"My dear sir, wasn't you caught napping that time? Didn't you speak in meeting? Didn't cloven feet peep out of your literary shoes? Don't it take an American woman to see through you! Isn't that a tacit acknowledgment that there are women who do 'exceed?' Wouldn't you think so if you lived this side the pond? Hope you don't judge us by John Bull's daughters, who stupefy themselves on roast-beef and porter. I tell you Yankee women are on the squirrel order. You'd lose your English breath trying to follow them. There isn't a man here in America that knows as much as his wife. Some of them own it, and some don't, but they all believe it, like gospel. They ask our opinion about everything. Sometimes straightforward, and sometimes in a circle—but they ask it! There are petticoats in the pulpit, petticoats in the editorial chair, petticoats in the lecturer's desk, petticoats behind the counter, petticoats labelled 'M. D.' Oh, they 'exceed!' no mistake about that. All femality is wide awake over here, Mr. Tupper. They crowd, and jostle, and push, just as if they wore hats. I don't uphold them in that, because, as I tell them, 'tis better policy to play possum, and wear the mask of submission. No use in rousing any unnecessary antagonism. But they don't all know as much as I do. I shall reach the goal just as quick in my velvet shoes, as if I tramped on rough-shod as they do, with their Woman's Rights Convention brogans!"
XXIX.
ALWAYS SPEAK THE TRUTH.
Why, Fanny Fern! Did you ever hear any old saying about practising and preaching? How came you ever to think of this sentiment? Oh, Fanny! you are a born writer of fiction. Didn't you prove your genius for that sort of thing when you wrote the following 'Fern.'
"Well, now, do you know I did that, till I came very near being mobbed in the street for a curiosity? I was verdant enough to believe that 'honesty was the best policy.' The first astonisher that I had, was on the occasion of the visit of a vain old lady to our house, before I was out of pantalettes. Her bonnet was stuck full of artificial flowers, looking as much out of place as a wreath of rosebuds on a mummy! Some such thought was passing through my mind, as I stood looking at her—when, mistaking my protracted gaze for one of admiration, she faced square about, and asked me if I didn't think they were becoming? 'No ma'am,' said I, never flinching a hair. Didn't I get a boxed ear for that?
"Well, I didn't make out much better in my subsequent attempts to 'speak the truth;' and what visionary ever concocted such nonsense, I'm at a loss to know.
"I'd like to put the question to you, and you, and YOU, and YOU!—Would the wheels of creation ever 'go ahead' without one everlasting intolerable squeak, if they were not 'oiled up' constantly with flattery? No shirking, now! no dodging the question! Of course they wouldn't! I humbly confess I ain't broke in myself, as much as I ought to be, but I'm learning by degrees! I can't help looking over my shoulder occasionally when anybody says a pretty thing to me to see if 'cloven foot' is anywhere round! but that will wear off in time. It almost killed me the first time I did the agreeable to a person I had no more respect for than Judas Iscariot, but I lived through it, though I don't take to it naturally!
"I've a tell-tale trick of blushing, too, when I'm being delivered of a lie, that stands very much in my light. I'm afraid there's some defect in my organization. I've applied to two or three young physicians, but they only aggravate my complaint. I'm thinking of putting myself under the tuition of ——; if I don't 'take my degree' THEN, I'll give up and done with it!
"Oh dear! it's an awful thing to grow up! to find your catechise, and Jack the Giant-Killer, and your Primer, and Mother Goose, all a humbug! To come across a wolf making 'sheep's eyes' at a lamb; to be obliged to make a chalk-mark on the saints to know them from the sinners; to see husbands, well—THERE! when I think of THEM, I must wait till a new dictionary is made before I can express my indignation! Wish I'd been introduced to Adam before he found out it was beyond him to keep the commandments. If there's anything I hate, 'tis an apple!"
XXX.
MOSES MILTIADES MADISON.
Everybody knows Moses. He and others like him, "carry the bag" in too many of our churches. But nobody seems to know him so well as Fanny; so we will let her relate his "experience," in her own words: