VII.
WHAT CAN BE GOT IN AMERICA.
WHILE I was preparing my article for the “Atlantic,” our friend Bob Stephens burst in upon us, in some considerable heat, with a newspaper in his hand.
“Well, girls, your time is come now! You women have been preaching heroism and sacrifice to us,—‘so splendid to go forth and suffer and die for our country,’—and now comes the test of feminine patriotism.”
“Why, what’s the matter now?” said Jenny, running eagerly to look over his shoulder at the paper.
“No more foreign goods,” said he, waving it aloft,—“no more gold shipped to Europe for silks, laces, jewels, kid gloves, and what-not. Here it is,—great movement, headed by senators’ and generals’ wives, Mrs. General Butler, Mrs. John P. Hale, Mrs. Henry Wilson, and so on, a long string of them, to buy no more imported articles during the war.”
“But I don’t see how it can be done,” said Jenny.
“Why,” said I, “do you suppose that ‘nothing to wear’ is made in America?”
“But, dear Mr. Crowfield,” said Miss Featherstone, a nice girl, who was just then one of our family-circle, “there is not, positively, much that is really fit to use or wear made in America,—is there now? Just think; how is Marianne to furnish her house here without French papers and English carpets?—those American papers are so very ordinary, and as to American carpets, everybody knows their colors don’t hold; and then, as to dress, a lady must have gloves, you know,—and everybody knows no such things are made in America as gloves.”
“I think,” I said, “that I have heard of certain fair ladies wishing that they were men, that they might show with what alacrity they would sacrifice everything on the altar of their country: life and limb would be nothing; they would glory in wounds and bruises, they would enjoy losing a right arm, they wouldn’t mind limping about on a lame leg the rest of their lives, if they were John or Peter, if only they might serve their dear country.”
“Yes,” said Bob, “that’s female patriotism! Girls are always ready to jump off from precipices, or throw themselves into abysses, but as to wearing an unfashionable hat or thread gloves, that they can’t do,—not even for their dear country. No matter whether there’s any money left to pay for the war or not, the dear souls must have twenty yards of silk in a dress,—it’s the fashion, you know.”