"June 11. I got two bricks from the dear old house at the corner of Broadway and Bond Street, now all down and rebuilding. Will have one enamelled for myself. Ah, Lord, what a bitter lesson is in this tearing-down! How I was wanting in duty to the noble parent who built this grand home for me! I hope to help young people to understand something of parental love and its responsibilities. But parents also must study children, since each new soul may require a new method."
"June 12. Home very gladly. Helped Maud with her Latin. At 3.30 to rehearse 'Midsummer-Night's Dream.' I Hermia and Snout. At 7.30 the reading, which was the pleasantest we have had."
[These readings were in the vestry of the Church of the Disciples. Mr. Clarke, our mother, Erving Winslow, and others of the congregation took part: we remember the late Professor James Mills Pierce as Orlando in "As You Like It"; his beautiful reading of the part contrasting oddly with his middle-aged, long-bearded personality. Our mother's rendering of Maria in "Twelfth Night" was something to remember.]
"June 17. Up at five and to get a boat. Maud and the Lieutenant [Zalinski] rowed me to Fort Independence and back, a most refreshing excursion. Dear Dr. Hedge came out to make a morning visit. I kept him as long as I could. We talked of Bartol, Rubinstein, Father Taylor, and Margaret Fuller, whom he knew when she was fourteen years old. He urged me to labor for dress reform, which he considered much needed. Had preached two sermons on the subject which his dressy parishioners resented, telling him that their husbands approved of their fine clothes. I begged him to unearth these sermons and give them to us at the club. We spoke of marriage, and I unfolded rapidly my military and moral theory of human relations. Thought of a text for a sermon on this subject: 'Arise, take up thy bed and walk.' This because the ills of marriage which are deemed incurable are not. We must meet them with the energetic will which converts evil into good, and without which all good degenerates into evil."
July finds her at Oak Glen. She is full of texts and sermons, but makes time to write to Fanny Perkins,[75] proposing "Picnics with a Purpose, sketching, seaside lectures, astronomical evenings." This thought may have been the germ from which grew the Town and Country Club, of which more hereafter.
The writing of sermons seems to have crowded serious poetry out of sight in these days, but the Comic Muse was always at hand with tambourine and flageolet, ready to strike up at a moment's notice. There was much coming and going of young men and maidens at Oak Glen in those days, and much singing of popular songs of a melancholy or desperate cast. The maiden was requested to take back the heart she had given; what was its anguish to her? There were handfuls of earth in a coffin hid, a coffin under the daisies, the beautiful, beautiful daisies; and so on, and so on, ad lachrymam. She bore all this patiently; but one day she said to Maud, "Come! You and these young persons know nothing whatever of real trouble. I will make you a song about a real trouble!" And she produced, words and tune, the following ditty:—
COOKERY BOOKERY, OH!
My Irish cook has gone away
Upon my dinner-party day;
I don't know what to do or say—
Cookery bookery, oh!
Chorus:
Sing, saucepan, range, and kitchen fire!
Sing, coals are high and always higher!
Sing, crossed and vexed, till you expire!
Cookery bookery, oh!
She could cook every kind of dish,
"Wittles" of meat and "wittles" of fish,
And soup as fancy as you wish—
And she is gone away!
She weighed two hundred pounds of cheek,
She had a voice that made me meek,
I had to listen when she did speak—
Cookery bookery, oh!
My husband comes, a saucy elf,
And eyes the saucepan on the shelf;
Says he, "Why don't you cook yourself?"
Cookery bookery, oh!
Chorus:
Sing, saucepan, range, and kitchen fire!
Sing, coals are high and always higher!
Sing, crossed and vexed, till you expire!
Cookery bookery, oh!
Jocosa Lyra! one chord of its gay music suggests another. It may have been in this summer that she wrote "The Newport Song," which also has its own lilting melody.
Non sumus fashionabiles:
Non damus dapes splendides:
But in a modest way, you know,
We like to see our money go:
Et gaudeamus igitur,
Our soul has nought to fidget her!
We do not care to quadrigate
On Avenues in gilded state:
No gold-laced footmen laugh behind
At our vacuity of mind:
But in a modest one-horse shay,
We rumble, tumble as we may,
Et gaudeamus igitur,
Our soul has nought to fidget her!
When æstivation is at end,
We've had our fun and seen our friend.
No thought of payment makes us ill,
We don't know such a word as "bill":
Et gaudeamus igitur,
Our soul has nought to fidget her!