grudged morsel. Weary days, and sleepless, memory-torturing nights.
“Well, Josiah’s dead and gone,” said my uncle, taking down his spectacles from the mantel, to survey me, as I sank on the settle, in the chimney corner. “Take off your bonnet, Hetty. I suppose we must give you house-room. Josiah never had the knack of saving anything—more’s the pity for you. That farm of his was awfully mismanaged. I could have had twice the produce he did off that land. Sheer nonsense, that shallow ploughing of his, tiring the land all out; he should have used the sub-soil plough. Then he had no idea of the proper rotation of crops, or how to house his cattle in winter, or to keep his tools where they wouldn’t rust and rot. That new barn, too, was a useless extravagance. He might have roofed the old one. It’s astonishing what a difference there is in brothers, about getting beforehand in the world. Now, I’ve a cool thousand in the bank, all for taking care of little things. (There, Jonathan! Jonathan! you’ve taken the meal out of the wrong barrel: it was the damaged meal I told you to carry to Widow Folger.)