Fern Leaves from Fanny's Port-folio.

A CHAPTER ON HOUSEKEEPING

I never could see the reason why your smart housekeepers must, of necessity, be Xantippes. I once had the misfortune to be domesticated during the summer months with one of this genus.

I should like to have seen the adventurous spider that would have dared to ply his cunning trade in Mrs. Carrot’s premises! Nobody was allowed to sleep a wink after daylight, beneath her roof. Even her old rooster crowed one hour earlier than any of her neighbors’. “Go ahead,” was written on every broomstick in the establishment.

She gave her husband his breakfast, buttoned up his overcoat, and put him out of the front door, with his face in the direction of the store, in less time than I’ve taken to tell it. Then she snatched up the six little Carrots; scrubbed their faces, up and down, without regard to feelings or noses, till they shone like a row of milk pans.

“Clear the track” was her motto, washing and ironing days. She never drew a long breath till the wash-tubs were turned bottom upwards again, and every article of wearing apparel sprinkled, folded, ironed, and replaced on the backs of their respective owners. It gave me a stitch in the side to look at her!

As to her “cleaning days,” I never had courage to witness one. I used to lie under an apple tree in the orchard, till she was through. A whole platoon of soldiers wouldn’t have frightened me so much as that virago and her mop.

You should have seen her in her glory on “baking days;” her sleeves rolled up to her arm-pits, and a long, check apron swathed around her bolster-like figure. The great oven glowing, blazing, and sparkling, in a manner very suggestive, to a lazy sinner, like myself. The interminable rows of greased pie-plates; the pans of rough and ready gingerbread; the pots of pork and beans, in an edifying state of progression; and the immense embryo loaves of brown and wheaten bread. To my innocent inquiry, whether she thought the latter would “rise,” she set her skinny arms akimbo, marched up within kissing distance of my face, cocked her head on one side, and asked if I thought she looked “like a woman to be trifled with by a loaf of bread!” The way I settled down into my slippers, without a reply, probably convinced her that I was no longer skeptical on that point.

Saturday evening she employed in winding up everything that was unwound in the house – the old entry clock included. From that time till Monday morning, she devoted to her husband and Sabbatical exercises. All I have to say is, it is to be hoped she carried some of the fervor of her secular employments into those halcyon hours.

BARNUM’S MUSEUM

It is possible that every stranger may suppose, as I did, on first approaching Barnum’s Museum, that the greater part of its curiosities are on the outside, and have some fears that its internal will not equal its external appearance. But, after crossing the threshold, he will soon discover his mistake. The first idea suggested will perhaps be that the view, from the windows, of the motley, moving throng in Broadway – the rattling, thundering carts, carriages and omnibuses – the confluence of the vehicular and human tides which, from so many quarters, come pouring past the museum – is, (to adopt the language of advertisements,) “worth double the price of admission.”

The visitor’s attention will unquestionably be next arrested by the “Bearded Lady of Switzerland” – one of the most curious curiosities ever presented. A card, in pleasant juxtaposition to the “lady,” conveys the gratifying intelligence that, “Visitors are allowed to touch the beard.” Not a man in the throng lifts an investigating finger! Your penetration, Madame Clofullia, does you infinite credit. You knew well enough that your permission would be as good as a handcuff to every pair of masculine wrists in the company. For my own part, I should no more meddle with your beard, than with Mons. Clofullia’s. I see no feminity in it. Its shoe-brush aspect puts me on my decorum. I am glad you raised it, however, just to show Barnum that there is something “new under the sun,” and to convince men in general that a woman can accomplish about anything she undertakes.

I have not come to New York to stifle my inquisitiveness. How did you raise that beard? Who shaves first in the morning? you, or your husband? Do you use a Woman’s Rights razor? Which of you does the strap-ping? How does your baby know you from its father? What do you think of us, smooth-faced sisters? Do you (between you and me) prefer to patronize dress-makers, or tailors? Do you sing tenor, or alto? Are you master, or mistress of your husband’s affections? – Well, at all events, it has been something in your neutral pocket to have “tarried at Jericho till your beard was grown.”

– What have we here? Canova’s Venus. She is exquisitely beautiful, standing there, in her sculptured graces; but where’s the Apollo? Ah, here’s a sleeping Cupid, which is better. Mischievous little imp! I’m off before you wake! – Come we now to a petrifaction of a horse and his rider, crushed in the prehensile embrace of a monstrous serpent, found in a cave where it must have lain for ages, and upon which one’s imagination might pleasantly dwell for hours. – Then, here are deputations from China-dom, in the shape of Mandarins, ladies of quality, servants, priests, &c., with their chalky complexions, huckleberry eyes and shaven polls. Here, also, is a Chinese criminal, packed into a barrel, with a hole in the lid, from which his head protrudes, and two at the sides, from whence his helpless paws depend. Poor Min Yung, you ought to reflect on the error of your ways, though, I confess, you’ve not much chance to room-inate.

Here are snakes, insects, and reptiles of every description, corked down and pinned up, as all such gentry should be, – most of them, I perceive, labeled in the masculine gender! Then there’s a “bear,” the thought of whose hug makes me utter an involuntary pater noster, and cling closer to the arm of my guide. I tell you what, old Bruin, as I hope to travel, I trust you’ve left none of your cubs behind.

– Here is a group of Suliote chiefs, and in their midst Lord Byron, with his shirt upside down; and here is the veritable carriage that little Victoria used to ride in, before the crown of royalty fretted her fair, girlish temples. Poor little embryo queen! How many times since, do you suppose, she has longed to step out of those bejeweled robes, drop the burdens state imposes, and throw her weary limbs, with a child’s careless abandon, on those silken cushions, free to laugh or cry, to sing or sigh.

– Then, here’s a collection of stuffed birds, whose rainbow plumage has darted through clustering foliage, fostered in other latitudes than ours. Nearly every species of beings that crawl, or fly, or walk, or swim, is here represented. And what hideous monsters some of them are! A “pretty kettle of fish,” some of the representatives of the finny tribe would make! I once thought I would like to be buried in the ocean, but I discarded that idea before I had been in the museum an hour. I shouldn’t want such a “scaly set” of creatures swimming in the same pond with me.

– I had nearly forgotten to mention the “Happy Family.” Here are animals and birds which are the natural prey of each other, living together in such pleasant harmony as would make a quarrelsome person blush to look upon. A sleek rat, probably overcome by the oppressive weather, was gently dozing – a cat’s neck supporting his sleepy head in a most pillow-ly manner. Mutual vows of friendship had evidently been exchanged and rat-ified by these natural enemies. I have not time to mention in detail the many striking instances of fraternization among creatures which have been considered each other’s irreconcilable foes. Suffice it to say that Barnum and Noah are the only men on record who have brought about such a state of harmonic antagonisms, and that Barnum is the only man who has ever made money by the operation.

– Heigho! time fails us to explore all the natural wonders gathered here, from all climes, and lands, and seas, by the enterprise of perhaps the only man who could have compassed it. We turn away, leaving the greater portion unexamined, with an indistinct remembrance of what we have seen, but with a most distinct impression that the “getting up” of Creation was no ordinary affair, and wondering how it could ever have been done in six days.

A FERN REVERIE

Dear me, I must go shopping. Shopping is a nuisance: clerks are impertinent: feminity is victimized. Miserable day, too: mud plastered an inch thick on the side walk. Well, if we drop our skirts, gentlemen cry “Ugh!” and if we lift them from the mud, they level their eye-glasses at our ankles. The true definition of a gentleman (not found in incomplete Webster) is – a biped, who, of a muddy day, is perfectly oblivious of anything but the shop signs.

Vive la France! Ingenious Parisians, send us over your clever invention – a chain suspended from the girdle, at the end of which is a gold hand to clasp up the superfluous length of our promenading robes; thus releasing our human digits, and leaving them at liberty to wrestle with rude Boreas for the possession of the detestable little sham bonnets, which the milliners persist in hanging on the backs of our necks.

Well, here we are at Call & Ketchum’s dry-goods store. Now comes the tug of war: let Job’s mantle fall on my feminine shoulders.

“Have you blue silk?”

Yardstick, entirely ignorant of colors, after fifteen minutes of snail-like research, hands me down a silk that is as green as himself.

Oh! away with these stupid masculine clerks, and give us women, who know by intuition what we want, to the immense saving of our lungs and leather.

Here’s Mr. Timothy Tape’s establishment.

“Have you lace collars, (in points,) Mr. Tape?”

Mr. Tape looks beneficent, and shows me some rounded collars. I repeat my request in the most pointed manner for pointed collars. Mr. Tape replies, with a patronizing grin:

“Points is going out, Ma’am.”

“So am I.”

Dear me, how tired my feet are! nevertheless, I must have some merino. So I open the door of Mr. Henry Humbug’s dry-goods store, which is about half a mile in length, and inquire for the desired article. Young Yardstick directs me to the counter, at the extreme end of the store. I commence my travels thitherward through a file of gaping clerks, and arrive there just ten minutes before two, by my repeater; when I am told “they are quite out of merinos; but won’t Lyonnese cloth do just as well?” pulling down a pile of the same. I rush out in a high state of frenzy, and, taking refuge in the next-door neighbor’s, inquire for some stockings. Whereupon the clerk inquires (of the wrong customer,) “What price I wish to pay?” Of course, I am not so verdant as to be caught in that trap; and, teetotally disgusted with the entire institution of shopping, I drag my weary limbs into Taylor’s new saloon, to rest.

Bless me! what a display of gilding, and girls, and gingerbread! what a heap of mirrors! There’s more than one Fanny Fern in the world. I found that out since I came in.

“What will you be pleased to have?” Julius Cæsar! look at that white-aproned waiter pulling out his snuff-box and taking a pinch of snuff right over that bowl of white sugar, that will be handed me in five minutes to sweeten my tea! And there’s another combing his hair with a pocket-comb, over that dish of oysters.

“What will I have?” Starve me, if I’ll have anything, till I can find a cleaner place than this to eat in.

Shade of old Paul Pry Boston! what do I hear? Two – (well I declare, I am not sure whether they are ladies or women; I don’t understand these New York feminities). At any rate, they wear bonnets, and are telling the waiter to bring them “a bottle of Maraschino de Zara, some sponge-cake, and some brandy drops!” See them sip the cordial in their glasses, with the gusto of an old toper. See their eyes sparkle and their cheeks flush, and just hear their emancipated little tongues go. Wonder if their husbands know that they – but of course they don’t. However, it is six of one and half a dozen of the other. They are probably turning down sherry cobblers, and eating oysters, at Florence’s; and their poor hungry children (while their parents are dainty-izing) are coming home hungry from school, to eat a fragmentary dinner, picked up at home by a lazy set of servants.

Heigho! Ladies sipping wine in a public saloon! Pilgrim rock! hide yourself under-ground! Well, it is very shocking the number of married women who pass their time ruining their health in these saloons, devouring Parisian confectionary, and tainting their children’s blood with an appetite for strong drink. Oh, what a mockery of a home must theirs be! Heaven pity the children reared there, left to the chance training of vicious hirelings.

APOLLO HYACINTH

“There is no better test of moral excellence, than the keenness of one’s sense, and the depth of one’s love, of all that is beautiful.” —Donohue.

I don’t endorse that sentiment. I am acquainted with Apollo Hyacinth. I have read his prose, and I have read his poetry; and I have cried over both, till my heart was as soft as my head, and my eyes were as red as a rabbit’s. I have listened to him in public, when he was, by turns, witty, sparkling, satirical, pathetic, till I could have added a codicil to my will, and left him all my worldly possessions; and possibly you have done the same. He has, perhaps, grasped you cordially by the hand, and, with a beaming smile, urged you, in his musical voice, to “call on him and Mrs. Hyacinth;” and you have called: but, did you ever find him “in?” You have invited him to visit you, and have received a “gratified acceptance,” in his elegant chirography; but, did he ever come? He has borrowed money of you, in the most elegant manner possible; and, as he deposited it in his beautiful purse, he has assured you, in the choicest and most happily chosen language, that he “should never forget your kindness;” but, did he ever pay?

Should you die to-morrow, Apollo would write a poetical obituary notice of you, which would raise the price of pocket-handkerchiefs; but should your widow call on him in the course of a month, to solicit his patronage to open a school, she would be told “he was out of town,” and that it was “quite uncertain when he would return.”

Apollo has a large circle of relatives; but his “keenness of perception, and deep love, of the beautiful” are so great, that none of them exactly meet his views. His “moral excellence,” however, does not prevent his making the most of them. He has a way of dodging them adroitly, when they call for a reciprocation, either in a business or a social way; or, if, at any time, there is a necessity for inviting them to his house, he does it when he is at his country residence, where their greenness will not be out of place.

Apollo never says an uncivil thing – never; he prides himself on that, as well as on his perfect knowledge of human nature; therefore, his sins are all sins of omission. His tastes are very exquisite, and his nature peculiarly sensitive; consequently, he cannot bear trouble. He will tell you, in his elegant way, that trouble “annoys” him, that it “bores” him; in short, that it unfits him for life – for business; so, should you hear that a friend or relative of his, even a brother or a sister, was in distress, or persecuted in any manner, you could not do Apollo a greater injury (in his estimation) than to inform him of the fact. It would so grate upon his sensitive spirit, – it would so “annoy” him; whereas, did he not hear of it until the friend, or brother, or sister, were relieved or buried, he could manage the matter with his usual urbanity and without the slightest draught upon his exquisitely sensitive nature, by simply writing a pathetic and elegant note, expressing the keenest regret at not having known “all about it” in time to have “flown to the assistance of his dear” – &c.

Apollo prefers friends who can stand grief and annoyance, as a rhinoceros can stand flies – friends who can bear their own troubles and all his – friends who will stand between him and everything disagreeable in life, and never ask anything in return. To such friends he clings with the most touching tenacity – as long as he can use them; but let their good name be assailed, let misfortune once overtake them, and his “moral excellence” compels him, at once, to ignore their existence, until they have been extricated from all their troubles, and it has become perfectly safe and advantageous for him to renew the acquaintance.

Apollo is keenly alive to the advantages of social position, (not having always enjoyed them;) and so, his Litany reads after this wise: From all questionable, unfashionable, unpresentable, and vulgar persons, Good Lord, deliver us!

SPOILED LITTLE BOY

“Boo-hoo! – I’ve eaten so – m-much bee-eef and t-turkey, that I can’t eat any p-p-plum p-p-pudding!”

Miserable little Pitcher! Take your fists out of your eyes, and know that thousands of grown-up pinafore graduates, are in the same Slough of Despond with your epicurean Lilliputian-ship. Having washed the platter clean of every crumb of “common fixins,” they are left with cloyed, but tantalizing desires, for the spectacle of some mocking “plum pudding.”

“Can’t eat your pudding!”

Why, you precious, graceless young glutton! you have the start of me, by many an ache-r. I expect to furnish an appetite for every “plum pudding” the fates are kind enough to cook for me, from this time till Teba Napoleon writes my epitaph.

Infatuated little Pitcher! come sit on my knee, and take a little advice. Don’t you know you should only take a nibble out of each dish, and be parsimonious at that; always leaving off, be the morsel ever so dainty, before your little jacket buttons begin to tighten; while from some of the dishes, you should not even lift the cover; taking aunt Fanny’s word for it, that their spicy and stimulating contents will only give you a pain under your apron. Bless your little soul, life’s “bill of fare” can be spun out as ingeniously as a cobweb, if you only understand it; and then you can sit in the corner, in good digestive order, and catch your flies! But if you once get a surfeit of a dainty, it takes the form of a pill to you, ever after, unless the knowing cuisinier disguise it under some novel process of sugaring; and sadder still, if you exhaust yourself in the gratification of gross appetites, you will be bereft of your faculties for enjoying the pure and heavenly delights which “Our Father” has provided as a dessert for his children.

A “BROWN STUDY” – SUGGESTED BY BROWN VAILS

“Why will ladies wear those ugly brown vails, which look like the burnt edge of a buckwheat cake? We vote for green ones.” —Exchange.

Mr. Critic: Why don’t you hit upon something objectionable? Such as the passion which stout ladies have for wearing immense plaids, and whole stories of flounces! Such as thin, bolster-like looking females wearing narrow stripes! Such as brunettes, gliding round like ghosts, in pale blue! Such as blondes blowing out like dandelions in bright yellow! Such as short ladies swathing up their little fat necks in voluminous folds of shawls, and shingle women, rejoicing in strips of mantles!

Then the gentlemen!

Your stout man is sure to get into a frock coat, with baggy trowsers; your May-pole, into a long-waisted body-coat, and “continuations” unnecessarily compact; your dark man looks like an “east wind” daguerreotyped, in a light blue neck-tie; while your pink-and-white man looks as though he wanted a pitcher of water in his face, in a salmon-colored or a black one.

Now allow me to suggest. Your thin man should always close the thorax button of his coat, and the last two at his waistband, leaving the intermediate open, to give what he needs – more breadth of chest. Your stout man, who has almost always a nice arm and hand, should have his coat sleeve a perfect fit from the elbow to the wrist, buttoning there tightly– allowing a nice strip of a white linen wristband below it.

I understand the architecture of a coat to a charm; know as quick as a flash whether ’tis all right, the minute I clap my eye on it. As to vests, I call myself a connoisseur. “Stocks” are only fit for Wall Street! Get yourself some nice silk neck-ties, and ask your wife, or somebody who knows something, to longitudinize them to your jugular. Throw your colored, embroidered, and ruffled shirt-bosoms overboard; leave your cane and cigar at home; wear a pair of neat, dark gloves; sport an immaculate pocket-handkerchief and dicky – don’t say naughty words – give us ladies the inside of the walk – speak of every woman as you would wish your mother or your sister spoken of, and you’ll do!

INCIDENT AT THE FIVE POINTS HOUSE OF INDUSTRY

To be able to appreciate Mr. Pease’s toils, and sacrifices, and self-denying labors at the Five Points House of Industry, one must visit the locality: – one must wind through those dirty streets and alleys, and see the wrecks of humanity that meet him at every step; – he must see children so dirty and squalid that they scarcely resemble human beings, playing in filthy gutters, and using language that would curdle his blood to hear from childhood’s lips; – he should see men, “made in God’s own image,” brutalised beyond his power to imagine; – he should see women (girls of not more than twenty years) reeling about the pavements in a state of beastly intoxication, without a trace of feminity in their vicious faces; – he should pass the rum shops, where men and women are quarreling and fighting and swearing, while childhood listens and learns! – he should pass the second-hand clothes cellars, where hard-featured Jewish dealers swing out faded, refuse garments, (pawned by starving virtue for bread,) to sell to the needy, half-naked emigrant for his last penny; – he should see decayed fruit and vegetables which the most ravenous swine might well root twice over before devouring, purchased as daily food by these poor creatures; – he should see gentlemen (?) threading these streets, not to make all this misery less, God knows, but to sever the last thread of hope to which many a tempted one is despairingly clinging.

One must see all this, before he can form a just idea of the magnitude and importance of the work that Mr. Pease has single-handed and nobly undertaken; remembering that men of wealth and influence have their own reasons for using that wealth and influence to perpetuate this modern Sodom.

One should spend an hour in Mr. Pease’s house, to see the constant drafts upon his time and strength, in the shape of calls and messages, and especially the applications for relief that his slender purse alas! is often not able to answer; – he should see his unwearied patience and activity, admire the kind, sympathetic heart – unaffected by the toil or the frowns of temporizing theorists – ever warm, ever pitiful, giving not only “the crumbs from his table,” but often his own meals to the hungry – his own wardrobe to the naked; – he should see this, and go away ashamed to have lived so long and done so little to help the maimed, and sick, and lame, to Bethesda’s Pool.

I will relate an incident which occurred, some time since, at the House of Industry, and which serves as a fair sample of daily occurrences there.

One morning an aged lady, of respectable appearance, called at the Mission House and enquired for Mr. Pease. She was told that he was engaged, and asked if some one else would not do as well. She said, respectfully, “No; my business is with him; I will wait, if you please, till he can see me.”

Mr. Pease immediately came in, when the old lady commenced her story:

“I came, sir,” said she, “in behalf of a poor, unfortunate woman and three little children. She is living now” – and the tears dropped over her wrinkled face – “in a bad place in Willet-street, in a basement. There are rum shops all around it, and many drunken people about the neighborhood. She has made out to pay the rent, but has had no food for the poor little children, who have subsisted on what they could manage to beg in the day time. The landlord promised, when she hired the basement, to put a lock on the door, and make it comfortable, so that ‘the Croton’ need not run in; but he got his rent and then broke his promise, and they have not seen him since.”