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

BLACKWELL'S ISLAND

Prior to visiting Blackwell's Island, my ideas of that place were very forlorn and small-pox-y. It makes very little difference, to be sure, to a man, or a woman, shut up in a cell eight feet by four, how lovely are the out-door surroundings; how blue the river that plashes against the garden wall below, flecked with white sails, and alive with gay pleasure-seekers, whose merry laugh has no monotone of sadness, that the convict wears the badge of degradation; and yet, after all, one involuntarily says to one's self, so instinctively do we turn to the cheerful side, I am glad they are located on this lovely island. Do you shrug your shoulders, Sir Cynic, and number over the crimes they have committed? Are your crimes against society less, that they are written down only in God's book of remembrance? Are you less guilty that you have been politic enough to commit only those that a short-sighted, unequal human law sanctions? Shall I pity these poor wrecks of humanity less, because they are so recklessly self-wrecked? because they turn away from my pity? Before I come to this, I must know, as their Maker knows, what evil influences have encircled their cradles. How many times, when their stomachs have been empty, some full-fed, whining disciple, has presented them with a Bible or a Tract, saying, "Be ye warmed and filled." I must know how often, when their feet have tried to climb the narrow, up-hill path of right, the eyes that have watched, have watched only for their halting; never noting, as God notes, the steps that did not slip – never holding out the strong right hand of help when the devil with a full larder was tugging furiously at their skirts to pull them backward; but only saying "I told you so," when he, laughing at your pharisaical stupidity, succeeded.

I must go a great way back of those hard, defiant faces, where hate of their kind seems indelibly burnt in; back – back – to the soft blue sky of infancy, overclouded before the little one had strength to contend with the flashing lightning and pealing thunder of misfortune and poverty which stunned and blinded his moral perceptions. I cannot see that mournful procession of men, filing off into those dark cells, none too dark, none too narrow, alas! to admit troops of devils, without wishing that some white-winged angel might enter too; and when their shining eyeballs peer at my retreating figure through the gratings, my heart shrieks out in its pain – oh! believe that there is pity here – only pity; and I hate the bolts and bars, and I say this is not the way to make bad men good; or, at least if it be, these convicts should not, when discharged, be thrust out loose into the world with empty pockets, and a bad name, to earn a speedy "through-ticket" back again. I say, if this be the way, let humanity not stop here, but take one noble step forward, and when she knocks off the convict's fetters, and lands him on the opposite shore, let her not turn her back and leave him there as if her duty were done; but let her there erect a noble institution where he can find a kind welcome and instant employment; before temptation, joining hands with his necessities, plunge him again headlong into the gulf of sin.

And here seems to me to be the loose screw in these institutions; admirably managed as many of them are, according to the prevalent ideas on the subject. You may tell me that I am a woman, and know nothing about it; and I tell you that I want to know. I tell you, that I don't believe the way to restore a man's lost self-respect is to degrade him before his fellow-creatures; to brand him, and chain him, and poke him up to show his points, like a hyena in a menagerie. No wonder that he growls at you, and grows vicious; no wonder that he eats the food you thrust between the bars of his cage with gnashing teeth, and a vow to take it out of the world somehow, when he gets out; no wonder that he thinks the Bible you place in his cell a humbug, and God a myth. I would have you startle up his self-respect by placing him in a position to show that you trusted him; I would have you give him something to hold in charge, for which he is in honor responsible; appeal to his better feelings, or if they smoulder almost to extinction, fan them into a flame for him out of that remnant of God's image which the vilest can never wholly destroy. Anything but shutting a man up with hell in his heart to make him good. The devils may well chuckle at it. And above all, tear down that taunting inscription over the prison-hall door at Blackwell's Island – "The way of transgressors is hard" – and place instead of it, "Neither do I condemn thee; go and sin no more."

Now, you can step aside, Mrs. Grundy; what I am about to write is not for your over-fastidious ear. You, who take by the hand the polished roué, and welcome him with a sweet smile to the parlor where sit your young, trusting daughters; you, who "have no business with his private life, so long as his manners are gentlemanly;" you who, while saying this, turn away with bitter, unwomanly words from his penitent, writhing victim. I ask no leave of you to speak of the wretched girls picked out of the gutters of New York streets, to inhabit those cells at Blackwell's Island. I speak not to you of what was tugging at my heart-strings as I saw them, that beautiful summer afternoon, file in, two by two, to their meals, followed by a man carrying a cowhide in his hand, by way of reminder; all this would not interest you; but when you tell me that these women are not to be named to ears polite, that our sons and our daughters should grow up ignorant of their existence, I stop my ears. As if they could, or did! As if they can take a step in the public streets without being jostled or addressed by them, or pained by their passing ribaldry; as if they could return from a party or concert at night, without meeting droves of them; as if they could, even in broad daylight, sit down to an ice-cream without having one for a vis-à-vis. As if they could ride in a car or omnibus, or cross in a ferry-boat, or go to a watering-place, without being unmistakably confronted by them. No, Mrs. Grundy; you know all this as well as I do. You would push them "anywhere out of the world," as unfit to live, as unfit to die; they, the weaker party, while their partners in sin, for whom you claim greater mental superiority, and who, by your own finding, should be much better able to learn and to teach the lesson of self-control – to them you extend perfect absolution. Most consistent Mrs. Grundy, get out of my way while I say what I was going to, without fear or favor of yours.

If I believed, as legislators, and others with whom I have talked on this subject, pretend to believe, they best know why, that God ever made one of those girls for the life they lead, for this in plain Saxon is what their talk amounts to, I should curse Him. If I could temporize as they do about it, as a "necessary evil," and "always has been, and always will be," and (then add this beautiful tribute to manhood) "that pure women would not be safe were it not so" – and all the other budget of excuses which this sin makes to cover its deformity – I would forswear my manhood.

You say their intellects are small, they are mere animals, naturally coarse and grovelling, Answer me this – are they, or are they not immortal? Decide the question whether this life is to be all to them. Decide before you shoulder the responsibility of such a girl's future. Granted she has only this life. God knows how much misery may be crowded into that. But you say, "Bless your soul, why do you talk to me? I have nothing to do with it; I am as virtuous as St. Paul." St. Paul was a bachelor, and of course is not my favorite apostle; but waiving that, I answer, you have something to do with it when you talk thus, and throw your influence on the wrong side. No matter how outwardly correct your past life may have been, if you really believe what you say, I would not give a fig for your virtue if temptation and opportunity favored; and if you talk so for talk's sake, and do not believe it, you had better "tarry at Jericho till your beard be grown."

But you say to me, "Oh, you don't know anything about it; men are differently constituted from women; woman's sphere is home." That don't suspend the laws of her being. That don't make it that she don't need sympathy and appreciation. That don't make it that she is never weary and needs amusement to restore her. Fudge. I believe in no difference that makes this distinction. Women lead, most of them, lives of unbroken monotony; and have much more need of exhilarating influences than men, whose life is out of doors in the breathing, active world. Don't tell me of shoemakers at their lasts, and tailors at their needles. Do either ever have to lay down their customers' coats and shoes fifty times a day, and wonder when the day is over why their work is not done, though they have struggled through fire and water to finish it? Do not both tailor and shoemaker have at least the variation of a walk to or from the shop to their meals? Do not their customers talk their beloved politics to them while they stitch, and do not their "confrères" run for a bottle of ale and crack merry jokes with them as their work progresses? Sirs! if monotony is to be avoided in man's life as injurious, if "variety" and exhilaration must always be the spice to his pursuits, how much more must it be necessary to a sensitively organized woman? If home is not sufficient (and I will persist that any industrious, virtuous, unambitious man, may have a home if he chooses); if home is not sufficient for him, why should it suffice for her? whose work is never done – who can have literally no such thing as system (and here's where a mother's discouragement comes in), while her babes are in their infancy; who often says to herself at night, though she would not for worlds part with one of them, "I can't tell what I have accomplished to-day, and yet I have not been idle a minute;" and day after day passes on in this way, and perhaps for weeks she does not pass the threshold for a breath of air, and yet men talk of "monotony!" and being "differently constituted," and needing amusement and exhilaration; and "business" is the broad mantle which it is not always safe for a wife to lift. I have no faith in putting women in a pound, that men may trample down the clover in a forty-acre lot. But enough for that transparent excuse.

The great Law-giver made no distinction of sex, as far as I can find out, when he promulgated the seventh commandment, nor should we. You tell me "society makes a difference;" more shame to it – more shame to the women who help to perpetuate it. You tell me that infidelity on the wife's part involves an unjust claim upon the husband and provider; and I ask you, on the other hand, if a good and virtuous wife has not a right to expect healthy children?

Let both be equally pure; let every man look upon every woman, whatsoever her rank or condition, as a sister whom his manhood is bound to protect, even, if need be, against herself, and let every woman turn the cold shoulder to any man of her acquaintance, how polished soever he may be, who would degrade her sex. Then this vexed question would be settled; there would be no such libels upon womanhood as I saw at Blackwell's Island, driven in droves to their cells. No more human traffic in those gilded palaces, which our children must not hear mentioned, forsooth! though their very fathers may help to support them, and which our tender-hearted legislators "can't see their way clear about." Then our beautiful rivers would no longer toss upon our island shores the "dead bodies of unfortunate young females."

SHALL WE HAVE MALE OR FEMALE CLERKS?

The question whether male or female clerks in stores are preferred by shopping ladies, has lately been agitated. I do not hesitate to say that the majority of ladies would much prefer the former.

There are reasons for this, apart from the natural and obvious preference which women entertain for a coat and vest, before a chignon and panier. Male clerks, as a general thing, confine their attention to business; in other words, "mind what they are about." Female clerks are too often taking an inventory of the way you dress your hair; of the cut and trimming, and probable cost of your sacque and dress. No lady who shops much can be unaware of the coroner's inquest, favorable or otherwise, thus held over the dry-goods on her back. When you add to this the momentous computations, whether her jewelry is bogus or real, and where she got that love of a bonnet, there is grave room for fear lest by mistake she should roll you up two yards of ribbon instead of three, involving a journey back, to the disgust of yourself and your dress-maker; or, worse still, if the day be stormy, oblige you to coax your dear Charles to let you pin a sample on the lappel of his coat, and beg him just to stop a minute – there's a dear fellow – as he comes up town, and bring it to you. Of course, he gets talking with Tom Jones on politics, and forgets all about it, and only ejaculates, "pshaw!" when your horror-stricken dress-maker asks you for it.

That's how it is, although I get my ears boxed for saying it.

Mind you, I don't say that it is always so, no more than it is true that all male clerks attend strictly to the business in hand. Still it is true: that is really the fly in the ointment. In the words of the little hymn,

 
"It is their nature to."
 

Women always dissect each other the moment they meet, and never leave so much as a hair-pin unmeasured. So, as you can't change their nature, and as the instances are rare in which man, or woman either, can do two things correctly at the same moment, what are you going to do about it?

Having said this much, I am happy to add that I have favorite stores for shopping, where I am served by female clerks with a promptness, a politeness, an exactness and a dispatch, not to be exceeded by the best-trained male clerk in existence.

As to the silly girls and women who go shopping "for fun," and to make eyes, and chatter with clerks, there is no question how their preferences go on this question. We don't count their votes.

For myself, as my time is always limited, I desire despatch, first and foremost, with an exactness involving no postscript to my shopping; and I would also prefer female clerks, if I could include this. In fact I am willing, in any case, to give my vote for the female clerks, so much do I desire that my own sex should be helped to help themselves.

Fashionable Disease. – The day when it was considered interesting and lady-like to be always ailing has gone by. Good health, fortunately, is the fashion. A rosy cheek is no longer considered "vulgar," and a fair, shapely allowance of flesh on the bones is considered the "style." Perhaps the great secret that good looks cannot exist without good health, may have had something to do with the care now taken to obtain it; whether this be so or not, future generations are the gainers all the same. A languid eye and a waxy, bloodless complexion, may go begging now for admiration. The "elegant stoop" in the shoulders, formerly considered so aristocratic, has also miraculously disappeared. Women walk more and ride less; they have rainy-day suits of apparel, too, which superfluity never was known to exist aforetime, sunshine being the only atmosphere in which the human butterfly was supposed to float. In short, "the fragile women of America" will soon exist only in the acid journal of some English traveller, who will, of course, stick to the by-gone fact as a still present reality, with a dogged pertinacity known only to that amiable nation.

UNKNOWN ACQUAINTANCES

You have none? Then I am sorry for you. Much of my pleasure in my daily walks is due to them. Perhaps you go over the ground mechanically, with only dinner or business in your eye when you shall reach your journey's end. Perhaps you "don't see a soul," as you express it. Perhaps you have no "soul" yourself; only a body, of which you are very conscious, and whose claims upon you outweigh every other consideration. That is a pity. I wouldn't go round that treadmill for all the mines of Golconda. It always makes me think of that melancholy old horse one sees, pawing rotatory wood, at the way stations, on the railroad tracks; and because the sight makes every bone in me ache, my particular window-seat in the car is always sure to command a view of him. Now, come what will, I'll not be that horse. You may if you like, and I will cling to my dreams. I sha'n't live in this world forever, and I won't hurry over the ground and never see a sweet face as it flits past me, or a grand one, or a sorrowful one. I won't be deaf to the rippling laugh of a little child or the musical voice of a refined woman. It may be only two words that she shall speak, but they shall have a pleasant significance for me. Then there are strange faces I meet every day which I hope to keep on meeting till I die. Who was such an idiot as to say that "no woman ever sees beauty in another"? I meet every day a face that no man living could admire more than myself; soulful as well as beautiful. Lovely blue, pensive eyes; golden hair, waving over a pure white forehead; cheeks like the heart of a "blush rose;" and a grieved little rosy mouth, like that of a baby to whom for the first time you deny something, fearing lest it grow too wilful. I think that day lost in which I do not meet that sweet face, framed in its close mourning bonnet. Were I a man it is to that face I should immediately "make love."

Make love? Alas! I did not think how terribly significant was this modern term when I used it. Let no man make love to that face. But if there is one who can be in dead earnest, and stay so, I give my consent, provided he will not attempt to change the expression of that mouth.

I have another acquaintance. I don't care to ask "Who is that man?" I know that he has lived his life and not slept it away. I know that it has been a pure and a good one. It is written in his bright, clear, unclouded eye; in his springing step; in the smile of content upon his lip; in the lift of his shoulders; in the poise of his head; in the free, glad look with which he breathes in his share of the warm sunshine. Were he taken to the bedside of a sick man, it seems to me the very sight of him were health.

I used to have many unknown acquaintances among the little children in the parks; but what with French nurses and silk velvet coats, I have learned to turn my feet elsewhere. It gives me the heart-ache to see a child slapped for picking up a bright autumn leaf, though it may chance to be "dirty;" or denied a smooth, round pebble, on account of a dainty little glove that must be kept immaculate. I get out of temper, and want to call on all their mothers and fight Quixotic battles for the poor little things, as if it would do any good; as if mothers who dress their children that way to play, cared for anything but their looks.

Then I have some unknown acquaintances in the yard of a large house in the upper part of Broadway. I never asked who lived in the house; but I thank him for the rare birds of brilliant plumage who walk to and fro in it, or perch upon the window-sills or steps, as proudly conscious of their gay feathers as the belles who rustle past. I love to imagine the beautiful countries they came from, and the flowers that blossomed there, and the soft skies that arched over them. I love to see them pick up their food so daintily, and, with head on one side, eye their many admirers looking through the fence, as if to say – beat that if you can in America! Ah! my birdies, stop your crowing; just wait a bit and see how the "American Eagle" is going to come out, and how each time they who have tried to clip his wings have only found that it made them grow broader and stronger. Soft skies and sweet flowers are very nice things, birdies; but rough winds and freedom are better for the soul.

I have said nothing of unknown acquaintances among my favorite authors. How many times – did I not so hate the sight of a pen when "school is let out" – have I longed to express to them my love and gratitude. Nor, judging by myself, could I ever say, "they do not need it;" since there are, or should be, moments in the experience of all writers when they regard with a dissatisfied eye what they have already given to the world, when sympathetic, appreciative words, warm from the heart, are hope and inspiration to the receiver.

A Link between Husbands and Wives. – Blessed be the little children who make up so unconsciously our life-disappointments. How many couples, mutually unable to bear each other's faults, or to forbear the causes of irritation, find solace for their pain in these golden links which still continue to unite them. On that they are one. There they can really repose. Those fragile props keep them from quite sinking disheartened by life's roadside. How often has a little hand drawn amicably together two else-unwilling ones, and made them see how bright and blessed earth may become in pronouncing that little word – "forgive."