Mosses from an old manse
opportunity, as we raised the coach, to jam two of my fingers under the
wheel, trusting that the pain would awaken me.
“Why, here we are, all to rights again!” exclaimed a sweet voice
behind. “Thank you for your assistance, gentlemen. My dear Mr.
Bullfrog, how you perspire! Do let me wipe your face. Don’t take this
little accident too much to heart, good driver. We ought to be thankful
that none of our necks are broken.”
“We might have spared one neck out of the three,” muttered the driver,
rubbing his ear and pulling his nose, to ascertain whether he had been
cuffed or not. “Why, the woman’s a witch!”
I fear that the reader will not believe, yet it is positively a fact,
that there stood Mrs. Bullfrog, with her glossy ringlets curling on her
brow, and two rows of orient pearls gleaming between her parted lips,
which wore a most angelic smile. She had regained her riding habit and
calash from the grisly phantom, and was, in all respects, the lovely
woman who had been sitting by my side at the instant of our overturn.
How she had happened to disappear, and who had supplied her place, and
whence she did now return, were problems too knotty for me to solve.
There stood my wife. That was the one thing certain among a heap of
mysteries. Nothing remained but to help her into the coach, and plod
on, through the journey of the day and the journey of life, as
comfortably as we could. As the driver closed the door upon us, I heard
him whisper to the three countrymen, “How do you suppose a fellow feels
shut up in the cage with a she tiger?”
Of course this query could have no reference to my situation. Yet,
unreasonable as it may appear, I confess that my feelings were not
altogether so ecstatic as when I first called Mrs. Bullfrog mine. True,
she was a sweet woman and an angel of a wife; but what if a Gorgon
should return, amid the transports of our connubial bliss, and take the
angel’s place. I recollected the tale of a fairy, who half the time was
a beautiful woman and half the time a hideous monster. Had I taken that
very fairy to be the wife of my bosom? While such whims and chimeras
were flitting across my fancy I began to look askance at Mrs. Bullfrog,
almost expecting that the transformation would be wrought before my
eyes.
To divert my mind, I took up the newspaper which had covered the little
basket of refreshments, and which now lay at the bottom of the coach,
blushing with a deep-red stain and emitting a potent spirituous fume
from the contents of the broken bottle of Kalydor. The paper was two or
three years old, but contained an article of several columns, in which
I soon grew wonderfully interested. It was the report of a trial for
breach of promise of marriage, giving the testimony in full, with
fervid extracts from both the gentleman’s and lady’s amatory
correspondence. The deserted damsel had personally appeared in court,
and had borne energetic evidence to her lover’s perfidy and the
strength of her blighted affections. On the defendant’s part there had
been an attempt, though insufficiently sustained, to blast the
plaintiff’s character, and a plea, in mitigation of damages, on account
of her unamiable temper. A horrible idea was suggested by the lady’s
name.
“Madam,” said I, holding the newspaper before Mrs. Bullfrog’s
eyes,—and, though a small, delicate, and thin-visaged man, I feel
assured that I looked very terrific,—“madam,” repeated I, through my
shut teeth, “were you the plaintiff in this cause?”
“Oh, my dear Mr. Bullfrog,” replied my wife, sweetly, “I thought all
the world knew that!”
“Horror! horror!” exclaimed I, sinking back on the seat.
Covering my face with both hands, I emitted a deep and deathlike groan,
as if my tormented soul were rending me asunder—I, the most exquisitely
fastidious of men, and whose wife was to have been the most delicate
and refined of women, with all the fresh dew-drops glittering on her
virgin rosebud of a heart!
I thought of the glossy ringlets and pearly teeth; I thought of the
Kalydor; I thought of the coachman’s bruised ear and bloody nose; I
thought of the tender love secrets which she had whispered to the judge
and jury and a thousand tittering auditors,—and gave another groan!
“Mr. Bullfrog,” said my wife.
As I made no reply, she gently took my hands within her own, removed
them from my face, and fixed her eyes steadfastly on mine.
“Mr. Bullfrog,” said she, not unkindly, yet with all the decision of
her strong character, “let me advise you to overcome this foolish
weakness, and prove yourself, to the best of your ability, as good a
husband as I will be a wife. You have discovered, perhaps, some little
imperfections in your bride. Well, what did you expect? Women are not
angels. If they were, they would go to heaven for husbands; or, at
least, be more difficult in their choice on earth.”
“But why conceal those imperfections?” interposed I, tremulously.
“Now, my love, are not you a most unreasonable little man?” said Mrs.
Bullfrog, patting me on the cheek. “Ought a woman to disclose her
frailties earlier than the wedding day? Few husbands, I assure you,
make the discovery in such good season, and still fewer complain that
these trifles are concealed too long. Well, what a strange man you are!
Poh! you are joking.”
“But the suit for breach of promise!” groaned I.
“Ah, and is that the rub?” exclaimed my wife. “Is it possible that you
view that affair in an objectionable light? Mr. Bullfrog, I never could
have dreamed it! Is it an objection that I have triumphantly defended
myself against slander and vindicated my purity in a court of justice?
Or do you complain because your wife has shown the proper spirit of a
woman, and punished the villain who trifled with her affections?”
“But,” persisted I, shrinking into a corner of the coach, however,—for
I did not know precisely how much contradiction the proper spirit of a
woman would endure,—“but, my love, would it not have been more
dignified to treat the villain with the silent contempt he merited?”
“That is all very well, Mr. Bullfrog,” said my wife, slyly; “but, in
that case, where would have been the five thousand dollars which are to
stock your dry goods store?”
“Mrs. Bullfrog, upon your honor,” demanded I, as if my life hung upon
her words, “is there no mistake about those five thousand dollars?”
“Upon my word and honor there is none,” replied she. “The jury gave me
every cent the rascal had; and I have kept it all for my dear
Bullfrog.”
“Then, thou dear woman,” cried I, with an overwhelming gush of
tenderness, “let me fold thee to my heart. The basis of matrimonial
bliss is secure, and all thy little defects and frailties are forgiven.
Nay, since the result has been so fortunate, I rejoice at the wrongs
which drove thee to this blessed lawsuit. Happy Bullfrog that I am!”
FIRE WORSHIP
It is a great revolution in social and domestic life, and no less so in
the life of a secluded student, this almost universal exchange of the
open fireplace for the cheerless and ungenial stove. On such a morning
as now lowers around our old gray parsonage, I miss the bright face of
my ancient friend, who was wont to dance upon the hearth and play the
part of more familiar sunshine. It is sad to turn from the cloudy sky
and sombre landscape; from yonder hill, with its crown of rusty, black
pines, the foliage of which is so dismal in the absence of the sun;
that bleak pasture-land, and the broken surface of the potato-field,
with the brown clods partly concealed by the snowfall of last night;
the swollen and sluggish river, with ice-incrusted borders, dragging
its bluish-gray stream along the verge of our orchard like a snake half
torpid with the cold,—it is sad to turn from an outward scene of so
little comfort and find the same sullen influences brooding within the
precincts of my study. Where is that brilliant guest, that quick and
subtle spirit, whom Prometheus lured from heaven to civilize mankind
and cheer them in their wintry desolation; that comfortable inmate,
whose smile, during eight months of the year, was our sufficient
consolation for summer’s lingering advance and early flight? Alas!
blindly inhospitable, grudging the food that kept him cheery and
mercurial, we have thrust him into an iron prison, and compel him to
smoulder away his life on a daily pittance which once would have been
too scanty for his breakfast. Without a metaphor, we now make our fire
in an air-tight stove, and supply it with some half a dozen sticks of
wood between dawn and nightfall.
I never shall be reconciled to this enormity. Truly may it be said that
the world looks darker for it. In one way or another, here and there
and all around us, the inventions of mankind are fast blotting the
picturesque, the poetic, and the beautiful out of human life. The
domestic fire was a type of all these attributes, and seemed to bring
might and majesty, and wild nature and a spiritual essence, into our in
most home, and yet to dwell with us in such friendliness that its
mysteries and marvels excited no dismay. The same mild companion that
smiled so placidly in our faces was he that comes roaring out of Ætna
and rushes madly up the sky like a fiend breaking loose from torment
and fighting for a place among the upper angels. He it is, too, that
leaps from cloud to cloud amid the crashing thunder-storm. It was he
whom the Gheber worshipped with no unnatural idolatry; and it was he
who devoured London and Moscow and many another famous city, and who
loves to riot through our own dark forests and sweep across our
prairies, and to whose ravenous maw, it is said, the universe shall one
day be given as a final feast. Meanwhile he is the great artisan and
laborer by whose aid men are enabled to build a world within a world,
or, at least, to smooth down the rough creation which Nature flung to
it. He forges the mighty anchor and every lesser instrument; he drives
the steamboat and drags the rail-car; and it was he—this creature of
terrible might, and so many-sided utility and all-comprehensive
destructiveness—that used to be the cheerful, homely friend of our
wintry days, and whom we have made the prisoner of this iron cage.
How kindly he was! and, though the tremendous agent of change, yet
bearing himself with such gentleness, so rendering himself a part of
all life-long and age-coeval associations, that it seemed as if he were
the great conservative of nature. While a man was true to the fireside,
so long would he be true to country and law, to the God whom his
fathers worshipped, to the wife of his youth, and to all things else
which instinct or religion has taught us to consider sacred. With how
sweet humility did this elemental spirit perform all needful offices
for the household in which he was domesticated! He was equal to the
concoction of a grand dinner, yet scorned not to roast a potato or
toast a bit of cheese. How humanely did he cherish the school-boy’s icy
fingers, and thaw the old man’s joints with a genial warmth which
almost equalled the glow of youth! And how carefully did he dry the
cowhide boots that had trudged through mud and snow, and the shaggy
outside garment stiff with frozen sleet! taking heed, likewise, to the
comfort of the faithful dog who had followed his master through the
storm. When did he refuse a coal to light a pipe, or even a part of his
own substance to kindle a neighbor’s fire? And then, at twilight, when
laborer, or scholar, or mortal of whatever age, sex, or degree, drew a
chair beside him and looked into his glowing face, how acute, how
profound, how comprehensive was his sympathy with the mood of each and
all! He pictured forth their very thoughts. To the youthful he showed
the scenes of the adventurous life before them; to the aged the shadows