WILL PARENTS TAKE HEED?--On all hands complaints are made of the increasing ill-health of our school-children. Now who is to take this matter in hand? Who is to say there shall be absolutely _no_ lessons learned out of school, unless the present duration of school hours shall be shortened? It needs, we think, only that the parents shall themselves _insist_ upon this to effect it. Why wait till brain-fever has set in?

Why wait till little spines are irretrievably crooked? And of what mortal use is it to keep on pouring anything into a vessel when it is incapable of holding any more, and is only wasted upon the ground?

_MY LIKING FOR PRETTY THINGS._

"Oh, you luxurious puss!" That remark was addressed to me, because I said I would like to be lulled to sleep each night, and awoke each morning by strains of sweet music. There's no harm in imagining things, I hope, provided one goes quietly and ploddingly on in what the ministers call "the path of duty." Now, for instance, sometimes I amuse myself planning beautiful forms for dishes, and cups, and plates, and gla.s.ses; beautiful patterns for carpets and wallpapers; beautiful and odd frames for pictures; beautiful loopings and draperies for window-curtains; and beautiful shapes for chairs and tables. Sometimes I eat an imaginary breakfast in a room with long windows, opening out into a lovely garden full of sweet flowers; like lilies of the valley and roses and mignonette and heliotrope and violets--oh, yes! violets _everywhere_. Then those lovely "pond lilies" should grow in the water, at the bottom of the garden, and some of them should be brought in, fresh, dewy, and cool, and placed on the breakfast-table; and little birds should hop in, over the threshold of the breakfast-room, for crumbs, and sing me a song of thanks; and a great, monstrous dog should lie p.r.o.ne upon the piazza; and vines should wreathe themselves round the pillars thereof; clematis and sweet pea, and honeysuckles, white and red, and the gorgeous trumpet-flower; and n.o.body should be able to find the chimneys at all, for the lovely blooming Wisteria that should clamber over the roof. _Such_ trees and such velvet gra.s.s as I'd have around the house! Giant horse-chestnuts and elms and oaks and maples; and here and there a lovely statue peeping out in some unexpected place.

And then I'd invite you, and you, and you; not because I would like to make a show-thing of it, but because I would like to see you enjoy it as much as myself.

Wouldn't it be nice? I _do_ hate _ugly_ things--there's no use in denying it. Sometimes Mr. Librario brings in one of his profound books, and lays it, _pro tem._, on my parlor-table; he looks for it shortly, and finds it not. "I knew it would be banished when I put it there," he says, "because the binding was so homely."

He pretends, too, that water tastes just as cool poured out from an ugly-shaped pitcher as out of my pet china one, with the graceful lip, and vine-wreathed sides and handle; and when I send for "a headache-cup-of-tea," and add, "Now be sure you bring it in my lovely blue-tinted cup-and-saucer," he laughs, and asks, "if _that_ will make my head any better?" Why, of course it will. Now, you see, if I, like a coward, dodged work and bother, and the disagreeables of life, when they had to be met, that would be one thing; but I don't; I just take 'em vigorously by the horns till I get through with them; and so I maintain that I have a right to my luxurious dreams and my _pretties_, if they do me any good. Now haven't I? And speaking of that, as I was looking round the other day, I saw such a dreadful waste of ingenuity that my heart bled for the misapplied talent of the inventor. It was a straw-colored b.u.t.ter-dish in the shape of a _man's hat_, ribbon and all complete. The rim thereof did duty as a saucer, while the divorcible crown was clapped over the b.u.t.ter. Horrible! Then I saw an egg dish, with an executive _sitting_ hen, awfully natural, doing duty as a cover. I left the locality abruptly, fearing I might see a meat-dish cover, in the form of a pig--snout, tail, bristles and all.

Why, I ask in this connection, am I daily tortured with the sight of lamps supported by bronze cherubs, appealing piteously to my wide-awake maternal instincts? And why are my evenings at public places of amus.e.m.e.nt spoiled by the sight of galleries of heartless people held up whole evenings by wretchedly carved female figures, in every stage of contorted legs, knees, heads, and arms.

"Didn't I tell you that it would be better if you hadn't quite so much imagination," triumphantly retorts Mr. Cynic.

Very true, you did; but still I don't agree with you; because looking at _some_ people through that glorified medium, I have been able to discover virtues--which--otherwise----Yes, sir!

_UNSOUGHT HAPPINESS._

Old stagers know that the way to be happy is to give up all attempts to be so. In other words, the cream of enjoyment in this life is always impromptu. The _chance_ walk; the unexpected visit; the unpremeditated journey; the unsought conversation or acquaintance.

Everybody feels more or less conscious in their "Sunday clothes." Who does not know the blessing of comfortable everyday apparel, every fold of which has made intimate acquaintance with the motions and postures of the owner; and which can be worn without fear of being spoiled, or rendering the wearer conspicuous. The bonnet which sets lightly on the head and defies rain; the boots which do not constantly remind the foot that a chair would be the greatest of all earthly blessings; in short, that freedom which will let you forget _you_ yourself, is like laying down a huge bundle which has fettered you weary miles on a dusty, sunny road, and sitting down, unenc.u.mbered, in a shady spot to dream and rest in a delicious, care-free coolness. It is just so with the mind. The best things written or spoken have _not_ been written or spoken "to order." They "_whistled themselves_," as the terror-stricken urchin remarked to his irate school-ma'am. They came unbidden, in easy, flowing raiment; not starched and stately, rustling, prim, and conscious. They came without thought of "what people would say." They stepped out because the time had come when they _couldn't stay in_. In a word, they were _natural_ as little children are, and consequently delicious and fresh.

I solemnly aver that, the moment anybody _tries_ to do or say a good thing, that moment he shall never be delivered of it, but shall only experience throes of mortal pain trying. If you build yourself a beautiful house, and make it a marvel of taste and convenience, in one of its lovely chambers shall your dead be laid; and you shall wander heart-sick away from it, to rid yourself of a phantom that will always follow you, till you turn boldly and face it, and with a strong heart accept its company.

This incessant _striving_ to be happy! Never, never shall mortals be so till they have learned to give it over. Happiness _comes_. It will not be challenged. It glides in only when you have closed the door and turned your back upon it, and forgot it. It lays a soft hand on your face when you thought to be alone, and brings a joyful flush of surprise to your cheek, and a soft light to your weary eye, and ineffable peace to your soul.

It is a great thing when all that can possibly happen to a person, save one's death, _has_ happened. It is a great thing to have been poor, and friendless, and nameless, and to have been rich, and famous, and flattered. It is a great thing to have been young and to have been old.

It is a great thing to have perforated the bubble, Fame, and seen it collapse before a hungry heart. It is a great thing to have had dear ones, who moulded every thought and action, from the rising to the setting sun, and then to have seen them suddenly vanish like stars from the sky, and to have folded one's paralyzed hands in the darkness because there was no earthly future left. It is a great thing to have suffered and agonized in your own Gethsemane on account of it, till that very suffering brings you to be glad and contented that _they_ are in a world where all tears are wiped from all eyes. It is a great thing to rise slowly and take up the burden of life again and plod mechanically on. It is a great thing to be calm and unmoved when brutal pens, to point a coa.r.s.e paragraph, unearth one's sacred dead. It is a great thing to lock up chambers in one's soul, and sit down by the closed doors, lest some apathetic or unkind ear should hear the pained cries you only want time to smother. It is a great thing to have encountered all of malice, and envy, and uncharitableness, that the world has to offer, so that its repet.i.tion can only be to the ear a dull, unmeaning sound. It is a great thing so to have weighed human judgment that its Aye or No is a matter of indifference in the light of--_to come_.

True; before the sensitive and tender-hearted can reach that point, rivers of tears must have been shed and millions of sighs heaved. Scores of suns must have set on days of torturing length, and scores of mornings _too many_ must have dawned. Uncounted hours must have been spent reaching out in the darkness for that which the soul has never found, or, finding, has lost; and thousands of times must the weary hands have fallen to the side in utter helplessness.

But this churchyard of the soul pa.s.sed through, where every step is upon some buried hope, what is the petty noise and dust of the highway about which others fume and complain? What is it to the unconscious if rudely jostled in pa.s.sing? What is it if a malicious whipster spatter mud? What is it if a rude voice accost, or the right of the road be clamorously contended? when all voices, all roads are alike; when delay or speed matters not; when a choice about _anything_ seems utterly ridiculous, and all one's faculties are lost in astonishment at the worry and fret and perturbation of those who have not undergone the same ossifying process as yourself.

After all, some great sorrow is surely essential to the humanizing of every soul. Never till then can it offer anything but lip sympathy to those who have gasped through the sea of trouble. How can he who has known only days of comparative prosperity interpret the despairing sigh of the friendless? How can he who has never dropped tears into the open grave of _his own dead_ measure the agony of that last, lingering look, as they are hidden forever from human sight? Till a vacant chair stands by his own hearth, how can he ever understand why one should still keep on grieving for that which can never be recalled? Till his heart turns sickening away from some festive anniversary in which a missing voice once made music, how can he see why one need be doleful on such a day as that? Till he has closed his ears to some familiar strain which evoked a.s.sociations too painful to bear, how can he tell "Why you cannot forget all that, since it makes you so miserable"? To answer such, is to talk to the blind of colors, to the deaf of sounds, to the dead of life and motion. Never, till his own house is darkened, till the badge of desolation flutters from his own door, till sunshiny days return merciless in their brightness, and stormy ones send his thoughts shuddering to a shelterless grave; never till he has tried changing the place, but still _always_ only to keep the old pain, can he understand the desperation with which at last one sits helplessly down, to face that which it can neither look upon nor flee from.

_DIGNITY OF HUMAN NATURE._

The philosopher is fond of talking to me about what he calls "the dignity of human nature." The pains he takes to bolster himself up in this shaky belief of his, would do credit to a better cause. Obstinacy of course is at the bottom of it, for he no more believes in it than I do. How can he, and he living and breathing in this sublunary sphere _himself_? That's just what I said to him this morning; for, thank Providence, I can generally speak my mind on most points. What did he say? That's my affair; suffice it to say, he sticks to it. I made him sit down; then I sat down on his knee, to make sure of a listener. Then I took in my hand the morning papers. In the first place, there was a man of sixty who had been coaxed in where he shouldn't go, and robbed while there. Secondly, there was a justice of the peace sentenced to the Penitentiary for robbery. Thirdly, there was a clergyman convicted of bigamy. Fourthly, there was a husband, who had been trying, with an iron shovel, to find out whether his wife had any brains. Fifthly, there was another who had decided an argument by biting off a portion of his antagonist's nose. Sixthly, there were two lads, of the respective ages of eight and thirteen, who had been murderously perforating each other's intestines with sharp penknives. Seventhly, there was a man in Ma.s.sachusetts who had lately numbered his twenty-fifth child. Eighthly, there was a "gentleman" found, in the small hours, sitting on the cold sidewalk in ---- street, hiccupping for a waiter "to bring him another bottle of champagne."

"Well," says the philosopher, when I stopped to take breath, "these are only the exceptions that prove the rule." Exceptions, quotha! when I hadn't yet dug into the nauseous kennel of the advertising list!

_Exceptions_? but what's the use of talking? Does not every morning's new issue furnish similar "exceptions"? Certainly. Besides, didn't I put _this_ catechism to him? How came ---- to give the wife of an official high in power that splendid grand piano? There's a _dignified_ way to secure, through a wheedling female tongue, a fat office. Not to mention a carriage and horses unexpectedly placed at the disposal of Senator ----'s wife. Last, but not least, look at "Jeff.," first and last, from his attempted flight to his boyish refusal to eat his prison fare, bestowing it gratuitously in the faces of his guards; and then kicking and swearing, while his naughty little hands and feet were being fastened together therefor. Dignity? when I look at human beings, and think of what they daily and hourly do, I am seized with convulsions of laughter at the idea. Sometimes the devil possesses me, in the presence of some solemn "hark from the tombs" kind of an individual, to picture it, till I am tied up with cramps trying to keep from laughing. n.o.body will ever know what I've suffered in this way. Dignity? You should see it with its boots up on the window-sill of some hotel lounging-room facing Broadway, with its mouth wide open, thus--O; its hat rakishly set on one temple, and its eyes somnolently closed to the charms of the lady pedestrians, who wouldn't miss the picture for sixpence. Dignity?

Yesterday I saw a man nearly cut in two with corsets. Another trying to hop round hilariously in a pair of corn-murdering boots. Another roaring out in an omnibus like a mad bull because the cold-fingered driver gave him a "soiled stamp."

Dignity of human nature? Where is it when a man is in the dentist's chair? Where, when a waiter spills coffee on his shirt-bosom or hot soup on his trousers? One might as well not stiffen himself up against facts like these, said I to the philosopher. We don't stop being children, this side the grave, that ever I could find out. The toys we mostly scramble for, like those that dangle from the Christmas-tree, suit but the present hour, and, with all their gilding and glittering lights, will one day be but broken rubbish on our hands. When a man is dead he looks dignified; but while he is alive, with a pipe stereotyped to his lips, or alternately dipping his _soup_-erfluous mustache in a plate of soup and sopping it with a napkin; or, as the country-woman said of her pet minister, "sitting down, spitting round socionable," I really can't entertain the idea of "Dignity." The more I try the more I laugh.

Frivolous, I grant; but what were woman without frivolity? Not a man would speak to us.

WHAT MINISTERS NEED.--We have often thought that ministers need their congregations as much, if not more, than congregations need their ministers. Parishioners are not apt to look at it in this way. The matter of salary nowadays, thank G.o.d, is, as a general thing, properly considered; but the matter of "holding up his hands" spiritually, is not. Remember, he is a man like yourselves, subject to discouragement, and needs--oh, more often than you know who only look on his face once a week--that affectionate relationship which you delight in between your own children and yourself. You wish their respect, but would you be satisfied with only that? Do you not delight in the beaming eye and constant, kindly, heartfelt recognition of your presence? Just so your minister feels toward you, else he were no minister. Then do not treat him as you would a Fourth-of-July orator, or a stray lecturer, to be paid and dismissed, and forgotten when his message is delivered, careless after that whether he be crushed or shipwrecked on his way home. Remember the phrase, "holding up his hands." It has a world of significance, looked at in this light.

_ALL ABOUT DOCTORS._

There be many kinds of Doctors; allopathic--h.o.m.oepathic--and mongrel.

Luckily every family swears by its own, and believes in no salvation beyond _his_ dictum. There is your fashionable Doctor who lives in a fine house; rides to his "cases" with a servant in livery; utterly eschews all gutter localities, and never troubles himself to go out when his head aches, or in bad weather. His manner of drawing off his gloves is pompous and impressive. Nurse in the corner sinks down into her slippers, utterly quenched by it. While he warms his hands silently at the fire, he is impressing all present with an idea of his immense profundity. This done, he fixes his eyes on the ceiling, and counts his patient's pulse; then comes the tongue examination; after which he relapses into another profound contemplation of the ceiling; during which time every tick of the clock seems solemn as fate. Then follows the cabalistic writing; a dead letter to everybody but this Grand Mogul and the apothecary. The gloves are then drawn on, and bowing to the thin air, our elegant Doctor delivers himself again into the care of his liveried servant.

Then there is your old-fashioned Doctor; whose patients "will have him,"

though he has wanted gradually to leave off practice for several years, in favor of new aspirants. The cut of his coat is a matter that don't affect his practice. He smiles blandly as the other Doctor, with the liveried servant, drives past, while he trudges independently on foot, and mentally shakes his head at "new fashions." _He_ is civil without regard to externals. A baby is a baby to him, whether it comes into the world with a nice wardrobe ready for its back, or the contrary. He is perfectly willing to tell a man who places his stomach in his hands what he is going to put into it, and what he expects it to do to him. He is interested philanthropically, as well as scientifically, in the most minute symptom of the most ordinary patient, who is encouraged by the sympathetic magnetism of his voice and eye to "tell him just how he feels." He scribbles no unnecessary recipes for his own benefit, or the apothecaries'; and speaks so cheerfully when he leaves, that the sick man half doubts, after all, if anything is the matter with him.

Then there is your young, new-fledged Doctor, who gives physic as a little boy touches off a firecracker, rather uncertain whether it will blow him, or his neighbor, or both, sky-high.

Then there is your Ladies' Doctor, "the handsome creature," who lifts his eyes with well-acted astonishment that these dear beings can endure a pain, or an ache, and still live; who says just what they want him to, in the way of prescribing "little journeys" and savory messes; and coaxes all their little troubles over their lips till they are more astonished at themselves than the Doctor is at them.

Then there is your blunt pop-gun Doctor, who has no time nor inclination for nonsense, and jerks out his opinion as he would a mouthful of tobacco; and they who don't like it, are welcome to move out of the way.

Who feels your pulse, and p.r.o.nounces you a prospective dead man, or woman, as coolly as if the intelligence concerned you no more than himself.

Then there is the eccentric Doctor, who advertises himself by some peculiarity of costume, like knee-breeches, or c.o.c.ked hat, or long, flowing hair, and is never better pleased than when everybody is saying: "Who _can_ that be?"

Then there is your celebrated Surgeon, who has long since bade good-by to his own nerves, and who looks at every man, woman, and child with a view to their "cutting up." When about to commence an operation before a cla.s.s of gaping students, mark the gleaming, circling flourish of his pet-knife in the air, before descending upon his chloroform-bound victim! The operation properly and deftly performed, _his_ part is done.

The Almighty is responsible for the rest.

Finally, and lastly, it is all very nice to laugh at Doctors when one is sound and well; but let a good smart pain come, and none so ready, as those who do so, to send a telegraphic summons for their speedy appearance. With this substantial proof of their power, let them snap their fingers at criticism and be jolly.

HOW TO PUT THE CHILDREN TO BED.--_Not_ with a reproof for any of that day's sins of omission or commission. Take any other time _but_ bedtime for that. If you ever heard a little creature sighing or sobbing in its sleep, you could never do this. Seal their closing eyelids with a kiss and a blessing. The time will come, all too soon, when they will lay their heads upon their pillows lacking both. Let them then at least have this sweet memory of a happy childhood, of which no future sorrow or trouble can rob them. Give them their rosy _youth_. Nor need this involve wild license. The judicious parent will not so mistake my meaning. If you have ever met the man or the woman whose eyes have suddenly filled when a little child has crept trustingly to its mother's breast, you may have seen one in whose childhood's home "Dignity" and "Severity" stood where Love and Pity should have been. Too much indulgence has ruined thousands of children; too much _Love_ not one.