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

DO AMERICAN WOMEN LOVE NATURE?

I read an article in The Nation the other day, in which the writer deplores "that American women are not lovers of Nature." Now, sins enough both of omission and commission are laid to their charge, without adding to the list those that are baseless. "American women not lovers of Nature!" Where does the writer keep his eyes, that he does not see, even here in the city, in mid-winter, the parlor-windows of almost every house he passes, decorated by the American ladies who preside over it, with hanging baskets of flowering plants, with ivies and geraniums tastefully arranged, besides bouquets of fresh-cut flowers always upon the mantel? Even the humblest house will have its cracked pitcher filled with green moss; as if unwilling to do without that little suggestion of Nature, although the fingers which tend it are coarse with washing, or sewing on shirts at six cents apiece. Did the writer never notice the "American women" going up and down Broadway? How impossible it is for them to resist stopping at the street corners to invest a few pennies in the little fragrant bunch of pansies or tuberoses, for private delectation, and the adornment of their own pretty rooms at home! Then, too, I am a great haunter of green-houses and florists' shops generally; whom, by the way, I consider in the light of missionaries in this work-a-day world, to educate and stimulate our artistic propensities, by the various and beautiful arrangements of form and color, in their floral offerings; and I find there plenty of "American women" enthusiastic in their praises and lavish in their expenditures in this direction. Many of them are flowers themselves, bright, beautiful, lovely, beyond all the buds and sprays and tinted leaves they hover over, like so many humming-birds.

Then, again, when I go into the country each summer, I find "American ladies" rambling in the woods, with a keen appreciation of Nature in all its varied forms, from a lovely sunrise to the last faint chirp of the sleepiest little bird who is safely nestled for the night in his leafy little home. I meet them too in the odorous warm autumn noons, with branches and garlands of gay-tinted leaves, so embarrassed with their wealth of richness that they cannot carry more, and yet unwilling to leave so many "real beauties" still trembling, unplucked, on the boughs above them. I see them taking infinite pains to press these bright leaves in books prepared for the purpose, that they may beautify their homes for the cold winter days. Sometimes the result of this painstaking is seen in the form of an ingenious lamp-shade, far more beautiful than one could purchase for any amount of money. Then, again, it will be in the leafy frame for a favorite picture; then again in a vase, the grouping of branches and tints in such perfect taste, that the most trained artistic eye could find no flaw or blemish.

Now, with all due deference to The Nation, in which this article appeared, I beg leave most emphatically to express a difference in opinion; the more so as this increasing interest in floral decorations, particularly those of the parlor windows, has been a matter of great congratulation with me; since the latter gives pleasure to many a passer-by who has neither the means nor time to spend in aught save the bare necessities of life. How many times I have seen some ragged little shivering child stand, spell-bound, before some sunlit window, gay with blossoming plants, and forgetting for the time the dirt and chill and squalor of her own wretched home! How many times the weary seamstress, resting her bundle upon the fence outside, while her eyes drank in their freshness! How many times the laboring man, with his little child beside him, have I seen, as he raised him upon his shoulder to "see the pretty flowers." And this is principally why I rejoice that American women do love Nature. Those people who stop to look from the outside, are being educated the while to the beautiful, quite unknown to themselves; and these ladies are providing them this pleasure without cost.

I was very much struck, while in Newport last summer, with the educating effect of the superb floral decorations about the villas of the wealthy in that place; for no house there, how humble soever, but had its little emulative patch of bright flowers, or its climbing vines, or its window bouquet. No, no; The Nation must have been taking a Rip Van Winkle nap, I think, when it made this unfounded charge against "American Women."

Good-Night. – How commonplace is this expression, and yet what volumes it may speak for all future time! We never listen to it, in passing, that this thought does not force itself upon us, be the tones in which it is uttered ever so gay. The lapse of a few fatal hours or minutes may so surround and hedge it in with horror, that of all the millions of words which a lifetime has recorded, these two little words alone shall seem to be remembered.

Good-night!

The little child has lisped it, as it passed, smiling, to a brighter morn than ours; the lover, with his gay dreams of the nuptial morrow; the wife and mother, with all the tangled threads of household care still in her fingers; the father, with the appealing eye of childhood all unanswered.

Good-night!

That seal upon days passed, and days to come. What hand so rash as to rend aside the veil that covers its morrow?

RAINY-DAY PLEASURES

I like a rainy day. None of your drizzling, half-and-half affairs, but an uncompromising, driving, wholesale, gusty whirlwind of water, that comes rattling, pell-mell, against the windows, that floods sidewalks, and swells gutters, and turns umbrellas inside out, and gives the trees a good shaking. I am sure on that day of slippers and a morning dress till bedtime. I am sure of time to look over the piles of magazines and newspapers that have been accumulating. I can answer some of those haunting letters, or write autographs; I can loll and think; I can put that wretched-looking desk to rights; I can polish up that time-worn gold pen; I can empty and refill my inkstand. I can do a thousand necessary things which a bright, sunshiny day would veto. Of course I don't want it to keep on raining a month. I shall want to wake some day and find a bright sky and clean pavements; but meanwhile I delight in these rattling windows, which make the bright coal-fire look so pleasant, and secure to me an uninterrupted morning; for whoso robs me of my morning, robs me of that which does not enrich him, and leaves me poor indeed. After midday, "come one, come all," etc. But how to make anybody save a writer understand this, is the question. Why you can't write at another portion of the day just as well; why you can't make an exception in their particular case; why an interruption of half an hour or an hour more or less in the morning should matter – this is incomprehensible to persons who, at the same time, would think you quite an idiot, should you undertake to explain to them why uncorked champagne should be after a while flat and stale. "But I can't come at any other time," once urged a person, with more frankness than consideration, who came on her own personal business. Now it is very disagreeable to be obliged to say "no" more than once to the same person; and yet when one's necessary and imperative arrangements of time are disregarded, it is manifestly pardonable. It is a curious fact, however, that authors themselves, who better than anybody else should understand the necessities of the case, are often culpable in this regard; they who, more than anybody else, revel in rainy mornings, or any morning which secures to them uninterrupted time and thought. I am not sure, after all my preaching, of not doing the same thing myself. If I should, I trust nobody will have any scruples about turning me out.

CHIT-CHAT WITH SOME OF MY CORRESPONDENTS

The epistles which public persons receive, if published, would not be credible. Begging letters are a matter of course; often in the highwayman style of, "hand over and deliver." I had one recently from a perfect stranger, who wished a cool hundred or so, and mapped out the circuitous way in which it was to be sent, so that "his folks needn't know it," with a belief in my spooniness, which an acquaintance with me would scarcely have warranted. Following close on the heels of this, came another from a woman, whose ideas of my spare time and common-sense were about equally balanced. This stranger of the female persuasion, being hard-up for amusement, wished "a long, racy letter from me, such as I alone could write, with no religion in it, because she got enough of that from the minister's wife." It is unnecessary to add that both these missives found a home in my waste-paper basket. Autograph letters I do not object to, as they keep me in postage stamps, and my little "Bright Eyes" in cards to draw dogs and horses upon.

A friend of mine has been delivered from manuscripts sent for perusal, with the modest accompanying request to find a publisher for the same, by stating her price to be $200. She has received no request of the kind since this announcement.

These are some of the annoyances of authors; but, verily, they have their rewards too. Here comes a letter from my native State, Maine, with a box of wood mosses and berries to place round the roots of my house-plants; and as an expression of affection from a stranger who knows from my writings how well I love such things. She says, in closing, that she hopes that myself and Mr. Beecher will continue to write so long as she lives to read. Mr. Beecher may step up and take his half of this sugar-plum, since he has announced himself a champion of "candy."

Then before me on my desk is a smiling baby face sent by its parents, who are strangers to me, if those can be strangers whose hearts warm toward each other; sent me, they add, "not for a silver cup, but because some chance words of mine touched their hearts, and so this little one was named Fanny Fern."

She smiles down upon me whether my sky be cloudy or clear, and in the light of that smile I will try to write worthily; for "their angels do always behold the face of my Father."

Here lie two letters on my desk from strangers regarding an article of mine. One warmly indorses the sentiments therein expressed, and calls upon "God to bless me" for their expression. The other dissents entirely, and commends me to the notice of a far different Power, for disseminating such wrong-headed notions. Thank you both! I am used to both styles of epistles. There's nothing I contend for more than individuality of opinion; this would be a stupid world enough if we all thought, felt, and acted after one universal programme; everybody must see things from their own standpoint and through their own spectacles; and, provided they use civil language, should "have the floor" in turn to air their ideas. It might be well to suggest that, in commenting on a newspaper article, care should be taken that it be first thoroughly read, that the writer's meaning be not misinterpreted; if this were done in many cases, the foundation for an adverse opinion would be quite knocked from under. Authors must expect the penalties as well as the rewards of their labors; but one of the most trying is to be accused of sentiments and feelings which they hold in utter abhorrence. Still, he would make small progress on a journey, who should stop to hurl a stone at every barking creature at his heels; therefore, in such cases, let patience have her perfect work, and let the victim keep steadily moving on, with an eye fixed upon the goal in the distance. But when you have unintentionally wounded a gentle spirit, which grieves all the more because it conscientiously believes that you have done harm, ah! then, none would be sorrier than the present writer; none would go farther to soothe the hurt; none would try harder to agree in opinion, consistently with self-respect. But if every writer stopped to consider whether his readers would be pleased, or the contrary, with his sentiments, instead of busying himself with the subject on hand for the moment, it would be like the clouding in of the sun on a clear morning. Everything would be reduced to one colorless level. The bright tints taken away, made brighter by the sometime shadows, could give a landscape tame enough, spiritless enough, to engender hypochondria. Surely the world of to-day is more liberal than this. Surely it is learning "to agree to differ." Surely it knows by this time that a good life is of more importance than creeds or beliefs. Surely in this year of our Lord, 1867, the days of the Inquisition are past both for editors and writers, and the watchword of to-day – and, thank God, for to-morrow, and the day after – is progress, not paralysis.

Having said this, I consider that I have cleared the deck for action, as far as my own ship is concerned. A stray shot won't frighten or discourage me; on the contrary, it only makes me step round the livelier, to see that my guns are in working order. Then, again, any one who wishes to hail me, and haul alongside in a friendly manner, shall be always certain of a kind salute from me.

A lady whose life, like that of many others, has not run smoothly through a bed of flowers, writes me "to tell her the secret of courage, which she is sure I know."

I do not profess to speak for others, but the secret of all the courage I ever had is a firm belief in immortality, and in its satisfactory unriddling of this life of seeming cross-purposes. Without this I can never tell how either man or woman can learn to look their dead in the face, or what is oftener much harder to do, to look their living in the face. I can never tell how they can lay their distracted heads upon their pillows at night, without praying that they may never wake to another sunrise, or how they can stagger to their feet seventy times seven, after prostrations of body and spirit, which come one after another, like the blows of some avenging fiend. I cannot tell else how they can see the good crushed and defeated and apparently extinguished, and the unscrupulous and bad receiving all homage, and sitting triumphant in high places. I cannot tell else how the wretched mother can take, lovingly and patiently, to her heart another little one, when her failing strength is already tasked to the utmost to care for little brothers and sisters, who, having a father, are yet fatherless. It must be only because her eyes can see clearly "Our Father who art in heaven." I look with sorrowing wonder upon those who, passing in and out of their pleasant, and as yet unbroken, homes, refuse to see the marks of blood upon their door-post, betokening the death of the first-born. I marvel that these steppers upon flowers childishly make no provision for the pitfalls concealed beneath them. I wonder at those who, laying their treasure all up in one place, never think, in this world of change, of the day of bankruptcy.

I do not wonder, when their household gods are shivered, that such exclaim, "Ye have taken away my idols, and what have I left?" or that suicide or lunacy are often the results.

It is only they who, in such crises, believe in "Him who doeth all things well," that have anything "left." It is only such who have courage for what sorrow soever is yet in store for them, in a life which for the moment seems robbed of all its sunshine. It is only they who have learned to live out of themselves, and who can yield – tearfully it may be, but unrepiningly – their earthly hopes and treasures up.

This is all the "courage" I know which will help us to look upon the dear dead face with patient resignation, or take up again the next morning the weary, vexed burden of life, until we are summoned to lay it down.

Lucia: – I am sorry that in your innocence you should have placed any dependence upon the statements of "a New York Correspondent." It is a pity to pull down any of the fine air-castles they are in the habit of building; still it is my duty to inform you that these gentry often describe, with the greatest minuteness, authors and authoresses whom they have never seen, manufacturing at the same time little personal histories concerning these celebrities, valuable only as ingenious specimen "bricks, made without straw." It matters little to the writers whether nature has furnished the authoress about whom they romance with black eyes or blue, brown hair or flaxen; whether nature made her a six-foot grenadier, or a symmetrical pocket edition of womanhood; the description answers all the same for the provincial paper for which it was intended, and these Ananias and Sapphira gentry find that a spicy lie pays as well as the truth – at least till they are found out. No, madam; notwithstanding the statements of your valuable "New York Correspondent" for the – , I have no "daughters married;" I never "wear a black stocking on one foot and a white one on the other, at the same time, to attract attention;" I never "rode on the top of an omnibus;" I don't "smoke cigarettes or chew opium;" I have no personal knowledge concerning the "mud-scow," "handcart," "cooking stove," and "hotel," that you have his authority for saying have been severally "named for me." I am not "married to Mr. Bonner," who has a most estimable wife of his own. I "never delivered an address in public;" and with regard to "the amount I have made by my pen," you and the special "New York Correspondent" are quite at liberty to speculate about it, without any assistance from me. As to my "religious creed," the first article in it is, "Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor."

A gentleman writes me to know "if it is true that I boldly, and unwinkingly, and unblushingly stated, over my own signature, and contrary to the usual custom of my sex, that I was fifty-eight years old."

Well, sir, I did. Why not? I feel prouder of that fact, and of my being the grandmother of the handsomest and smartest grandchild in this or any other country, than of any other two facts I have knowledge of. I can't conceive why men, or women either – for this squeamishness about one's age, I find, is not at all a thing of sex – should care one penny about it. I say again, I am "fifty-eight," and I am glad of it. I have had my day, and I am quite willing that every other woman should have hers.

Will Parents Take Heed? – On all hands complaints are made of the increasing ill-health of our school-children. Now who is to take this matter in hand? Who is to say there shall be absolutely no lessons learned out of school, unless the present duration of school hours shall be shortened? It needs, we think, only that the parents shall themselves insist upon this to effect it. Why wait till brain-fever has set in? Why wait till little spines are irretrievably crooked? And of what mortal use is it to keep on pouring anything into a vessel when it is incapable of holding any more, and is only wasted upon the ground?

MY LIKING FOR PRETTY THINGS

"Oh, you luxurious puss!" That remark was addressed to me, because I said I would like to be lulled to sleep each night, and awoke each morning by strains of sweet music. There's no harm in imagining things, I hope, provided one goes quietly and ploddingly on in what the ministers call "the path of duty." Now, for instance, sometimes I amuse myself planning beautiful forms for dishes, and cups, and plates, and glasses; beautiful patterns for carpets and wallpapers; beautiful and odd frames for pictures; beautiful loopings and draperies for window-curtains; and beautiful shapes for chairs and tables. Sometimes I eat an imaginary breakfast in a room with long windows, opening out into a lovely garden full of sweet flowers; like lilies of the valley and roses and mignonette and heliotrope and violets – oh, yes! violets everywhere. Then those lovely "pond lilies" should grow in the water, at the bottom of the garden, and some of them should be brought in, fresh, dewy, and cool, and placed on the breakfast-table; and little birds should hop in, over the threshold of the breakfast-room, for crumbs, and sing me a song of thanks; and a great, monstrous dog should lie prone upon the piazza; and vines should wreathe themselves round the pillars thereof; clematis and sweet pea, and honeysuckles, white and red, and the gorgeous trumpet-flower; and nobody should be able to find the chimneys at all, for the lovely blooming Wisteria that should clamber over the roof. Such trees and such velvet grass as I'd have around the house! Giant horse-chestnuts and elms and oaks and maples; and here and there a lovely statue peeping out in some unexpected place. And then I'd invite you, and you, and you; not because I would like to make a show-thing of it, but because I would like to see you enjoy it as much as myself.

Wouldn't it be nice? I do hate ugly things – there's no use in denying it. Sometimes Mr. Librario brings in one of his profound books, and lays it, pro tem., on my parlor-table; he looks for it shortly, and finds it not. "I knew it would be banished when I put it there," he says, "because the binding was so homely."

He pretends, too, that water tastes just as cool poured out from an ugly-shaped pitcher as out of my pet china one, with the graceful lip, and vine-wreathed sides and handle; and when I send for "a headache-cup-of-tea," and add, "Now be sure you bring it in my lovely blue-tinted cup-and-saucer," he laughs, and asks, "if that will make my head any better?" Why, of course it will. Now, you see, if I, like a coward, dodged work and bother, and the disagreeables of life, when they had to be met, that would be one thing; but I don't; I just take 'em vigorously by the horns till I get through with them; and so I maintain that I have a right to my luxurious dreams and my pretties, if they do me any good. Now haven't I? And speaking of that, as I was looking round the other day, I saw such a dreadful waste of ingenuity that my heart bled for the misapplied talent of the inventor. It was a straw-colored butter-dish in the shape of a man's hat, ribbon and all complete. The rim thereof did duty as a saucer, while the divorcible crown was clapped over the butter. Horrible! Then I saw an egg dish, with an executive sitting hen, awfully natural, doing duty as a cover. I left the locality abruptly, fearing I might see a meat-dish cover, in the form of a pig – snout, tail, bristles and all.

Why, I ask in this connection, am I daily tortured with the sight of lamps supported by bronze cherubs, appealing piteously to my wide-awake maternal instincts? And why are my evenings at public places of amusement spoiled by the sight of galleries of heartless people held up whole evenings by wretchedly carved female figures, in every stage of contorted legs, knees, heads, and arms.

"Didn't I tell you that it would be better if you hadn't quite so much imagination," triumphantly retorts Mr. Cynic.

Very true, you did; but still I don't agree with you; because looking at some people through that glorified medium, I have been able to discover virtues – which – otherwise – Yes, sir!