Fern Leaves from Fanny's Port-folio.. Fern Fanny
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Название: Fern Leaves from Fanny's Port-folio.
Автор: Fern Fanny
Издательство: Public Domain
Жанр: Зарубежная классика
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TABITHA TOMPKINS’ SOLILOQUY
Have I, Tabitha Tompkins, a right to my share of fresh air uncontaminated? or have I not? I ask the question with my arms akimbo. I might as well say what I’ve got to say, popgun fashion, as to tiptoe round my subject, mincing and curtesying when I’m all ablaze with indignation.
I ask again: Have I a right to my share of fresh air uncontaminated? or have I not?
Do I go out for a walk? Every man I meet is a locomotive chimney. Smoke – smoke – smoke – smoke: – great, long tails of it following in their wake, while I dodge, and twist, and choke, trying to escape the coils of the stifling anaconda, till I’m black in the face. I, Tabitha Tompkins, whose grandfather was one of the “signers” of the Declaration of Independence! I feel seventy-six-y! I have borne it about as long as I can without damage to hooks and eyes.
If I try to escape it, by getting into an omnibus, there it is again! If it does not originate inside, some “gentleman” on the box or top, wafts it into the windows. If I take refuge in a ferry boat, I find “gentlemen requested not to smoke,” (as usual) a dead letter, – no more regarded than is the law against gaming, or the Sunday liquor traffic. Do I go to a concert at Castle Garden, and step out on the balcony between the performances for a breath of fresh air? – myriads of lighted Havannas send me dizzy and staggering back into the concert room. Does a gentleman call to see me of an evening? – the instant he shakes his “ambrosial curls,” and gives “a nod,” I have to run for my vinaigrette.
Do I advertise for lodgings; and after much inspection of rooms, and wear and tear of patience and gaiter boots, make a final selection? Do I emigrate with big trunk, and little trunk, and a whole nest of bandboxes? Do I get my rocking-chair, and work-table, and writing-desk, and pretty little lamp, all safely transported and longitudinized to my fancy? Do I, in a paradisaical state of mind, (attendant upon said successful emigration,) go to my closet, some fine morning, and take down a pet dress? – asafœtida and onions, what an odor! All the “pachouli” and “new mown hay” in New York wouldn’t sweeten it. Six young men the other side of that closet, and all smokers!!! Betty, you may have that dress; – I wouldn’t touch it with a pair of tongs.
Do I lend a masculine friend my copy of Alexander Smith’s Poems? – can I ever touch it again till it has been through quarantine? Does he, by mistake, carry home my tippet in his pocket after a concert? – can I compute the hours it must hang dangling on the clothes line, before it can be allowed to resume its place round my neck?
Do I go to church on Sunday, with a devout desire to attend to the sermon? – my next neighbor is a young man, apparently seated on a nettle cushion: he groans and fidgets, and fidgets and groans; crosses his feet and uncrosses them; kicks over the cricket; knocks down his cane; drops the hymn-book, and finally draws from his coat pocket a little case; takes out one segar after another, transposes them, applies them to the end of his nose, and pats them affectionately; then he examines his watch; then frowns at the pulpit; then, glancing at the door, draws a sigh long enough and strong enough to inflate a pair of bellows, or burst off a vest button.
With a dolorous whine, this same young man deplores (in public) his inability to indulge in the luxury of a wife, “owing to the extravagant habits of the young ladies of the present day.” I take this occasion to submit to public inspection a little bit of paper found in the vest pocket of this fumigated, cork-screwed, pantalooned humbug, by his washerwoman:
Received Payment,
(Mr. Stubbs is earnestly requested to call and settle the above at his earliest convenience. J. F.)
Consistent Stubbs! But, then, his segar bill is not receipted!
SOLILOQUY OF A HOUSEMAID
Oh, dear, dear! Wonder if my mistress ever thinks I am made of flesh and blood? Five times, within half an hour, I have trotted up stairs, to hand her things, that were only four feet from her rocking-chair. Then, there’s her son, Mr. George, – it does seem to me, that a great able-bodied man like him, needn’t call a poor tired woman up four pair of stairs to ask “what’s the time of day?” Heigho! – its “Sally do this,” and “Sally do that,” till I wish I never had been baptized at all; and I might as well go farther back, while I am about it, and wish I had never been born.
Now, instead of ordering me round so like a dray horse, if they would only look up smiling-like, now and then; or ask me how my “rheumatiz” did; or say good morning, Sally; or show some sort of interest in a fellow-cretur, I could pluck up a bit of heart to work for them. A kind word would ease the wheels of my treadmill amazingly, and wouldn’t cost them anything, either.
Look at my clothes, all at sixes and sevens. I can’t get a minute to sew on a string or button, except at night; and then I’m so sleepy it is as much as ever I can find the way to bed; and what a bed it is, to be sure! Why, even the pigs are now and then allowed clean straw to sleep on; and as to bed-clothes, the less said about them the better; my old cloak serves for a blanket, and the sheets are as thin as a charity school soup. Well, well; one wouldn’t think it, to see all the fine glittering things down in the drawing-room. Master’s span of horses, and Miss Clara’s diamond ear-rings, and mistresses rich dresses. I try to think it is all right, but it is no use.
To-morrow is Sunday – “day of rest” I believe they call it. Humph!– more cooking to be done – more company – more confusion than on any other day in the week. If I own a soul I have not heard how to take care of it for many a long day. Wonder if my master and mistress calculate to pay me for that, if I lose it? It is a question in my mind. Land of Goshen! I aint sure I’ve got a mind – there’s the bell again!
CRITICS
“Bilious wretches, who abuse you because you write better than they.”
Slander and detraction! Even I, Fanny, know better than that. I never knew an editor to nib his pen with a knife as sharp as his temper, and write a scathing criticism on a book, because the authoress had declined contributing to his paper. I never knew a man who had fitted himself to a promiscuous coat, cut out in merry mood by taper fingers, to seize his porcupine quill, under the agony of too tight a self-inflicted fit, to annihilate the offender. I never saw the bottled-up hatred of years, concentrated in a single venomous paragraph. I never heard of an unsuccessful masculine author, whose books were drugs in the literary market, speak with a sneer of successful literary feminity, and insinuate that it was by accident, not genius, that they hit the popular favor!
By the memory of “seventy-six,” No! Do you suppose a man’s opinions are in the market – to be bought and sold to the highest bidder? Do you suppose he would laud a vapid book, because the fashionable authoress once laved his toadying temples with the baptism of upper-tendom? or, do you suppose he’d lash a poor, but self-reliant wretch, who had presumed to climb to the topmost round of Fame’s ladder, without his royal permission or assistance, and in despite of his repeated attempts to discourage her? No – no – bless your simple soul; a man never stoops to a meanness. There never was a criticism yet, born of envy, or malice, or repulsed love, or disappointed ambition. No – no. Thank the gods, I have a more exalted opinion of masculinity.
FORGETFUL HUSBANDS
“There is a man out west, so forgetful, that his wife has to put a wafer on the end of her nose, СКАЧАТЬ