EXERCISE LV. WOMAN. MEN are the realities, women the poetry, of this world. Men are the trees; women, the fruitage and flower. The former delight in a rude soil - they strike their roots downward with a perpetual effort; and heave their proud branches upward, in perpetual strife. Are they to be removed?—you must tear up the very earth with their roots, rock, and ore, and impurity, or they perish. They cannot be translated with safety. Something of their home, a little of their native soil, must cling to them forever, or they die. Not so with woman. Give her but air and sky enough, and she will seek no nourishment of the earth, strike no roots downward, urge no sceptre upward, but content herself with shedding light and cheerfulness on every side of her flowers and perfume on everything she touches. Would you remove her-you have only to unclasp a few green delicate fibres, to scatter a few blossoms, and shake off a few large drops-like the rain-drops of a summer showerand lo! she is ready to depart with you whithersoever you may go. She does not cling to her native soil; she does not yearn for a native earth; all that she needs anywhere is something to grow to. Her vitality is untouched, her sympathies are unhurt, by the influences of a new sky or a strange air. It may be, that in her youth her blossoming was about the doorway of a cottage; it may be that she is now transplanted to a palace-made to breathe the hot and crowded air, to bask in the artificial sunshine, of a city-in shadow, and smoke, and a most exaggerating atmosphere. But even there she is happy; she carries her home with her; and though what she clings to may sicken at the heart, and perish at the roots, for lack of its native air, she will put forth her beauty, and scatter her perfume, as before. These things are easily said; but are they true? We are liable to be carried away by poetry, and metaphor and illustration; but what do they prove? Why should it be more difficult to describe the women than the me of a small neighborhood, of a remote parish, or of a lars L country? Try the experiment yourself. Go to the first church that you see open, or to any other place where you may meet a multitude of women gathered together. Try to give a general idea of their dress, nay, try to give anybody a general idea of part of it,-of the fashion of their bonnets. You will find the hats of the men all alike; but of the bonnets, you will seldom or never see two alike in the whole house—I might say on the face of the whole earth. Such is the very nature of woman; quick, apt, sensible and precipitate; with an eye for color that men have not, with an ear for music that men have not, and with a taste for shape that shows itself in everything she wears, and in everything she builds up. A woman studies change and variety; it is reproach to her to dress alike-I do not say to be alike-for twentyfour hours at a time. She would blush to be caught twice a year at a ball in the same, or in a similar dress. And when it may not be in her power to put on a new robe every day, it is the study of a large part of her life to appear to do so; to multiply and vary, by all sorts of contrivances, the few that she may have; now by altering the shape, now by giving it a new dye, now by changing the ribbons, or a flounce, or a furbelow, and now it may be by converting slips into frocks, or frocks into slips, or both into spencers or riding-habits: all of which a woman may do from her youth up, yet more from love of change than from her secret wish to appeal better off than she is. And so with not a few of our men. The more youthful they are, the more sensitive they are, the more like women they are, the more changeable and capricious they are. But why should I complain of this? I do not; I only mention the fact to show how difficult it is to give another a general idea of the character of a body of women. Before the hue is copied, it has altered. Before the outline is finished, it is no longer the same. You are in pursuit of the rainbow; you are describing a changeable landscape under the drifting clouds of a changeable sky; you are after a bird of paradise, a feather, a butterfly, And every touch, that woos its stay, But is this to complain ?-if I say that flowers are not trees, that fruitage is not rock, that women are not men; what say I more than everybody, women as well as men, should delight to acknowledge? Are we to be imprisoned forever and aye with realities? Are we to live under a marble firmament, because, forsooth, a marble firmament may have more stability? Are we, who live in the very midst of change and fluctuation, who are never the same more than two minutes together, who see all the elements circulating forever and ever within and around us, through all the vicissitudes of shadow and light, and youth and age; are we to speak irreverently of her, who, by the greater fineness and greater purity of her corporeal texture, is made more sensible than we to the influences of sky, and air, and sea, and earth? As well might we deride the perfume of the flower, and the hue of the wild rose, or the songs of birds, or the flavor of each, for not being as fixed and immutable as the ery earth we tread on. Are we to speak slightingly of that, which, with all its changes, and through all its changes, is still woman; the witchery and power, the pulse and the life-blood, of our being? Let us remember that the charm of the very sky is its changeableness; of the very earth, is its being never the same for a long while together; of the very sea and air, that they change at every breath you draw, and with every word you speak. Let us remember that the character of her who is appointed to be our companion forever, here and hereafter, Like sunshine in the rill, Though turned astray, is sunshine still. EXERCISE LVI. SELF-CONCEIT. [Spoken by a very small Boy.] WHEN boys are exhibiting in public, the politeness or curiosity of the hearers frequently induces them to inquire the names of the performers. To save the trouble of answers, so far as relates to myself, my name is Charles Chatterbox. I was born in this town; and have grown to my present enormous stature without any artificial help. It is true, I eat, drink, and sleep, and take as much care of my noble self as any young man about; but I am a monstrous great student. There is no telling the half of what I have read. Why, what do you think of the Arabian Tales? Truth! every word truth! There's the story of the lamp, and of Rook's eggs as big as a meeting-house. And there is the history of Sinbad the Sailor. I have read every word of them. And I have read Tom Thumb's folio through, Winter Evening Tales, and Seven Champions, and Parismus and Parismeñus, and Valentine and Orson, and Mother Bunch, and Seven Wise Masters, and a curious book, entitied "Think well on 't." Then there is another wonderful book, containing fifty reasons why an old bachelor was not married. The first was, that nobody would have him; and the second was, he declared to everybody that he would not marry; and so it went on, stronger and stronger. Then, at the close of the book, it gives an account of his marvellous death and burial. And, in the appendix, it tells about his being ground over, and coming out as young, and as fresh, and as fair as ever. Then, every few pages, is a pic ture cf him to the life. I have also read Robinson Crusoe, and Reynard the Fox, and Moll Flanders; and I have read twelve delightful novels, and Irish Rogues, and Life of Saint Patrick; and Philip Quarle, and Conjuror Crop, and Esop's Fables, and Laugh and be Fat, and Toby Lumpkin's Elegy on the Birth of a Child, and a Comedy on the Death of his Brother, and an Acrostic, occasioned by a mortal sickness of his dear wife, of which she recovered. This famous author wrote a treatise on the Rise and Progress of Vegetation; and a whole Body of Divinity he comprised in four lines. I have read all the works of Pero Gilpin, whose memory was so extraordinary that he never forgot the hours of eating and sleeping. This Pero was a rare lad. Why, he could stand on his head, as if it were a real pedestal; his feet he used for drumsticks. He was trumpeter to the foot guards in Queen Betty's time; and, if he had not blown his breath away, might have lived to this day. Then, I have read the history of a man who married for money, and of a woman that would wear her husband's-small-clothes in spite of him; and I have read four books of riddles and rebuses; and all that is not half a quarter. Now, what signifies reading so much, if one can't tell of it? In thinking over these things, I am sometimes so lost in company, that I don't hear anything that is said, till some one pops out that witty saying, "A penny for your thoughts." Then I say, to be sure, I was thinking of a book I had been reading. Once, in this mood, I came very near swallowing my cup and saucer; and, another time, was upon the very point of taking down a punch-bowl, that held a gallon. Now, if I could fairly have gotten them down, they would not have hurt me a jot; for my mind is capacious enough for a china-shop. There is no choking a man of my reading. Why, if my mind can contain Genii and Giants, sixty feet high, and enchanted castles, why not a punch-bowl and a whole tea-board? ... It was always conjectured that I should be a monstrous great man; and I believe, as much as I do the Mexican war, that I shall be a perfect Brobdignag, in time. Well now, do you see, when I have read a book, I go right off into the company of the ladies; for they are the judges whether a man knows anything or not. Then I introduce a subject which will show my parts to the best advantage; and I always mind to say a smart thing just before I quit. You must know, moreover, that I have learned a great deal of wit. I was the first man who invented all that people say about tongues, and sounds, and maybe's. I invented the wit of kissing a candlestick when a lady holds it, and also the plays of criminal and cross-question; and, above all, I invented the wit of paying toll at bridges. In short, ladies and gentlemen, take me all in all, I am a dc wnright curious fellow. |