Fern Leaves from Fanny's Port-folio.

Well, sir, before summer was over, my wife and I looked as jaded as omnibus horses – she with chance “help” and floods of city company, and I with my arduous duties as express man for my own family in particular, and the neighbors in general.

And now here we are – “No. 9 Kossuth square.” Can reach anything we want, by putting our hands out the front windows. If, as the poet says, “man made the town,” all I’ve got to say is – he understood his business!

THE AGED MINISTER VOTED A DISMISSION

Your minster is “superannuated,” is he? Well, call a parish meeting, and vote him a dismission; hint that his usefulness is gone; that he is given to repetition; that he puts his hearers to sleep. Turn him adrift, like a blind horse, or a lame house dog. Never mind that he has grown gray in your thankless service – that he has smiled upon your infants at the baptismal font, given them lovingly away in marriage to their heart’s chosen, and wept with you when Death’s shadow darkened your door. Never mind that he has laid aside his pen, and listened many a time, and oft, with courteous grace to your tedious, prosy conversations, when his moments were like gold dust; never mind that he has patiently and uncomplainingly accepted at your hands, the smallest pittance that would sustain life, because “the Master” whispered in his ear, “Tarry here till I come.” Never mind that the wife of his youth, whom he won from a home of luxury, is broken down with privation and fatigue, and your thousand unnecessary demands upon her strength, patience, and time. Never mind that his children, at an early age, were exiled from the parsonage roof, because there was not “bread enough and to spare,” in their father’s house. Never mind that his library consists only of a Bible, a Concordance, and a Dictionary; and that to the luxury of a religious newspaper, he has been long years a stranger. Never mind that his wardrobe would be spurned by many a mechanic in our cities; never mind that he has “risen early and sat up late,” and tilled the ground with weary limbs, for earthly “manna,” while his glorious intellect lay in fetters —for you. Never mind all that; call a parish meeting, and vote him “superannuated.” Don’t spare him the starting tear of sensibility, or the flush of wounded pride, by delicately offering to settle a colleague, that your aged pastor may rest on his staff in grateful, gray-haired independence. No! turn the old patriarch out; give him time to go to the moss-grown church-yard, and say farewell to his unconscious dead, and then give “the right hand of fellowship” to some beardless, pedantic, noisy college boy, who will save your sexton the trouble of pounding the pulpit cushions; and who will tell you and the Almighty, in his prayers, all the political news of the week.

THE FATAL MARRIAGE

A very pretty girl was Lucy Lee. Don’t ask me to describe her; stars, and gems, and flowers, have long since been exhausted in depicting heroines. Suffice it to say, Lucy was as pretty a little fairy as ever stepped foot in a slipper or twisted a ringlet.

Of course, Lucy knew she was pretty; else why did the gentlemen stare at her so? Why did Harry Graham send her so many bouquets? Why did Mr. Smith and Mr. Jones try to sit each other out in an evening call? Why were picnics and fairs postponed, if she were engaged or ill? Why did so many young men request an introduction? Why did all the serenaders come beneath her window? Why was a pew or omnibus never full when she appeared at the door? And last, though not least, why did all the women imitate and hate her so?

We will do Miss Lucy the justice to say, that she bore her blushing honors very meekly. She never flaunted her conquest in the faces of less attractive feminines; no, Lucy was the farthest remove from a coquette; but kind words and bright smiles were as natural to her as fragrance to flowers, or music to birds. She never tried to win hearts; and between you and me, I think that’s the way she did it.

Grave discussions were often held about Lucy’s future husband; the old maids scornfully asserting that “beauties generally pick up a crooked stick at last,” while the younger ones cared very little whom she married, if she only were married and out of their way. Meanwhile, Lucy smiled at her own happy thoughts, and sat at her little window on pleasant, summer evenings, watching for Harry, (poor Harry,) who, when he came, was at a loss to know if he had ever given her little heart one flutter, so merrily did she laugh and chat with him. Skillful little Lucy, it was very right you shouldn’t let him peep into your heart till he had opened a window in his own.

Lucy’s papa didn’t approve of late hours or lovers; moonlight he considered but another name for rheumatism; at nine o’clock, precisely, he rung the bell each evening for family prayers; and when the Bible came in lovers were expected to go out: in case they were obtuse, – chairs set back against the wall, or an extra lamp blown out, or the fire taken apart, were hints sufficiently broad to be understood; and they generally answered the purpose. Miss Lucy’s little lamp, glowing immediately after from her bed-room window, gave the finale to the “Mede and Persian” order of Mr. Lee’s family arrangements.

Still, Lee house was not a hermitage, by any means. More white cravats and black coats passed over “Deacon” Lee’s threshold, than into any hotel in Yankeedom. Little Lucy’s mother, too, was a modern Samaritan, never weary of experimenting on their dyspeptic and bronchial affections; while Lucy herself (bless her kind heart) knew full well that two-thirds of them had large families, empty purses, and more Judases and Paul Prys than “Aarons and Hurs” in their congregations.

Among the habitués of Lee house, none were so acceptable to Lucy’s father, as Mr. Ezekiel Clark, a bachelor of fifty, an ex-minister, and now an agent for some “Benevolent Society.” Ezekiel had an immensely solemn face; and behind this convenient mask he was enabled to carry out, undetected, various little plans, ostensibly for the “society’s” benefit, but privately – for his own personal aggrandizement. When Ezekiel’s opinion was asked, he crossed his hands and feet, and fastened his eyes upon the wall, in an attitude of the deepest abstraction, while his questioner stood on one leg, awaiting, with the most intense anxiety, the decision of such an oracular Solomon. Well, not to weary you, the long and short of it was, that Solomon was a stupid fool, who spent his time trying to humbug the religious public in general, and Deacon Lee in particular, into the belief that had he been consulted before this world was made, he could have suggested great and manifold improvements. As to Deacon Lee, no cat ever tossed a poor mouse more dexterously than he played with the deacon’s free will; all the while very demurely pocketing the spoils in the shape of “donations” to the “society,” with which he appeased his washerwoman and tailor, and transported himself across the country, on trips to Newport, Saratoga, &c., &c.

His favorite plan was yet to be carried out; which was no more or less than a modest request for the deacon’s pretty daughter, Lucy, in marriage. Mr. Lee rubbed his chin, and said, “Lucy was nothing but a foolish little girl;” but Ezekiel overruled it, by remarking that that was so much the more reason she should have a husband some years her senior, with some knowledge of the world, qualified to check and advise her; to all of which, after an extra pinch of snuff, and another look into Ezekiel’s oracular face, Deacon Lee assented.

Poor little Lucy! Ezekiel knew very well that her father’s word was law, and when Mr. Lee announced him as her future husband, she knew she was just as much Mrs. Ezekiel Clark, as if the bridal ring had been already slipped on her fairy finger. She sighed heavily, to be sure, and patted her little foot nervously, and when she handed him his tea, thought he looked older than ever; while Ezekiel swallowed one cup after another, till his eyes snapped and glowed like a panther’s in ambush. That night poor Lucy pressed her lips to a faded rose, the gift of Harry Graham; then, cried herself to sleep!

Unbounded was the indignation of Lucy’s admirers, when the sanctimonious Ezekiel was announced as the expectant bridegroom. Harry Graham took the first steamer for Europe, railing at “woman’s fickleness.” (Consistent Harry! when never a word of love had passed his moustached lip.)

Shall I tell you how Ezekiel was transformed into the most ridiculous of lovers? how his self-conceit translated Lucy’s indifference into maiden coyness? how he looked often in the glass and thought he was not so very old after all? how he advised Lucy to tuck away all her bright curls, because they “looked so childish?” how he named to her papa an “early marriage day,” – not that he felt nervous about losing his prize – oh, no (?) – but because “the society’s business required his undivided attention.”

Well; Lucy, in obedience to her father’s orders, stood up in her snow-white robe, and vowed “to love and cherish” a man just her father’s age, with whom she had not the slightest congeniality of taste or feeling. But papa had said it was an excellent match, and Lucy never gainsayed papa; still, her long lashes drooped heavily over her blue eyes, and her hand trembled, and her cheek grew deathly pale, as Ezekiel handed her to the carriage that whirled them rapidly away.

Shall I tell you how long months and years dragged wearily on? how Lucy saw through her husband’s mask of hypocrisy and self-conceit? how to indifference succeeded disgust? how Harry Graham returned from Europe, with a fair young English bride? how Lucy grew nervous and hysterical? how Ezekiel soon wearied of his sick wife, and left her in one of those tombs for the wretched, an insane hospital? and how she wasted, day by day – then died, with only a hired nurse to close those weary blue eyes?

In a quiet corner of the old churchyard where Lucy sleeps, a silver-haired old man, each night at dew-fall, paces to and fro, with remorseless tread, as if by that weary vigil he would fain atone to the unconscious sleeper, for turning her sweet young life to bitterness.

FRANCES SARGEANT OSGOOD

“I’m passing through the eternal gates,Ere June’s sweet roses blow.”

So sang the dying poetess. The “eternal gates” have closed upon her. Those dark, soul-lit eyes beam upon us no more. “June” has come again, with its “sweet roses,” its birds, its zephyrs, its flowers and fragrance. It is such a day as her passionate heart would have reveled in – a day of Eden-like freshness and beauty. I will gather some fair, sweet flowers, and visit her grave.

“Show me Mrs. Fanny Osgood’s monument, please,” said I to the rough gardener, who was spading the turf in Mount Auburn.

“In Orange Avenue, Ma’am,” he replied, respectfully indicating, with a wave of the hand, the path I was to pursue.

Tears started to my eyes, as I trod reverently down the quiet path. The little birds she loved so well, were skimming confidingly and joyously along before me, and singing as merrily as if my heart echoed back their gleeful songs.

I approached the enclosure, as the gardener had directed me. There were five graves. In which slept the poetess? for there was not even a headstone! The flush of indignant feeling mounted to my temples; the warm tears started from my eyes. She was forgotten! Sweet, gifted Fanny! in her own family burial place she was forgotten! The stranger from a distance, who had worshiped her genius, might in vain make a pilgrimage to do her honor. I, who had personally known and loved her, had not even the poor consolation of decking the bosom of her grave with the flowers I had gathered; I could not kiss the turf beneath which she is reposing; I could not drop a tear on the sod, ’neath which her remains are mouldering back to their native dust. I could not tell, (though I so longed to know,) in which of the little graves – for there were several – slept her “dear May,” her “pure Ellen;” the little, timid, household doves, who folded their weary wings when the parent bird was stricken down, by the aim of the unerring Archer.

Though allied by no tie of blood to the gifted creature, who, somewhere, lay sleeping there, I felt the flush of shame mount to my temples, to turn away and leave her dust so unhonored. Oh, God! to be so soon forgotten by all the world! – How can even earth look so glad, when such a warm, passionate heart lies cold and pulseless? Poor, gifted, forgotten Fanny! She “still lives” in my heart; and, Reader, glance your eye over these touching lines, “written during her last illness,” and tell me, Shall she not also live in thine?

A MOTHER’S PRAYER IN ILLNESS. BY MRS. OSGOODYes! take them first, my Father! Let my dovesFold their white wings in Heaven safe on thy breast,Ere I am called away! I dare not leaveTheir young hearts here, their innocent, thoughtless hearts!Ah! how the shadowy train of future illsComes sweeping down life’s vista, as I gaze?My May! my careless, ardent-tempered May;My frank and frolic child! in whose blue eyesWild joy and passionate woe alternate rise;Whose cheek, the morning in her soul illumes;Whose little, loving heart, a word, a glance,Can sway to grief or glee; who leaves her play,And puts up her sweet mouth and dimpled armsEach moment, for a kiss, and softly asks,With her clear, flute-like voice, “Do you love me?”Ah! let me stay! ah! let me still be by,To answer her, and meet her warm caress!For, I away, how oft, in this rough world,That earnest question will be asked in vain!How oft that eager, passionate, petted heartWill shrink abashed and chilled, to learn, at length,The hateful, withering lesson of distrust!Ah! let her nestle still upon this breast,In which each shade that dims her darling faceIs felt and answered, as the lake reflectsThe clouds that cross yon smiling Heaven.And thou,My modest Ellen! tender, thoughtful, true,Thy soul attuned to all sweet harmonies;My pure, proud, noble Ellen! with thy giftsOf genius, grace and loveliness half-hidden’Neath the soft vail of innate modesty:How will the world’s wild discord reach thy heart,To startle and appal! Thy generous scornOf all things base and mean – thy quick, keen taste,Dainty and delicate – thy instinctive fearOf those unworthy of a soul so pure,Thy rare, unchildlike dignity of mien,All – they will all bring pain to thee, my child.And oh! if ever their grace and goodness meetCold looks and careless greetings, how will allThe latent evil yet undisciplinedIn their young, timid souls forgiveness find?Forgiveness and forbearance, and soft chidings,Which I, their mother, learn’d of love, to give.Ah! let me stay! albeit my heart is weary,Weary and worn, tired of its own sad beat,That finds no echo in this busy worldWhich cannot pause to answer– tired, alike,Of joy and sorrow – of the day and night!Ah! take them first, my Father! and then me;And for their sakes – for their sweet sakes, my Father!Let me find rest beside them, at thy feet.

BEST THINGS

I have a horror of “best” things, come they in the shape of shoes, garments, bonnets or rooms. In such a harness my soul peers restlessly out, asking “if I be I.” I’m puzzled to find myself. I become stiff and formal and artificial as my surroundings.

But of all the best things, spare me the infliction of a “best room.” Out upon a carpet too fine to tread upon, books too dainty to handle, sofas that but mock your weary limbs, and curtains that dare not face a ray of sunlight!

Had I a house, there should be no “best room” in it. No upholsterer should exorcise comfort, or children, from my door-sill. The free, fresh air should be welcome to play through it; the bright, glad sunshine to lighten and warm it; while fresh mantel-flowers should woo us visits from humming-bird and drowsy bee.

For pictures, I’d look from out my windows, upon a landscape painted by the Great Master – ever fresh, ever varied, and never marred by envious “cross lights;” now, wreathed in morning’s silvery mist; now, basking in noon’s broad beam; now, flushed with sunset’s golden glow; now, sleeping in dreamy moonlight.

For statuary, fill my house with children – rosy, dimpled, laughing children; now, tossing their sunny ringlets from open brows; now, vailing their merry eyes in slumberous dreams, ’neath snow-white lids; now, sweetly grave, on bended knee, with clasped hands, and lisped words of holy prayer.

Did I say I’d have nothing “best?” Pardon me. Sunday should be the best day of all the seven – not ushered in with ascetic form, or lengthened face, or stiff and rigid manners. Sweetly upon the still Sabbath air should float the matin hymn of happy childhood; blending with early song of birds, and wafted upward, with flowers’ incense, to Him whose very name is Love. It should be no day for puzzling the half-developed brain of childhood with gloomy creeds, to shake the simple faith that prompts the innocent lips to say, “Our Father.” It should be no day to sit upright on stiff-backed chairs, till the golden sun should set. No; the birds should not be more welcome to warble, the flowers to drink in the air and sunlight, or the trees to toss their lithe limbs, free and fetterless.

“I’m so sorry that to-morrow is Sunday!” From whence does this sad lament issue? From under your roof, oh mistaken but well-meaning Christian parents – from the lips of your child, whom you compel to listen to two or three unintelligible sermons, sandwiched between Sunday schools, and finished off at nightfall by tedious repetitions of creeds and catechisms, till sleep releases your weary victim! No wonder your child shudders, when the minister tells him that “Heaven is one eternal Sabbath.”

Oh, mistaken parent! relax the over-strained bow —prevent the fearful rebound, and make the Sabbath what God designed it, not a weariness, but the “best” and happiest day of all the seven.

THE VESTRY MEETING

The clock had just struck seven. The sharp-nosed old sexton of the Steeple-Street Church had arranged the lights to his mind, determined the proper latitude and longitude of Bibles and hymn-books, peeped curiously into the little black stove in the corner, and was now admonishing every person who passed in, of the propriety of depositing the “free soil” on his boots upon the entry door-mat.

In they crept, one after another – pale-faced seamstresses, glad of a reprieve; servant girls, who had turned their backs upon unwashed dishes; mothers, whose “crying babies” were astounding the neighbors; old maids, who had nowhere to spend their long evenings; widowers, who felt an especial solicitude lest any of the sisters should be left to return home unprotected; girls and boys, who came because they were bid, and who had no very clear idea of the performances; and last, though not least, Ma’am Spy, who thought it her duty to see that none of the church-members were missing, and to inquire every Tuesday night, of her friend Miss Prim, if she didn’t consider Mrs. Violet a proper subject for church discipline, because she always had money enough to pay her board bills, although her husband had deserted her.

Then there were the four Misses Nipper, who crawled in as if the vestry floor were paved with live kittens, and who had never been known, for four years, to vary one minute in their attendance, or to keep awake from the first prayer to the doxology.

Then, there was Mrs. John Emmons, who sang the loudest, and prayed the longest, and wore the most expensive bonnets, of any female member in the church – whose name was on every committee, who instituted the select praying circle for the more aristocratic portion of the parish, and whose pertinacious determination to sit next to her husband at the Tuesday night meeting, was regarded by the uninitiated as a beautiful proof of conjugal devotion; but which, after patient investigation, (between you and me, dear reader,) was found to be for the purpose of arresting his coat-flaps when he popped up to make mental shipwreck of himself by making a speech.

Then, there was Mr. Nobbs, whose remarks were a re-hash of the different religious periodicals of the day, diversified with misapplied texts of Scripture, and delivered with an intonation and gesticulation that would have given Demosthenes fits.

Then, there was Zebedee Falstaff, who accomplished more for the amelioration of the human race (according to his own account) than any man of his aldermanic proportions in the nation, and who delivered (on a hearty supper) a sleepy exhortation on the duties of self-denial and charity, much to the edification of one of his needy relatives, to whose tearful story he had that very day turned a deaf ear.

Then, there was Brother Higgins, who was always “just going” to make a speech, “if brother Thomas hadn’t so exactly anticipated his sentiments a minute before.”

Then, there was Mr. Addison Theophilus Shakspeare Milton, full of poetical and religious inspiration, who soared so high in the realms of fancy, that his hearers lost sight of him.

Then, there was little Dr. Pillbox, who gave us every proof in his weekly exhortations of his knowledge of “drugs,” not to mention young Smith, who chased an idea round till he lost it, and then took shelter behind a bronchial difficulty which compelled him, “unwillingly (?) to come to a close.”

Then, there were some sincere, good-hearted Christians – respectable citizens – worthy heads of families; but whose lips had never been “touched with a live coal from off the altar.”

Where was the pastor? Oh, he was there – a slight, fragile, scholar-like looking man, with a fine intellectual face, exquisitely refined tastes and sensibilities, and the meek spirit of “the Master.” Had those slender shoulders no cross to bear? When chance sent some fastidious worldling through that vestry door, did it cost him nothing to watch the smile of contempt curl the stranger’s lip, as some uneducated, but well-meaning layman, presented with stammering tongue, in ungrammatical phrase, distorted, one-sided, bigoted views of great truths which his eloquent tongue might have made as clear as the noon-day, and as cheering and welcome as heaven’s own blessed light, to the yearning, dissatisfied spirit? Oh, is there nothing in religion, when it can so subdue the pride of intellect as to enable its professor to disregard the stammering tongue, and sit meekly at the feet of the ignorant disciple because he is a disciple?

A BROADWAY SHOP REVERIE

Forty dollars for a pocket-handkerchief! My dear woman! you need a straight-jacket, even though you may be the fortunate owner of a dropsical purse.

I won’t allude to the legitimate use of a pocket-handkerchief; I won’t speak of the sad hearts that “forty dollars,” in the hands of some philanthropist, might lighten; I won’t speak of the “crows’ feet” that will be penciled on your fair face, when your laundress carelessly sticks the point of her remorseless smoothing iron through the flimsy fabric, or the constant espionage you must keep over your treasure, in omnibuses, or when promenading; but I will ask you how many of the lords of creation, for whose especial benefit you array yourself, will know whether that cobweb rag fluttering in your hand cost forty dollars, or forty cents?

Pout if you like, and toss your head, and say that you “don’t dress to please the gentlemen.” I don’t hesitate to tell you (at this distance from your finger nails) that is a downright – mistake! and that the enormous sums most women expend for articles, the cost of which few, save shop-keepers and butterfly feminines, know, is both astounding and ridiculous.

True, you have the sublime gratification of flourishing your forty-dollar handkerchief of sporting your twenty-dollar “Honiton collar,” or of flaunting your thousand-dollar shawl, before the envious and admiring eyes of some weak sister, who has made the possible possession of the article in question a profound and lifetime study; you may pass, too, along the crowded pavé, laboring under the hallucination, that every passer-by appreciates your dry-goods value. Not a bit of it! Yonder is a group of gentlemen. You pass them in your promenade; they glance carelessly at your tout-ensemble, but their eyes rest admiringly on a figure close behind you. It will chagrin you to learn that this locomotive loadstone has on a seventy-five cent hat, of simple straw – a dress of lawn, one shilling per yard – a twenty-five cent collar, and a shawl of the most unpretending price and fabric.