Fern Leaves from Fanny's Port-folio.

During one of these agreeable calls, the lady took occasion slightly to object to Betty’s nibbling the tarts, as she brought them up for dinner; whereupon, Mr. Renoux declared, upon the honor of a Frenchman, that “she should be pitched out of the door immediately, if not sooner; and an efficient servant engaged to take her place.”

The next day, the “efficient servant” came in, broom in hand, whistling “Oh, Susanna,” and passing into the little dressing-room, to “put it to rights,” amused herself by trying on the widow’s best bonnet, and polishing her teeth and combing her hair with that lady’s immaculate and individual head-brush and tooth-brush. You will not be surprised to learn, that their injured and long-suffering owner, took a frantic and “French leave” the following morning, in company with her big and little band-boxes; taking refuge under the sheltering roof of Madame Finfillan.

Madame Finfillan was a California widow; petite, plump and pretty – who bore her cruel bereavement with feminine philosophy, and slid round the world’s rough angles with a most eel-like dexterity. In short, she was a Renoux in petticoats. Madame welcomed the widow with great pleasure, because, as she said, she “wished to fill her house only with first-class boarders;” and the widow might be assured that she had the apartments fresh from the diplomatic hands of the Spanish Consul, who would on no account have given them up, had not his failing health demanded a trip to the Continent. Madame also assured the widow, that, (although she said it herself,) every part of her house would bear the closest inspection; that those vulgar horrors, cooking butter, and diluted tea, were never seen on her Epicurean table; that they breakfasted at ten, lunched at two, dined at six, and enjoyed themselves in the interim; that her daughter, Miss Clara, was perfectly well qualified to superintend, when business called her mother away. And that nobody knew, (wringing her little white hands,) how much business she had to do, what with trotting round to those odious markets, trading for wood and coal, and such like uninteresting things; or what would become of her, had she not some of the best friends in the world to look after her, in the absence of Mons. Finfillan.

– Madame then caught up the widow’s little boy, and, half smothering him with kisses, declared that there was nothing on earth she loved so well as children; that there were half a dozen of them in the house, who loved her better than their own fathers and mothers, and that their devotion to her was at times quite touching – (and here she drew out an embroidered pocket handkerchief, and indulged in an interesting little sniffle behind its cambric folds.) Recovering herself, she went on to say, that the manner in which some boarding-house keepers treated children, was perfectly inhuman: that she had a second table for them, to be sure, but it was loaded with delicacies, and that she always put them up a little school lunch herself; on which occasion there was always an amicable little quarrel among them, as to which should receive from her the greatest number of kisses; also, that it was her frequent practice to get up little parties and tableaux, for their amusement. “But here is my daughter, Miss Clara,” said she, introducing a fair-haired young damsel, buttoned up in a black velvet jacket, over a flounced skirt.

“Just sixteen yesterday,” said Madame: “naughty little blossom, budding out so fast, and pushing her poor mamma off the stage;” (and here Madame paused for a compliment, and looking in the opposite mirror, smoothed her jetty ringlets complacently.) “Yes, every morning little blossom’s mamma looks in the glass, expecting to find a horror of a gray hair. But what makes my little pet so pensive to-day? – thinking of her little lover, hey? Has the naughty little thing a thought she does not share with mamma? But, dear me!” – and Madame drew out a little dwarf watch; “I had quite forgotten it is the hour Mons. Guigen gives me my guitar lesson. Adieu, dinner at six, remember;” – and Madame tripped, coquettishly, out of the room.

Yes; “dinner at six.” Gold salt-cellars, black waiters, and finger-bowls; satin chairs in the parlor, and pastilles burning on the side-table; but the sheets on the beds all torn to ribbons; the boarders allowed but one towel a week; every bell-rope divorced from its bell; the locks all out of order on the chamber doors; the “dear children’s” bill of fare at the “second table” – sour bread, watery soup, and cold buckwheat cakes; – and “dinner at six,” only an invention of the enemy, to save the expense of one meal a day – the good, cozy, old-fashioned tea.

Well, the boarders were all “trusteed” by Madame’s butcher, baker and milkman; Miss Clara eloped with the widow’s diamond ring and Mons. Peneke; and Madame, who had heard that Mons. Finfillan was “among the things that were,” was just about running off with Mons. Guigen, when her liege lord suddenly returned from California, with damaged constitution and morals, a dilapidated wardrobe and empty coffers.

Moral. Beware of boarding-houses: in the words of Shakspeare,

Let those keep house who ne’er kept house beforeAnd those who have kept house, keep house the more.

A GRUMBLE FROM THE (H)ALTAR

This is the second day I’ve come home to dinner, without that yard of pink ribbon for Mrs. Pendennis. Now, we shall have a broil, not down in the bill of fare. Julius Cæsar; if she only knew how much I have to do; but it would make no difference if she did. I used to think a fool was easily managed. Mrs. Pendennis has convinced me that that was a mistake. If I try to reason with her, she talks round and round in a circle, like a kitten chasing its tail. If I set my arms a-kimbo, and look threatening, she settles into a fit of the sulks, to which a November drizzle of a fortnight’s duration is a millenium. If I try to get round her by petting, she is as impudent as the – . Yes, just about. Jerusalem! what a thing it is to be married! And yet, if an inscrutable Providence should bereave me of Mrs. Pendennis, I am not at all sure – good gracious, here she comes! Do you know I’d rather face one of Colt’s revolvers this minute, than that four feet of womanhood? Isn’t it astonishing, the way they do it?

A WICK-ED PARAGRAPH

Connubial. – Mr. Albert Wicks, of Coventry, under date of December 28th, advertised his wife as having left his bed and board; and now, under date of March 26th, he appends to his former notice, the following:

“Mrs. Wicks, if you ever intend to come back and live with me any more, you must come now or not at all.

“I love you as I do my life, and if you will come now, I will forgive you for all you have done and threatened to do, which I can prove by three good witnesses: and if not, I shall attend to your case without delay, and soon, too.”

There, now, Mrs. Wicks, what is to be done? “Three good witnesses!” think of that! What the mischief have you been about? Whatever it is, Mr. Wicks is ready to “love you like his life.” Consistent Mr. Wicks!

Now take a little advice, my dear innocent, and don’t allow yourself to be badgered or frightened into anything. None but a coward ever threatens a woman. Put that in your memorandum book. It’s all bluster and braggadocio. Thread your darning-needle, and tell him you are ready for him – ready for anything except his “loving you like his life;” that you could not possibly survive that infliction, without having your “wick” snuffed entirely out.

Sew away, just as if there were not a domestic earthquake brewing under your connubial feet. If it sends you up in the air, it sends him, too – there’s a pair of you! Put that in his Wick-ed ear! Of course he will sputter away, as if he had swallowed a “Roman candle,” and you can take a nap till he gets through, and then offer him your smelling-bottle to quiet his nerves.

That’s the way to quench him!

MISTAKEN PHILANTHROPY

“Don’t moralize to a man who is on his back. Help him up, set him firmly on his feet, and then give him advice and means.”

There’s an old-fashioned, verdant piece of wisdom, altogether unsuited for the enlightened age we live in! Fished up, probably, from some musty old newspaper, edited by some eccentric man troubled with that inconvenient appendage, called a heart! Don’t pay any attention to it. If a poor wretch (male or female) comes to you for charity, whether allied to you by your own mother, or mother Eve, put on the most stoical, “get thee behind me” expression you can muster. Listen to him with the air of a man who “thanks God he is not as other men are.” If the story carry conviction with it, and truth and sorrow go hand in hand, button your coat up tighter over your pocket-book, and give him a piece of – good advice! If you know anything about him, try to rake up some imprudence or mistake he may have made in the course of his life, and bring that up as a reason why you can’t give him anything more substantial, and tell him that his present condition is probably a salutary discipline for those same peccadilloes! Ask him more questions than there are in the Assembly’s Catechism, about his private history, and when you’ve pumped him high and dry, try to teach him (on an empty stomach,) the “duty of submission.” If the tear of wounded sensibility begin to flood the eye, and a hopeless look of discouragement settle down upon the face, “wish him well,” and turn your back upon him as quick as possible.

Should you at any time be seized with an unexpected spasm of generosity, and make up your mind to bestow some worn out, old garment that will hardly hold together till the recipient gets it home, you’ve bought him, body and soul; of course you are entitled to the gratitude of a life-time! If he ever presumes to think differently from you after that, he’s an “ungrateful wretch,” and “ought to suffer.” As to the “golden rule,” that was made in old times; everything is changed now; ’taint suited to our meridian.

People shouldn’t get poor; if they do, you don’t want to be bothered with it. It’s disagreeable; it hinders your digestion. You’d rather see Dives than Lazarus; and it’s my opinion your taste will be gratified in that particular, (in the other world, if it is not in this!)

INSIGNIFICANT LOVE

“You, young, loving creature, who dream of your lover by night and by day – you fancy that he does the same of you? One hour, perhaps, your presence has captivated him, subdued him even to weakness; the next, he will be in the world, working his way as a man among men, forgetting, for the time being, your very existence. Possibly, if you saw him, his outer self, so hard and stern, so different from the self you know, would strike you with pain. Or else his inner and diviner self, higher than you dream of, would turn coldly from your insignificant love.”

“Insignificant love!!” I like that. More especially when out of ten couple you meet, nine of the wives are as far above their husbands, in point of mind, as the stars are above the earth. For the credit of the men I should be sorry to say how many of them would be minus coats, hats, pantaloons, cigars, &c., were it not for their wives’ earnings; or how many smart speeches and able sermons have been concocted by their better halves, (while rocking the cradle,) to be delivered to the public at the proper time, parrot fashion, by the lords of creation. Wisdom will die with the men, there’s no gainsaying that!

Catch a smart, talented, energetic woman, and it will puzzle you to find a man that will compare with her for goaheadativeness. The more obstacles she encounters, the harder she struggles, and the more you try to put her down, the more you won’t do it. Children are obliged to write under their crude drawings, “this is a dog,” or, “this is a horse.” If it were not for coats and pants, we should be obliged to label, “this is a man,” in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred!

“Insignificant love!” Why does a man offer himself a dozen times to the same woman? Pity to take so much pains for such a trifle! “Insignificant love!” Who gets you on your feet again, when you fail in business, by advancing the nice little sum settled on herself by her anxious pa? Who cheers you up, when her nerves are all in a double-and-twisted knot, and you come home with your face long as the moral law? Who wears her old bonnet three winters, while you smoke, and drive, and go to the opera? Who sits up till the small hours, to help you find the way up your own staircase? Who darns your old coat, next morning, just as if you were a man, instead of a brute? And who scratches any woman’s eyes out, who dares insinuate that her husband is superior to you!

“Insignificant love!” I wish I knew the man who wrote that article! I’d appoint his funeral to-morrow, and it should come off too!!

A MODEL MARRIED MAN

Cobbett says that for two years after his marriage, he retained his disposition to flirt with pretty women; but at last his wife – probably having lost all hope of his reforming himself – gently tapped him upon the arm, and remarked —

“Don’t do that. I do not like it.”

Cobbett says: – “That was quite enough. I had never thought on the subject before; one hair of her head was more dear to me than all other women in the world; and this I knew that she knew; but now I saw that this was not all that she had a right to from me. I saw that she had the further claim upon me that I should abstain from everything that might induce others to believe that there was any other woman for whom, even if I were at liberty, I had any affection.”

Now I suppose most women, on reading that, would roll up their eyes and think unutterable things of Mr. Cobbett! But, had I borne his musical name, and had that fine speech been addressed to me, I should immediately have dismissed the – house-maid!

It is not in any masculine to get on his knees that way, without a motive! I tell you, that man was a humbug! overshot the mark, entirely; promised ten times as much as a sinful masculine could ever perform. If he’d said about a quarter part of that, you might have believed him. His affection for Mrs. Cobbett was skin-deep. He would have flirted with every one of you, the minute her back was turned, to the end of the electrical chapter!

A man who is magnetized as he ought to be, don’t waste his precious time making such long-winded, sentimental speeches. You never need concern yourself, when such a glib tongue makes love to you. Go on with your knitting; he’s convalescent! getting better of his complaint fast. Now mind what I tell you; that Cobbett was a humbug!

MEDITATIONS OF PAUL PRY, JUN

Not a blessed bit of gossip have I heard for a whole week! Nobody’s run off with anybody’s wife; not a single case of “Swartwouting;” no minister’s been to the theatre; and my friend Tom, editor of the “Sky Rocket,” (who never cares whether a rumor be true or false, or where it hits, so that it makes a paragraph,) is quite in despair. He’s really afraid the world is growing virtuous – says it would be a hundred dollars in his pocket, to get hold of a bit of scandal in such a dearth of news; and if the accused party gets obstreperous, he’d just as lief publish one side as the other! The more fuss the better; all he’s afraid of is, they won’t think it worth noticing!

Ah! we’ve some new neighbors in that house; pretty woman there, at the window; glad of that! In the first place, it rests my eyes to look at them; in the next place, where there’s a pretty woman, you may be morally certain there’ll be mischief, sooner or later, i. e. if they don’t have somebody like me to look after them; therefore I shall keep my eye on her. That’s her husband in the room, I’m certain of it, (for all the while she is talking to him, she’s looking out the window!) There he goes down street to his business – a regular humdrum, henpecked, “ledger” looking Lilliputian. Was not cut out for her, that’s certain! Well, my lady’s wide awake enough! Look at her eye! No use in pursing up that pretty mouth! – that eye tells the story! Nice little plump figure; coquettish turn of the head, and a spring to her step. Well, well, I’ll keep my eyes open.

Just as I expected! there’s a young man ringing at the door; “patent leather,” “kid gloves,” white hand, ring on the little finger – hope she won’t shut the blinds now. There! she has taken her seat on the sofa at the back part of the room. She don’t escape me that way, while I own a spy-glass! Jupiter! if he is not twisting her curls round his fingers! Wonder how old “Ledger” would like that!

Tuesday. – Boy at the door with a bouquet. Can’t ring the bell; I’ll just step out and offer to do it for him, and learn who sent it! “Has orders not to tell;” umph! I’ve no orders “not to tell;” so here goes a note to Ledger about it; that little gipsy is stepping rather too high.

Wednesday. – Here I am tied up for a month at least; scarcely a whole bone in my body, to say nothing of the way my feelings are hurt. How did I know that young man was “her brother?” Why couldn’t Ledger correct my mistake in a gentlemanly way, without daguerreotyping it on my back with a horsewhip? It’s true I am not always correct in my suspicions, but he ought to have looked at my motives! Suppose it hadn’t been her brother, now! It’s astonishing, the ingratitude of people. It’s enough to discourage all my attempts at moral reform!

Well, it’s no use attacking that hornet’s nest again; but I’ve no doubt some of the commandments are broken somewhere; and with the help of some “opodeldoc” I’ll get out and find where it is!

SUNSHINE AND YOUNG MOTHERS

Folly. For girls to expect to be happy without marriage. Every woman was made for a mother, consequently, babies are as necessary to their “peace of mind,” as health. If you wish to look at melancholy and indigestion, look at an old maid. If you would take a peep at sunshine, look in the face of a young mother.

“Young mothers and sunshine”! They are worn to fiddle strings before they are twenty-five! When an old lover turns up, he thinks he sees his grandmother, instead of the dear little Mary who used to make him feel as if he should crawl out of the toes of his boots! Yes! my mind is quite made up about matrimony; it’s a one-sided partnership.

“Husband” gets up in the morning, and pays his devoirs to the looking-glass; curls his fine head of hair; puts on an immaculate shirt bosom; ties an excruciating cravat; sprinkles his handkerchief with cologne; stows away a French roll, an egg, and a cup of coffee; gets into the omnibus, looks at the pretty girls, and makes love between the pauses of business during the forenoon generally. Wife must “hermetically seal” the windows and exclude all the fresh air, (because the baby had “the snuffles” in the night;) and sits gasping down to the table more dead than alive, to finish her breakfast. Tommy turns a cup of hot coffee down his bosom; Juliana has torn off the strings of her school bonnet; James “wants his geography covered;” Eliza can’t find her satchel; the butcher wants to know if she’d like a joint of mutton; the milkman would like his money; the iceman wants to speak to her “just a minute;” the baby swallows a bean; husband sends the boy home from the store to say his partner will dine with him; the cook leaves “all flying,” to go to her “sister’s dead baby’s wake,” and husband’s thin coat must be ironed before noon.

“Sunshine and young mothers!” Where’s my smelling bottle?

UNCLE BEN’S ATTACK OF SPRING FEVER, AND HOW HE GOT CURED

“It is not possible that you have been insane enough to go to housekeeping in the country, for the summer? Oh, you ought to hear my experience,” and Uncle Ben wiped the perspiration from his forehead, at the very thought.

Yes, I tried it once, with city habits and a city wife: got rabid with the dog days, and nothing could cure me but a nibble of green grass. There was Susan, you know, who never was off a brick pavement in her life, and didn’t know the difference between a cheese and a grindstone.

Well, we ripped up our carpets, and tore down our curtains, and packed up our crockery, and nailed down our pictures, and eat dust for a week, and then we emigrated to Daisy Ville.

Could I throw up a window or fasten back a blind in that house, without sacrificing my suspenders and waistband button? No, sir! Were not the walls full of Red Rovers? Didn’t the doors fly open at every wind gust? Didn’t the roof leak like the mischief? Was not the chimney leased to a pack of swallows? Was not the well a half a mile from the house?

Oh, you needn’t laugh. Instead of the comfortable naps to which I had been accustomed, I had to sleep with one eye open all night, lest I shouldn’t get into the city in time. I had to be shaving in the morning before a rooster in the barn-yard had stirred a feather; swallowed my coffee and toast by steam, and then, still masticating, made for the front door. There stood Peter with my horse and gig, – for I detest your cars and omnibuses. On the floor of the chaise was a huge basket in which to bring home material for the next day’s dinner; on the seat was a dress of my wife’s to be left “without fail” at Miss Sewing Silk’s, to have the forty-seventh hook moved one-sixth of a degree higher up on the back. Then there was a package of shawls from Tom Fools & Co., to be returned, and a pair of shoes to carry to Lapstone, who was to select another pair for me to bring out at night; and a demijohn to be filled with Sherry. Well, I whipped up Bucephalus, left my sleeping wife and babies, and started for town; cogitating over an intricate business snarl, which bade defiance to any straightening process. I hadn’t gone half a mile before an old maid (I hate old maids) stopped me to know if I was going into town, and if I was, if I wouldn’t take her in, as the omnibusses made her sick. She said she was niece to Squire Dandelion, and “had a few chores to do a shopping.” So I took her in, or rather, she took me in, (but she didn’t do it but once – for I bought a sulkey next day!) Well, it came night, and I was hungry as a Hottentot, for I never could dine, as your married widowers pro tem do, at eating-houses, where one gravy answers for flesh, fish and fowl, and the pudding-sauce is as black as the cook’s complexion. So I went round on an empty stomach, hunting up my expressman parcels, and wending my way to the stable with arms and pockets running over. When I got home, found my wife in despair, no tacks in the house to nail down carpets, and not one to be had at the store in the village; the cook had deserted because she couldn’t do without “her city privileges,” (meaning Jonathan Jones, the “dry dirt” man); and the chambermaid, a buxom country girl with fire red hair, was spinning round the crockery (a la Blitz) because she “couldn’t eat with the family.”

Then Charley was taken with the croup in the night, and in my fright I put my feet into my coat sleeves, and my arms into my pants, and put on one of my wife’s ruffles instead of a dicky, and rode three miles in a pelting rain, for some “goose grease” for his throat.

Then we never found out till cherries, and strawberries, and peaches were ripe, how many friends (?) we had. There was a horse hitched at every rail in the fence, so long as there was anything left to eat on a tree in the farm; but if my wife went in town shopping, and called on any of them, they were “out, or engaged;” – or if at home, had “just done dinner, and were going to ride.”

Then there was no school in the neighborhood for the children, and they were out in the barn-yard feeding the pigs with lump sugar, and chasing the hens off the nest to see what was the prospect for eggs, and making little boats of their shoes, and sailing them in the pond, and milking the cow in the middle of the day, &c.

Then if I dressed in the morning in linen coat, thin pants, and straw hat, I’d be sure to find the wind “dead east” when I got into the city; or if I put on broadcloth and fixins to match, it would be hotter than Shadrach’s furnace, all day – while the dense morning fog would extract the starch from my dicky and shirt-bosom, till they looked very like a collapsed flapjack.

Then our meeting-house was a good two miles distant, and we had to walk, or stay at home; because my factotum (Peter) wouldn’t stay on the farm without he could have the horse Sundays to go to Mill Village to see his affianced Nancy. Then the old farmers leaned on my stone wall, and laughed till the tears came into their eyes, to see “the city gentleman’s” experiments in horticulture, as they passed by “to meetin’.”