The curious thing is, that the dispenser of comfort can do with a very small share of it herself. When her husband does not dine at home, it is surprising what odds and ends are sufficient to make up the dinner. Perhaps the best part of it is a large slice of bread-and-butter; for it is wasting the servants' time to make them cook when there is nobody to be at the table. But she makes up for this at tea: that is a comfortable meal for the every-day married lady. The husband, a matter-of-fact, impassive fellow, swallows down his two or three cups in utter unconsciousness of the poetry of the occasion; while the wife pauses on every sip, drinks in the aroma as well as the infusion, fills slowly and lingeringly out, and creams and sugars as if her hands dallied over a labor of love. With her daughters, in the mean time, grown up, or even half-grown up, she exchanges words and looks of motherly and masonic intelligence: she is moulding them to comfort, initiating them in every-dayism; and as their heads bend companionably toward each other, you see at a glance that the girls will do honor to their breeding. The husband calls this "dawdling," and already begins to fret. Let him: he knows nothing about it.
It is surprising the affection of the daughters for their every-day mother. Not that the sentiment is steady and uniform in its expression, for sometimes one might suppose mamma to be forgotten, or at least considered only as a daily necessary not requiring any special notice. But wait till a grief comes, and mark to what bosom the panting girl flies for refuge and comfort; see with what abandon she flings her arms round that maternal neck, and with what a passionate burst the hitherto repressed tears gush forth. This is something more than habit, something more than filial trust. There are more senses than five in human nature—or seven either: there is a fine and subtle link between these two beings—a common atmosphere of thought and feeling, impalpable and imperceptible, yet necessary to the souls of both. If you doubt it—if you doubt that there is a moral attraction in the every-day married lady, irrespective of blood-affinity, carry your view forward to another generation, and interrogate those witnesses who are never mistaken in character, and who never give false testimony—little children. They dote on their every-day grandmamma. Their natures, not yet seared and hardened by the world, understand hers; and with something of the fresh perfume of Eden about them still, they recognize instinctively those blessed souls to whom God has given to love little children.
This is farther shown when the every-day married lady dies. What is there in the character we have drawn to account for the shock the whole family receives? The husband feels as if a thunder-cloud had fallen, and gathered, and blackened upon his heart, through which he could never again see the sun. The grown-up children, especially the females, are distracted; "their purposes are broken off;" they desire to have nothing more to do with the world: they lament as those who will not be comforted. Even common acquaintances look round them, when they enter the house, with uneasiness and anxiety—
"We miss her when the morning calls,
As one that mingled in our mirth:
We miss her when the evening falls—
A trifle wanted on the earth!
"Some fancy small, or subtle thought,
Is checked ere to its blossom grown;
Some chain is broken that we wrought,
Now—she hath flown!"
And so she passes away—this every-day married lady—leaving memorials of her commonplace existence every where throughout the circle in which she lived, moved, and had her being, and after having stamped herself permanently upon the constitution, both moral and physical, of her descendants.
ANECDOTE OF A SINGER.
Signora Grassini, the great Italian singer, died a few months since at Milan. She was distinguished not only for her musical talents, but also for her beauty and powers of theatrical expression. One evening in 1810, she and Signor Crescentini performed together at the Tuileries, and sang in "Romeo and Juliet." At the admirable scene in the third act, the Emperor Napoleon applauded vociferously, and Talma, the great tragedian, who was among the audience, wept with emotion. After the performance was ended, the Emperor conferred the decoration of a high order on Crescentini, and sent Grassini a scrap of paper, on which was written, "Good for 20,000 livres.—Napoleon."
"Twenty thousand francs!" said one of her friends—"the sum is a large one."