Читать книгу Caper-Sauce: A Volume of Chit-Chat about Men, Women, and Things. - Fern Fanny - Страница 10

There are many-sided men and women, and there are men and women that are one-sided, both in brains and body. There are men of business who have no surplus left after attending to their business. There are women who have no surplus left after attending to their kettles and pans and their mending basket. On the other hand, there are men whom business does not wholly absorb; who are interested intelligently, and actively, too, in every great question of the day and hour. There are women who order their houses discreetly, tastefully, and economically, and can yet converse elegantly and with knowledge with the most cultured persons of both sexes.

This is a preface to some little remarks of mine on an article lately written by a gentleman in one of our Magazines, on the wife of General (Cherry-Tree) Washington.

This writer says that Mrs. Washington's "knitting was never out of her hands; that when callers came, the click of her needles was always an accompaniment to her conversation. That she deemed it a privilege to attend to the details of housekeeping, and regarded the days when her official position required her presence in the drawing-room as lost."

Now she is a specimen of what I should call a one-sided woman. I am glad she was an accomplished housekeeper, and better still, was not above attending to her duty there. It was splendid, in her high position, that she should set so good an example in this regard. But it was not good to keep her needles clicking when callers came, as if to say, You are an intruder, and I can ill endure your presence. This, I maintain, was neither necessary nor polite. It was not good that she could consider her "drawing-room days" as lost, and not perceive that they might be turned to account in elevating, as an intelligent woman can, the tone of the society she moved in. That she took the contrary view of it shows, to my thinking, that she was not truly an intelligent woman. I believe her duty, as the wife of an American President, lay there quite as much as in looking over her household economies. But that was Then, and this is Now! In those days one-sided men and women were plenty, and many-sided men and women rare. We can point to-day to many glorious examples of the latter, thank Heaven.

It was once considered a disgrace to a woman to know enough to spell correctly; and if, in addition to committing this indiscretion, she happened to disgrace herself by a knowledge of French or Latin, let her never speak of it, lest it should "destroy her chances of marriage." The idea is losing ground that a woman's mentality perils puddings and shirt-buttons. There have been too many shining, tasteful houses and well-ordered tables presided over by cultivated women, for any man nowadays to drag up that old fogyism, without raising a laugh for himself.

When I read this article about Mrs. Washington, who, I admit, was excellent as far as she went, I called the writer to an account. He replied, "Oh, I knew you'd pitch into me, Fanny;" and not liking to disappoint him, I have.

Religious Tolerance. – It would do no harm if Christians who are disposed to judge harshly of each other, were to read occasionally the accounts handed down to us of enormities committed some centuries ago, and even in later years, in the name of religion, upon those of differing creeds; the perpetrators sincerely believing at the time that they were doing God service. When we are tempted to shut the gate of heaven in any fellow-mortal's face, let us recall these things, at which humanity and Christianity should alike shudder. Said a good old man, in dying, of a son who had embraced another faith than that taught him, "Well, it matters not by which road John gets to heaven, if he only reaches it at last." It seems to us that this, taken rightly, is the true spirit.