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OLD TIMES.

On a clear spring morning more than fifty years ago, Cousin Antoinette and I sat on the front porch of Cottage Hall ready for a ride and waiting for the stable boy to bring up our ponies. We were in the act of mounting when my father appeared and inquired where we were going.

“We shall not take a long ride, papa. We are not going anywhere, and shall return in good time for breakfast.”

“You will do nothing of the kind. You have no brother here to ride with you, and it is improper for two young ladies to be seen on the public road alone so early in the morning.” He then ordered the horses back to the lot. We were obliged to submit to his authority without protest, though I was ready to say, “There is a word sweeter than ‘mother, home, or heaven,’ and that word is ‘liberty.’” Contrast this with the freedom of the modern girl on her bicycle!

Once when I left the schoolroom on account of a disagreement with the governess, my stepmother thought my father should require me to return and apologize. “No,” he replied, “she elects her own life and must abide by her choice; she shall not be coerced.” I was never afterward a student in any schoolroom, though at this time only in my thirteenth year. I had been in class with girls three or four years older than myself, and was considered quite mature in person and mental development. I early ascertained that girls had a sphere wherein they were expected to remain and that the despotic hand of some man was continually lifted to keep them revolving in a certain prescribed and very restricted orbit. When mild reproofs failed there were always other curbs for the idiot with eccentric inclinations.

Yet it was with my father’s full consent, even by his advice, that at fifteen years of age I married Edwin Thomas Merrick, for he thought I could not enter too soon upon woman’s exclusive path, and be marching along towards woman’s kingdom with a companion in the prime of a noble manhood. I was indebted for my “bringing up” to the young man I married. He was more than twice my age, and possessed many times over my amount of wisdom. In one of Mr. Merrick’s love-letters, written in 1839, alluding to a remark of mine on the absurdity of a “young thing like me” being companionable for a man of thirty years, he says: “Is it not ‘ridiculously absurd’ for a young lady who talks seriously of moving an island in the lake of Windermere to suppose she is not old enough to marry anybody? I have been reared in the cold North where mind and person come to maturity slowly; you in the sunny South where the flower bursts at once into full luxuriance and beauty.” Lover-like, he compliments me by continuing: “I have never discovered in you anything to remind me of the disparity of our ages; but, on the contrary, I have found a maturity of judgment, correctness of taste and extent of accomplishments which cause me to feel that you have every acquisition of a lady of twenty; and I have been happier in your society than in that of any other human being.”

My husband, the nephew of my stepmother, was born July 9th, 1809, in Wilbraham, Massachusetts. He was an advocate and jurist, served as district judge of the Florida parishes, and was twice elected chief justice of the Supreme Court of Louisiana.

The entire household at Cottage Hall was devoted to “Cousin Edwin,” as he was called after our Southern fashion of claiming kinship with those we like. I remember that when Mrs. Lafayette Saunders heard that Mrs. Thomas had made this match, she replied: “It is a pity she did not do the same for all the family, for she surely has made a good one for Caroline!” For a year and a half Mr. Merrick and I had seen much of each other and had exchanged frequent letters, many of which have been sacredly preserved to the present time. Bishop John C. Keener, who was his lifelong friend, said of him at the time of his death: “Judge Merrick was always a bright, delightful person in his family and with his acquaintances and friends. He was a scholar, and was familiar with several modern languages, especially French and German. He had an investigating mind, loved to explore the recent wonders of science, and the doctrine of evolution he accepted. Few men had rounded their career into a grander expression of all the high qualities which concur in the useful citizen and the influential public magistrate. He was an incorruptible and capable judge, which is the most important and admirable character in the official constituency of government.”

The Law Association of New Orleans, in their tribute to his memory, said to him—using his own words at a like meeting in honor of Chief Justice Eustis: “His judicial opinions show a comprehensive intellect, cultivated by long study, and familiarized with the sentiments of the great writers and expounders of the law. They were, as became them, more solid than brilliant, more massive than showy. They are like granite masonry, and will serve as guides and landmarks in years to come. He was domestic, temperate and simple in his habits; modest, patient, punctual, and exceedingly studious. In his family relations he was a good husband, a wise and loving father. He loved his fellow-men and enjoyed the success of others. He encouraged young men, and with his brethren of the bar he was always considerate, courteous and generous.”

Thus he received a beautiful and eloquent tribute which dealt with both his public and private life.

In his home Mr. Merrick was always gentle and lovable without the least apparent pride. He would entertain with the greatest simplicity the youngest child in the house; and this fact reminds me of a little boy who deposited with tears a bouquet at his lifeless feet. To the inquiry “Who sent them?” he replied: “I brought them. For three years he has given me money to buy all my school books, and I am so sorry he is dead!” In a letter my daughter-in-law had written me while we were in Virginia during one of his last summers on earth, she asked: “Does father still roam over the hills gathering flowers for you to wear as he used to do?” Even in his old age his cheerfulness, his equipoise and sweetness never deserted him.

In regard to early marriages, I cannot, in view of my own experience and long life of contentment and domestic happiness, say aught unfavorable, though there is another side to the question and modern custom tends increasingly towards marriage at a later period. As it is true that the progeny of immature plants and animals do not equal in vigor and capacity for endurance the offspring of fully developed specimens, so human beings who desire to establish a home and intend to bring up a family, should not be children, but full-grown, matured men and women; yet, all things else being equal, it is surely better they should unite to make up a perfect life before the season of youth has passed away, and the man became blasé, the woman warped. Men are much concerned about our sex and the duties and peculiar functions belonging thereto. It is my opinion that they too need some instruction in regard to the exercise and regulation of their own relations and responsibilities toward the future welfare of the race. They have decided that brain work is detrimental to the full development of the organization of the female; but they do not worry over the effects of tobacco, whisky and certain vile habits upon the congenital vigor of both boys and girls. Fathers and medical men ought to look well to the hygienic duties of their own sex; then both sexes would be born with better capacity for life and growth, and the poor mother would not be obliged to spend so much care and trouble in rearing the offspring of debilitated manhood. Nature does not work in a hurry. She is patient, persistent and deliberate, never losing sight of her own great ends, and inexorable as to her rights.

If study could check and thwart a child’s growth Margaret D’Ossoli would have been a case of arrested development instead of a large-souled woman. It was her father who kept her little head all day over Greek and Latin exercises at the age of seven years, when she should have been playing with her dolls and romping in the fresh outdoor air. It was her father, M. Necker, who trained Madame de Stael into a woman whom the great Napoleon hated and even feared so much that he insulted her childless wifehood by telling her that what France needed was mothers, and sent her into banishment.

It is useless to get up a lamentation that the race will die out and children be neglected because woman is going to college and becoming informed and intellectual. Nature will take care that she keeps to her principal business, which is to become a willing (or unwilling) medium to continue the species.