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A MOTHER’S INFLUENCE

“And so you sail to-morrow, Will? I shall miss you.”

“Yes; I’m bound to see the world. I’ve been beating my wings in desperation against the wires of my cage these three years. I know every stick, and stone, and stump in this odious village by heart, as well as I do those stereotyped sermons of Parson Grey’s. They say he calls me ‘a scapegrace’ – pity I should have the name without the game,” said he, bitterly. “I haven’t room here to run the length of my chain. I’ll show him what I can do in a wider field of action.”

“But how did you bring your father over?”

“Oh, he’s very glad to be rid of me; quite disgusted because I’ve no fancy for seeing corn and oats grow. The truth is, every father knows at once too much and too little about his own son; the old gentleman never understood me; he soured my temper, which is originally none of the best, roused all the worst feelings in my nature, and is constantly driving me from instead of to the point he would have me reach.”

“And your mother?”

“Well, there you have me; that’s the only humanized portion of my heart – the only soft spot in it. She came to my bed-side last night, after she thought I was asleep, gently kissed my forehead, and then knelt by my bed-side. Harry, I’ve been wandering round the fields all the morning, to try to get rid of that prayer. Old Parson Grey might preach at me till the millennium, and he wouldn’t move me any more than that stone. It makes all the difference in the world when you know a person feels what they are praying about. I’m wild and reckless and wicked, I suppose; but I shall never be an infidel while I can remember my mother. You should see the way she bears my father’s impetuous temper; that’s grace, not nature, Harry; but don’t let us talk about it – I only wish my parting with her was well over. Good-bye; God bless you, Harry; you’ll hear from me, if the fishes don’t make a supper of me;” and Will left his friend and entered the cottage.

Will’s mother was moving nervously and restlessly about, tying up all sorts of mysterious little parcels that only mothers think of, “in case he should be sick,” or in case he should be this, that, or the other, interrupted occasionally by exclamations like this from the old farmer: “Fudge – stuff – great overgrown baby – making a fool of him – never be out of leading strings;” and then turning short about and facing Will as he entered, he said,

“Well, sir, look in your sea-chest, and you’ll find gingerbread and physic, darning-needles and tracts, ‘bitters’ and Bibles, peppermint and old linen rags, and opodeldoc. Pshaw! I was more of a man than you are when I was nine years old. Your mother always made a fool of you, and that was entirely unnecessary, too, for you were always short of what is called common sense. You needn’t tell the captain you went to sea because you didn’t know enough to be a landsman; or that you never did any thing right in your life, except by accident. You are as like that ne’er do well Jack Halpine, as two peas. If there is anything in you, I hope the salt water will fetch it out. Come, your mother has your supper ready, I see.”

Mrs. Low’s hand trembled as she passed her boy’s cup. It was his last meal under that roof for many a long day. She did not trust herself to speak – her heart was too full. She heard all his father so injudiciously said to him, and she knew too well from former experience the effect it would have upon his impetuous, fiery spirit. She had only to oppose to it a mother’s prayers, and tears, and all-enduring love. She never condemned in Will’s hearing, any of his father’s philippics; always excusing him with the general remark that he didn’t understand him. Alone, she mourned over it; and when with her husband, tried to place matters on a better footing for both parties.

Will noted his mother’s swollen eyelids; he saw his favorite little tea-cakes that she had busied herself in preparing for him, and he ate and drank what she gave him, without tasting a morsel he swallowed, listening for the hundredth time to his father’s account of “what he did when he was a young man.”

“Just half an hour, Will,” said his father, “before you start; run up and see if you have forgotten any of your duds.”

It was the little room he had always called his own. How many nights he had lain there listening to the rain pattering on the low roof; how many mornings awakened by the chirp of the robin in the apple-tree under the window. There was the little bed with its snowy covering, and the thousand and one little comforts prepared by his mother’s hand. He turned his head – she was at his side, her arms about his neck. “God keep my boy!” was all she could utter. He knelt at her feet as in the days of childhood, and from those wayward lips came this tearful prayer, “Oh God, spare my mother, that I may look upon her face again in this world!”

Oh, in after days, when that voice had died out from under the parental roof, how sacred was that spot to her who gave him birth! There was hope for the boy! he had recognized his mother’s God. By that invisible silken cord she still held the wanderer, though broad seas roll between.

Letters came to Moss Glen – at stated intervals, then more irregularly, picturing only the bright spots in his sailor life (for Will was proud, and they were to be scanned by his father’s eye.) The usual temptations of a sailor’s life when in port were not unknown to him. Of every cup the syren Pleasure held to his lips, he drank to the dregs; but there were moments in his maddest revels, when that angel whisper, “God keep my boy,” palsied his daring hand, and arrested the half-uttered oath. Disgusted with himself, he would turn aside for an instant, but only to drown again more recklessly “that still small torturing voice.”

“You’re a stranger in these parts,” said a rough farmer to a sun-burnt traveller. “Look as though you’d been in foreign parts.”

“Do I?” said Will, slouching his hat over his eyes. “Who lives in that little cottage under the hill?”

“Old Farmer Low – and a tough customer he is, too; it’s a word and a blow with him. The old lady has had a hard time of it, good as she is, to put up with all his kinks and quirks. She bore it very well till the lad went away; and then she began to droop like a willow in a storm, and lose all heart, like. Doctor’s stuff didn’t do any good, as long as she got no news of the boy. She’s to be buried this afternoon, sir.”

Poor Will staid to hear no more, but tottered in the direction of the cottage. He asked no leave to enter, but passed over the threshold into the little “best parlor,” and found himself alone with the dead. It was too true! Dumb were the lips that should have welcomed him; and the arms that should have enfolded him were crossed peacefully over the heart that beat true to him till the last.

Conscience did its office. Long years of mad folly passed in swift review before him; and over that insensible form a vow was made, and registered in Heaven.

“Your mother should have lived to see this day, Will,” said a gray-haired old man, as he leaned on the arm of the clergyman, and passed into the village church.

“Bless God, my dear father, there is ‘joy in Heaven over one sinner that repenteth;’ and of all the angel band, there is one seraph hand that sweeps more rapturously its harp to-day for ‘the lost that is found.’”

MR. PUNCH MISTAKEN

“A man will own that he is in the wrong – a woman, never; she is only mistaken.” —Punch.

Mr. Punch, did you ever see an enraged American female? She is the expressed essence of wild-cats. Perhaps you didn’t know it, when you penned that incendiary paragraph; or, perhaps you thought that in crossing the “big pond,” salt water might neutralize it; or, perhaps you flattered yourself we should not see it, over here; but here it is, in my clutches, in good strong English: I am not even “mistaken.”

Now, if you will bring me a live specimen of the genus homo, who was ever known “to own that he was in the wrong,” I will draw in my horns and claws, and sneak ingloriously back into my American shell. But you can’t do it, Mr. Punch! You never saw that curiosity, either in John Bull’s skin or Brother Jonathan’s. ’Tis an animal which has never yet been discovered, much less captured.

A man own he was in the wrong! I guess so! You might tear him in pieces with, red-hot pincers, and he would keep on singing out “I didn’t do it; I didn’t do it.” No, Mr. Punch, a man never “owns up” when he is in the wrong; especially if the matter in question be one which he considers of no importance; for instance, the non-delivery of a letter, which may have been entombed in his pocket for six weeks.

No sir; he just settles himself down behind his dickey, folds his belligerent hands across his stubborn diaphragm, plants his antagonistic feet down on terra-firma as if there were a stratum of loadstone beneath him, and thunders out,

 
“Come one, come all; this rock shall fly
From its firm base, as soon as I.”
 

FERN MUSINGS

I never was on an august school committee, but, if I was, I’d make a sine-qua-non that no school-marm should be inaugurated who had not been a married mother; I don’t believe in old maids; they all know very well that they haven’t fulfilled their female destiny, and I wouldn’t have them wreaking their bilious vengeance on my urchins, (if I had any.) No woman gets the acid effectually out of her temper, till she has taken matrimony “the natural way.”

No; I don’t believe in spinster educational teaching any more than I do in putting dried up old bachelors on the school committee. What bowels of mercies have either, I’d like to know, for the poor little restless victims of narrow benches and short recesses? The children are to “hold up their hands” (are they?) if they have a request to make? What good does that do, if the teacher won’t take any notice of the Free Mason sign? “They are not to enter complaints.” So some poor timid little girl must be pinched black and blue by a little Napoleon in jacket and trowsers, till she is forced to shriek out with pain, when she is punished by being kept half an hour after school for “making a disturbance!” They are “not to eat in school,” are they? Perhaps they have made an indifferent breakfast; (perhaps they are poor, and have had none at all, and A, B, C, D, doesn’t digest well on an empty stomach;) but the spinster teacher can hear them recite with a tempting bunch of grapes in her hand, which she leisurely devours before their longing eyes.

They “must not smile in school,” must they? Not when “Tom Hood” in a pinafore, cuts up some sly prank that brings “down the house;” yes – and the ferule too, on everybody’s hand but his own; (for he has a way of drawing on his “deacon face,” to order.)

They may go out in recess, but they must speak in a whisper out doors, as if they all had the bronchitis! No matter if Queen Victoria should ride by, no little brimless hat must go up in the air till “the committee had set on it!”

Oh fudge! I should like to keep school myself. I’d make “rag babies” for the little girls, and “soldier caps” for the boys; and I don’t think I would make a rule that they should not sneeze till school was dismissed; and when their little cheeks began to flush, and their little heads droop wearily on their plump shoulders, I’d hop up and play, “hunt the slipper;” or, if we were in the country, we’d race over the meadow, and catch butterflies, or frogs, or toads, or snakes, or anything on earth except a “school committee.”

THE TIME TO CHOOSE

“The best time to choose a wife is early in the morning. If a young lady is at all inclined to sulks and slatternness, it is just before breakfast. As a general thing, a woman don’t get on her temper, till after 10 A. M.” —Young Man’s Guide.

Men never look slovenly before breakfast; no, indeed. They never run round in their stocking feet, vestless, with dressing-gown inside out; soiled handkerchief hanging out of the pocket by one corner. Minus dicky – minus neck-tie; pantaloon straps flying; suspenders streaming from their waistband; chin shaved on one side, and lathered on the other; hair like porcupine quills; face all in a snarl of wrinkles because the fire wont kindle, and because it snows, and because the office boy don’t come for the keys, and because the newspaper hasn’t arrived, and because they lost a bet the night before, and because there’s an omelet instead of a broiled chicken, for breakfast, and because they are out of sorts and shaving soap, out of cigars and credit, and because they can’t “get their temper on” till they get some money and a mint julep.

Any time “before ten o’clock,” is the time to choose a husband —perhaps!

SPRING IS COMING

Tiny blades of grass are struggling between the city’s pavements. Fathers, and husbands, sighing, look at the tempting shop windows, dolefully counting the cost of a “spring outfit.” Muffs, and boas, and tippets, are among the things that were; and shawls, and “Talmas,” and mantles, and “little loves of bonnets,” reign supreme, though maiden aunts, and sage mammas, still mutter – “East winds, east winds,” and choose the sunnier sidewalk.

Housekeepers are making a horrible but necessary Babel, stripping up carpets, and disembowelling old closets, chests, and cupboards. Advertisements already appear in the newspapers, setting forth the superior advantages of this or that dog-day retreat. Mrs. Jones drives Mr. Jones distracted, at a regular hour every evening, hammering about “change of scene, and air,” and the “health of the dear children;” which, translated, means a quantity of new bonnets and dresses, and a trip to Saratoga, for herself and intimate friend, Miss Hob-Nob; while Jones takes his meals at a restaurant – sleeps in the deserted house, sews on his missing buttons and dickey strings, and spends his leisure time where Mrs. Jones don’t visit.

Spring is coming!

Handsome carriages roll past, freighted with lovely women, (residents of other cities, for an afternoon ride.) Dash on, ladies! You will scarcely find the environs of Boston surpassed, wherever you may drive. A thousand pleasant surprises await you; lovely winding paths and pretty cottages, and more ambitious houses with groups of statuary hidden amid the foliage. But forget not to visit our sweet Mount Auburn. Hush the light laugh and merry jest as the gray-haired porter throws wide the gate for your prancing horses to tread the hallowed ground. The dark old pines throw out their protecting arms above you, and in their dense shade sleep eyes as bright, forms as lovely, as your own – while “the mourners go about the streets.” Rifle not, with sacrilegious hand, the flowers which bloom at the headstone – tread lightly over the beloved dust! Each tenanted grave entombs bleeding, living hearts; each has its history, which eternity alone shall reveal.

Spring is coming!

The city belle looks fresh as a new-blown rose – tossing her bright curls in triumph, at her faultless costume and beautiful face. Her lover’s name is Legion – for she hath also golden charms! Poor little butterfly! bright, but ephemeral! You were made for something better. Shake the dust from your earth-stained wings and —soar!

Spring is coming!

From the noisome lanes and alleys of the teeming city, swarm little children, creeping forth like insects to bask in God’s sunshine – so free to all. Squalid, forsaken, neglected; they are yet of those to whom the Sinless said, “Suffer little children to come unto me.” The disputed crust, the savage curse, the brutal blow, their only patrimony! One’s heart aches to call this childhood! No “spring!” no summer, to them! Noisome sights, noisome sounds, noisome odors! and the leprosy of sin following them like a curse! One longs to fold to the warm heart those little forsaken ones; to smooth those matted ringlets; to throw between them and sin the shield of virtue – to teach their little lisping lips to say “Our Father!”

Spring is coming!

Yes, its blue skies are over us – its soft breezes shall fan us – the fragrance of its myriad flowers be wafted to us. Its mossy carpet shall be spread for our careless feet – our languid limbs shall be laved at its cool fountains. Its luscious fruits shall send health through our leaping veins – while from mountain top, and wooded hill, and flower-wreathed valley, shall float one glad anthem of praise from tiniest feathered throats!

Dear reader! From that human heart of thine shall no burst of grateful thanks arise to Him who giveth all? While nature adores – shall man be dumb? God forbid!

STEAMBOAT SIGHTS AND REFLECTIONS

I am looking, from the steamer’s deck, upon as fair a sunrise as ever poet sang or painter sketched, or the earth ever saw. Oh, this broad, blue, rushing river! sentineled by these grand old hills, amid which the silvery mist wreaths playfully; half shrouding the little eyrie homes, where love wings the uncounted hours; while looming up in the hazy distance, is the Babel city, with glittering spires and burnished panes – one vast illumination. My greedy eye with miserly eagerness devours it all, and hangs it up in Memory’s cabinet, a fadeless picture; upon which dame Fortune (the jilt) shall never have a mortgage.

Do you see yonder figure leaning over the railing of the boat, gazing on all this outspread wealth of beauty? One longs to hear his lips give utterance to the burning thoughts which cause his eye to kindle and his face to glow. A wiry sister, (whose name should be “Martha,” so careful, so troubled looks her spinstership,) breaks the charmed spell by asking him, in a cracked treble, “if them porters on the pier can be safely trusted with her bandbox and umberil.” My stranger eyes meet his, and we both laugh involuntarily – (pardon us, oh ye prim ones) —without an introduction!

Close at my elbow sits a rough countryman, with so much “free soil” adhering to his brogans they might have been used for beet-beds, and a beard rivaled only by Nebuchadnezzar’s when he experimented on a grass diet. He has only one word to express his overpowering emotions at the glowing panorama before us, and that is “pooty,” – houses, trees, sky, rafts, railroad cars and river, all are “pooty;” and when, in the fulness of a soul craving sympathy, he turned to his dairy-fed Eve to endorse it, that matter-of-fact feminine shower-bath-ed his enthusiasm, by snarling out “pooty enough, I’spose, but where’s my breakfast?”

Ah! here we are at the pier, at last. And now they emerge, our night-travelers, from state-room and cabin into the fresh cool air of the morning. Venus and Apollo! what a crew. Solemn as a hearse, surly as an Englishman, blue as an indigo-bag! There’s a poor shivering babe, twitched from a warm bed by an ignorant young mother, to encounter the chill air of morning, with only a flimsy covering of lace and embroidery; – there’s a languid southern belle, creeping out, à la tortoise, and turning up her little aristocratic nose as if she sniffed a pestilence; – there’s an Irish bride (green as Erin) in a pearl-colored silk dress surmounted by a coarse blanket shawl; – there’s a locomotive hour-glass, (alias a dandy,) a blue-eyed, cravat-choked, pantaloon be-striped, vest-garnished, disgusting “institution!” (give him and his quizzing glass plenty of sea-room); – and there’s a clergyman, God bless his care-worn face, with a valise full of salted-down sermons and the long-coveted “leave of absence;” – there’s an editor, kicking a newsboy for bringing “coals to Newcastle” in the shape of “extras;” – and there’s a good-natured, sunshiny “family man,” carrying the baby, and the carpet-bag, and the traveling shawl, lest his pretty little wife should get weary; – and there’s a poor bonnetless emigrant, stunned by the Babel sounds, inquiring, despairingly, the name of some person whom nobody knows or cares for; – and last, but not least, there’s the wiry old maid “Martha,” asking “thim porters on the pier,” with tears in her faded green eyes, to be “keerful of her bandbox and umberil.”

On they go. Oh, how much of joy – how much of sorrow, in each heart’s unwritten history.