The Wit of Women

by Kate Sanborn

  And taste like gall beside. Hand me some flour,

  And do fly round. John Henry, wipe your nose!

  I wonder how ‘twill be when I am dead?

  “How my nose’ll be?” Yes, how your nose’ll be,

  And how your back‘ll be. If that ain’t red

  I’ll miss my guess. I don’t expect you’ll see—

  You nor your father neither—what I’ve done

  And suffered in this house. As true’s I live

  Them pesky fowl ain’t stuffed! The biggest one

  Will hold two loaves of bread. Say, wipe that sieve,

  And hand it here. You are the slowest poke

  In all Fairmount. Lor’! there’s Deacon Gubben’s wife!

  She’ll be here to-morrow. That pan can soak

  A little while. I never in my life

  Saw such a lazy critter as she is.

  If she stayed home, there wouldn’t be a thing

  To eat. You bet she’ll fill up here! “It’s riz?”

  Well, so it has. John Henry! Good king!

  How did that boy get out? You saw him go

  With both fists full of raisins and a pile

  Behind him, and you never let me know!

  There! you’ve talked so much I clean forgot the rye.

  I wonder if the Governor had to slave

  As I do, if he would be so pesky fresh about

  Thanksgiving Day? He’d been in his grave

  With half my work. What, get along without

  An Indian pudding? Well, that would be

  A novelty. No friend or foe shall say

  I’m close, or haven’t as much variety

  As other folks. There! I think I see my way

  Quite clear. The onions are to peel. Let’s see:

  Turnips, potatoes, apples there to stew,

  This squash to bake, and lick John Henry!

  And after that—I really think I’m through.

  CHAPTER VII.

  PROSE, BUT NOT PROSY.

  Mrs. Alice Wellington Rollins, in those interesting articles in the Critic which induced me to look further, says:

  “We claim high rank for the humor of women because it is almost exclusively of this higher, imaginative type. A woman rarely tells an anecdote, or hoards up a good story, or comes in and describes to you something funny that she has seen. Her humor is like a flash of lightning from a clear sky, coming when you least expect it, when it could not have been premeditated, and when, to the average consciousness, there is not the slightest provocation to humor, possessing thus in the very highest degree that element of surprise which is not only a factor in all humor, but to our mind the most important factor. You tell her that you cannot spend the winter with her because you have promised to spend it with some one else, and she exclaims: ‘Oh, Ellen! why were you not born twins!’ She has, perhaps, recently built for herself a most charming home, and coming to see yours, which happens to be just a trifle more luxurious and charming, she remarks as she turns away: ‘All I can say is, when you want to see squalor, come and visit me in Oxford Street!’ She puts down her heavy coffee-cup of stone-china with its untasted coffee at a little country inn, saying, with a sigh: ‘It’s no use; I can’t get at it; it’s like trying to drink over a stone wall.’ She writes in a letter: ‘We parted this morning with mutual satisfaction; that is, I suppose we did; I know my satisfaction was mutual enough for two.’ She asks her little restless daughter in the most insinuating tones if she would not like to sit in papa’s lap and have him tell her a story; and when the little daughter responds with a most uncompromising ‘no!’ turns her inducement into a threat, and remarks with severity: ‘Well, be a good girl, or you will have to!’ She complains, when you have kept her waiting while you were buying undersleeves, that you must have bought ‘undersleeves enough for a centipede.’ You ask how poor Mr. X–- is—the disconsolate widower who a fortnight ago was completely prostrated by his wife’s death, and are told in calm and even tones that he is ‘beginning to take notice.’ You tell her that one of the best fellows in the class has been unjustly expelled, and that the class are to wear crape on their left arms for thirty days, and that you only hope that the President will meet you in the college-yard and ask why you wear it; to all of which she replies soothingly, ‘I wouldn’t do that, Henry; for the President might tell you not to mourn, as your friend was not lost, only gone before.’ You tell her of your stunned sensation on finding some of your literary work complimented in the Nation, and she exclaims: ‘I should think so! It must be like meeting an Indian and seeing him put his hand into his no-pocket to draw out a scented pocket-handkerchief, instead of a tomahawk.’ Or she writes that two Sunday-schools are trying to do all the good they can, but that each is determined at any cost to do more good than the other.”

  I have selected several specimens of this higher type of humor.

  Mrs. Ellen H. Rollins was pre-eminently gifted in this direction. The humor in her exquisite “New England Bygones” is so interwoven with the simple pathos of her memories that it cannot be detached without detriment to both. But I will venture to select three sketches from

  OLD-TIME CHILD LIFE.

  BY E.H. ARR.

  Betsy had the reddest hair of any girl I ever knew. It was quite short in front, and she had a way of twisting it, on either temple, into two little buttons, which she fastened with pins. The rest of it she brought quite far up on the top of her head, where she kept it in place with a large-sized horn comb. Her face was covered with freckles, and her eyes, in winter, were apt to be inflamed. She always seemed to have a mop in her hand, and she had no respect for paint. She was as neat as old Dame Safford herself, and was continually “straightening things out,” as she called it. Her temper, like her hair, was somewhat fiery; and when her work did not suit her, she was prone to a gloomy view of life. If she was to be believed, things were always “going to wrack and ruin” about the house; and she had a queer way of taking time by the forelock. In the morning it was “going on to twelve o’clock,” and at noon it was “going on to midnight.”

  She kept her six kitchen chairs in a row on one side of the room, and as many flatirons in a line on the mantelpiece. Everything where she was had, she said, to “stand just so;” and woe to the child who carried crookedness into her straight lines! Betsy had a manner of her own, and made a wonderful kind of a courtesy, with which her skirts puffed out all around like a cheese. She always courtesied to Parson Meeker when she met him, and said: “I hope to see you well, sir.” Once she courtesied in a prayer-meeting to a man who offered her a chair, and told him, in a shrill voice, to “keep his setting,” though she was “ever so much obleeged” to him. This was when she was under conviction, and Parson Meeker said he thought she had met with a change of heart. Father Lathem’s wife hoped so too, for then “there would be a chance of having some Long-noses and Pudding-sweets left over in the orchard.”

  It was in time of the long drought, when fire ran over Grayface, and a great comet appeared in the sky. Some of the people of Whitefield thought the world was coming to an end. The comet stayed for weeks, visible even at noon-day, stretching its tail from the zenith far toward the western horizon, and at night staring in at windows with its eye of fire. It was the talk of the people, who pondered over it with a helpless wonder. I recall two Whitefield women as they stood, one morning, bare-armed in a doorway, staring at and chattering about it. One says they “might as well stop work” and “take it easy” while they can. The other thinks the better way is to “keep on a stiddy jog until it comes.” They wish they knew “how near it is,” and “what the tail means anyway.”

  Betsy comes along with a pail, which she sets down, and then looks up to the comet. The air is dense with smoke from Grayface, and the dry earth is full of cracks. Betsy declares that it is “going on two months since there has been any rain.” Everything is “going to wrack and ruin,” and “if that thing up there should burst, there’ll be an end to Whitefield.”<
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  Then she catches sight of me listening wide-mouthed, and she tells me that I needn’t suppose she is “going home to iron my pink muslin,” for she thinks the tail of the comet “has started, and is coming right down to whisk it off from the line.” I believe her, and distinctly remember the terror that took hold of me as I rushed home and tore the pink muslin from the line, lest it should be whisked off by the comet’s tail.

  When the drought broke, a single day’s rain washed all the smoke from the air. Directly, the tail of the comet began to fade, and all of a sudden its fiery eye went out of the sky.

  Some of the villagers thought it had “burst,” others that it had “burned out.” Betsy said: “Whatever it was, it was a humbug;” and the wisest man in Whitefield could neither tell whence it came nor whither it went. One thing, however, was certain: Farmer Lathem said that never, since his orchard began to bear, had he gathered such a crop of apples as he did, despite the drought, in the year of the great comet.

  MRS. MEEKER.

  BY E.H. ARR.

  When I read of Roman matrons I always think of Mrs. Meeker. Her features were marked, and her eyes of deepest blue. She wore her hair combed closely down over her ears, so that her forehead seemed to run up in a point high upon her head: Its color was of reddish-brown, and, I am sorry to say, so far as it was seen, it was not her own. It was called a scratch, and Betsy said Mrs. Meeker “would look enough sight better if she would leave it off.” Whether any hair at all grew upon Mrs. Meeker’s head was a great problem with the village children, and nothing could better illustrate the dignity of this woman than the fact that for more than thirty years the whole neighborhood tried in vain to find out.

  PARSON MEEKER.

  BY E.H. ARR.

  Every Sunday he preached two long sermons, each with five heads, and each head itself divided. After the fifthly came an application, with an exhortation at its close. The sermons were called very able, or, more often, “strong discourses.” I used to think this was because Mrs. Meeker had stitched their leaves fast together. Betsy said they were just like Deacon Saunders’s breaking-up plough, “and went tearing right through sin.” The parson, when I knew him, was a little slow of speech and dull of sight. He sometimes lost his place on his page. How afraid I used to be lest, not finding it, he should repeat his heads! He always brought himself up with a jerk, however, and sailed safely through to the application.

  When that came, Benny almost always gave me a jog with his elbow or foot. Once he stuck a pin into my arm, which made me jump so that Deacon Saunders, who sat behind, waked up with a loud snort. The deacon was always talking about the sermons being “powerful in doctrine.” When Benny asked Betsy what doctrines were, she told him to “let doctrines alone;” that they were “pizen things, only fit for hardened old sinners.”

  There are many delightful articles which must be merely alluded to in passing, as the “Old Salem Shops,” by Eleanor Putnam, so delicate and delicious that, once read, it will ever be a fragrant memory; Louise Stockton’s “Woman in the Restaurant” I want to give you, and Mrs. Barrow’s “Pennikitty People;” a chapter from Miss Baylor’s “On This Side,” and the opening chapters of Miss Phelps’s “Old Maids’ Paradise;” also the description of “Joppa,” by Grace Denio Litchfield, in “Only an Incident.” There are others from which it is not possible to make extracts. Miss Woolson’s admirable “For the Major,” though pathetic, almost tragic, in its underlying feeling, is, at the same time, a story of exquisite humor, from which, nevertheless, not a single sentence could be quoted that would be called “funny.” Her work, and that of Frances Hodgson Burnett, as well as that of Miss Phelps and Mrs. Spofford, shine with a silver thread of humor, worked too intimately into the whole warp and woof to be extracted without injuring both the solid material and the tinsel. To appreciate the point and delicacy of their finest wit, you must read the whole story and grasp the entire character or situation.

  Mrs. E.W. Bellamy, a Southern lady, published in last year’s Atlantic Monthly a sketch called “At Bent’s Hotel,” which ought to have a place in this volume; but my publisher says authoritatively that there must be a limit somewhere; so this gem must be included in—a second series!

  There is so much truth as well as humor in the following article, that it must be included. It gives in prose the agonies which Saxe told so feelingly in verse:

  A FATAL REPUTATION.

  BY ISABEL FRANCES BELLOWS.

  I am impelled to write this as an awful warning to young men and women who are just entering upon life and its responsibilities. Years ago I thoughtlessly took a false step, which at the time seemed trivial and of little import, but which has since assumed colossal proportions that threaten to overshadow much of the innocent happiness of my otherwise placid existence. What wonder, then, that I try to avert this danger from young and inexperienced minds who in their gay thoughtlessness rush into the very jaws of the disaster, and before they are well aware find they are entrapped for life, as there is no escape for those who have thus brought their doom upon themselves.

  I will try and relate how, like the Lady of Shalott, when I first began to gaze upon the world of realities “the curse” came upon me. It was in this wise:

  I lived in my youth an almost cloistral life of seclusion and self-absorption, from which I was suddenly shaken by circumstances, and forced to mingle in the busy world; to which, after the first shock, I was not at all averse, but found very interesting, and also—and there was the weight that pulled me down—tolerably amusing. For I met some curious people, and saw and heard some remarkable things; and as I went among my friends I often used to give an account of my observations, until at last I discovered that wherever I went, and under whatever circumstances (except, of course, at the funeral of a member of the family), I was expected to be amusing! I found myself in the same relation to society that the clown bears to the circus-master who has engaged him—he must either be funny or leave the troupe.

  Now, I am unfortunate in having no particular accomplishments. I cannot sing either the old songs or the new; neither am I a performer on divers instruments. I can paint a little, but my paintings do not seem to rouse any enthusiasm in the beholder, nor do they add an inspiring strain to conversation. I can, indeed, make gingerbread and six different kinds of pudding, but I hesitate to mention it, because the cook is far in advance of me in all these particulars, not to mention numerous other ways in which she excels. I have thus but one resource in life; and when I give one or two instances of the humiliation and distress of mind to which I have been subjected on its account I am sure I shall win a sympathizing thought even from those who are more favored by nature, and possibly save a few young spirits from the pain of treading in my footsteps.

  In the first place, I am not naturally witty. Epigrams do not rise spontaneously to my lips, and it sometimes takes days and even weeks of consideration after an opportunity of making one has occurred before the appropriate words finally dawn upon me. By that time, of course, the retort is what the Catholics call “a work of supererogation.” I perhaps possess a slight “sense of the humorous,” which has undoubtedly given rise to the fatal demand upon me, but I do not remember ever having been very funny. There never was any danger of my experiencing difficulties like Dr. Holmes on that famous occasion when he was as funny as he could be. I have often been as funny as I could be, but the smallest of buttons on the slenderest of threads never detached itself on my account. I have never had to restrain my humorous remarks in the slightest degree, but on the contrary have sometimes been driven into making the most atrocious jokes, and even puns, because it was evident something of the sort was expected from me—only, of course, something better.

  One occurrence of this kind will remain forever fixed in my memory. I was invited to a picnic, that most ghastly device of the human mind for playing at having a good time. At first I had declined to go, but it was represented to me that no less than three families had company for whose entertai
nment something must be done; that two young and interesting friends of mine just about to be engaged to each other would be simply inconsolable if the plan were given up; and, in short, that I should show by not going an extremely hateful and unseemly spirit—”besides, it wouldn’t do to have it without you, my dear,” continued my amiable friend, “because you know you are always the life of the party.” So I sighed and consented.

  The day arrived, and before nine o’clock in the morning the mercury stood at ninety degrees in the shade. The cook overslept herself, and breakfast was so late that William Henry missed the train into the city, which didn’t make it pleasanter for any of us. I had made an especially delicate cake to take with me as my share of the feast, and while we were at breakfast I heard a crash in the direction of the kitchen, and hastening tremblingly to discover the origin of it I found the cake and the plate containing it in one indistinguishable heap on the floor.

  “It slipped between me two hands as if it was alive, bad luck to it,” said the cook; “and it was meself that saw the heavy crack in the plate before you set the cake onto it, mum!”

  I took cookies and boiled eggs to the picnic.

  The wreck had hardly been cleared away before my son and heir appeared in the doorway with a hole of unimagined dimensions in his third worst trousers. His second worst were already in the mending basket, so nothing remained for me but to clothe him in his best suit and wonder all day in which part of them I should find the largest hole when I came home.

  Lastly, I had just put on my hat, and was preparing to set forth, warm, tired and demoralized, when my youngest, in her anxiety to bid me a sufficiently affectionate farewell, lost her small balance, and came rolling down-stairs after me. No serious harm was done, but it took nearly an hour before I succeeded in soothing and comforting her sufficiently to be able to leave her, with two brown-paper patches on her head and elbow, in the care of the nurse.