Читать книгу Ginger-Snaps - Fern Fanny - Страница 7

WHEN I live in the country, the front door of my house shall be made for use, and not for show; and the blinds and windows shall be thrown wide open from sunrise until sunset; and I will issue invitations to the bees and birds and butterflies to come in and out at their own convenience, without fear of molestation from me, or of danger to my furniture or belongings. If a few mosquitoes follow suit, I will accept them as a necessary evil, and not to be compared, in the way of annoyance, with that air of sepulchral gloom which, like a wet blanket of mist, surrounds the exterior of most country dwellings, where the men, women, and children skulk round like burglars to the back of the house to effect an entrance, and the closed door and blinds are suggestive of a corpse awaiting burial. And yet I think I understand how this bad custom came about. It was from many babies and much darning and baking, and the dread of impending fly-specks on the gilt frame encircling General Washington and the large looking-glass. But, dear friends, put a mahogany frame round the General, and banish the looking-glass, which will, in a few years, if you neglect all that makes home cheerful, reflect only the imprint of life's cares, instead of its pleasures and contents. "They are so very few," you say. Well, then the more necessity for letting in the sunshine. As I walk about, I notice the careworn, pallid faces of the wives and mothers about many of these country homes, and the careless untidiness of dress which, in a woman, means that she has given the whole thing up, either from overwork or lack of sympathy from the one person for whom the shining hair was once neatly combed, and the strip of white collar carefully pinned, although it might be late in the day before time was found to do these things. When I see these women at nightfall, in this neglectful dress, sitting alone upon the back door-step, while the husband and father has strolled off to some neighbor's, and lies flat on his stomach on the grass, with half a dozen other husbands and fathers, browsing like so many cattle, without a thought of those weary women, I fall to thinking how much life would be worth to me reduced to this utilitarian standard of cow and cabbage. Then I wonder if those women were to throw open the blinds and doors and windows of the front of the house, and smooth their hair a bit, and let one of the children pick some grasses and wild flowers for the mantel, and then tell their respective Johns and Toms to bring into the house the men they like to talk to at that hour, so that all could be jolly together, whether it wouldn't change things for the better. If that plan didn't work, do you know what I would do? I would shoulder my baby, and trot down the road to the nearest neighbor's, and let the old coffin of a house take care of itself. I wouldn't rust, anyhow.

Now, it may be that these women wouldn't know how miserable they were, if I didn't tell them of it. So much the worse, then. I only know that if life were all work to me, it should go hard but I would try to catch a sunbeam now and then, if it were only that the children might not be demoralized by growing up to look at me in the light of a dray-horse; if it were only that my boys need not expect their wives to close their eyes and ears to the beauty and harmony which God had scattered so lavishly about them. Because there are rocks, shall there be no roses? Because there is dust, shall there be no dew?

Do you do well, my sisters, to make your houses so gloomy that your husbands would rather roost outside upon the stone fences, than stay in them? Don't have a "best carpet;" don't have a "best sofa." Let in the sun, and the birds, and the children, though it involve bare floors and wooden chairs, and the total banishment of General Washington and that best looking-glass. Eat in your "best parlor," and laugh in it; don't save it up to be laid out in! Try it now, and see if life isn't a different thing to you all. As to your "work," a great deal of it is unnecessary. John and the children would be much better without pies, cakes, and doughnuts. Make it your religion to give them wholesome bread and meat, and then stop and take a little breath. Nobody will thank you for turning yourself into a machine. When you drop in your tracks, they will just shovel the earth over you, and get Jerusha Ann Somebody to step into your shoes. They wont cry a bit. You never stopped to say a word to them except "get out of my way." To be sure, you were working hard for them all the while, but that wont be remembered. So you just take a little comfort yourself as you go along, and look after "№ 1." Laugh more and darn less; they will like you twice as well. If there is more work than you can consistently do, don't do it. Sometimes there is a little blossom of a daughter in a family who makes everything bright with her finger-tips; if there is none in yours, do you be that blossom. Don't, even for John, let your children remember home as a charnel-house, and you as its female sexton.