If I Had My Own Blue Box:

From Moore’s Rural New-Yorker in Rochester, NY

December 17^th, 1864

Garments of Mourning

“Putting on black” as a sign of mourning was an essentially heathen custom, indicating the horror of death, and that all beyond the grave was a blank. Mrs. Ware, in her very useful little book, “Death and Life,” has some excellent remarks upon these customs: – “The early Christians recognized the new aspect which the knowledge if immortality gave to the death of the body; and the soon ceased to use the signs of mourning for the dead, that till then had been universal. They felt that it was wrong to mourn the dead; and their epitaphs in the Roman catacombs still testify to the peaceful trust and the hopeful assurance that animated the minds of those who there deposited the mortal remains, often sealed with the blood of martyrdom of those they held most dear.

Among the thousands of inscriptions still to be read there, there is no allusion to be found to the grief of those who were left to perform the last offices to their friends. No inconsolable relatives immortalized their tears on those walls. The simplicity of a childlike faith that to die here was to live in the mansions of the all-loving Father, seems to have been the abounding source whence flowed the countless phrases that speak of death as always a good rather than an evil. The bad Latin in which mny [sic] of the inscriptions are couched, proves that a large proportion of the dead were of the lower and little educated classes; but all ranks seem to have been animated by the same spirit. Selfish grief finds no expression there; and the historians tell us that all signs of mourning in dress were deemed unfitting in those who believed in the Christian immortality.”

From Moore’s Rural New-Yorker in Rochester, NY

December 3^rd, 1864

What the Ladies Ask

Women are very haughty creatures – very resentful of any supposed slight – very aggressive, besides, if they imagine the time for attack favorable. Will they sit down patiently as makers of pill-boxes and artificial flowers? Will they be satisfied with their small gains and smaller consideration? Will there not be ambitious spirits amongst them who will ask, What do you mean to offer us? We are of a class who neither care to bind books nor draw patterns. We are our equals – if we were not distinctively modest, we might say something more that our equals – in acquirement and information. We have our smattering of physical-science humbug, as you have; we are read up in theological disputation, and are as ready as you to stand by Moses against Colenso; in modern languages we are more than your match.

What have you to offer us if we are too proud, or too poor, or too anything else, to stand waiting for a buyer in the marriage-market of Belgravia? You will not suffer us to enter the learned professions nor the services; you will not encourage us to be architects, attorneys, land agents, or engineers. We know and we feel that there is not one of these callings either above our capacity or unsuited to our habits, but you deny us admittance; and now we ask, What is your scheme for our employment? What project have you that may point out to us a future of independence and a station of respect? Have you such a plan? or, failing it, have you the courage to proclaim to the world that all your boasted civilization can offer us is to become governess to the children of our luckier sisters? But there are many of us totally unsuited to this, brought up with many ways and habits that would make such an existence something very like penal servitude – what will you do with us? – Blackwood.

From Moore’s Rural New-Yorker in Rochester, NY

November 26^th, 1864

Baby-ology

If there is anything of which I am positively afraid, it is a baby – a real, live, genuine, long-white-gowned baby. I like little ducks, chickens, turkeys, and pigs are quite admissible. But a little, bald-headed, red-faced, tender-eyed, mouth-puckered baby is inadmissible. I am a very courageous youth; I hardly know the feeling of fear, but deliver me from entering a room where I am liable to be asked to hold some body’s “dear baby!” I rather hold a bag of cats. I am afraid to hold the thing with any degree of tenacity, for fear of squeezing it to death, and if I do not hold it fast, I am afraid it will fall to pieces. If I look at it, it sets up a squall, and if I do not look at it, it upsets itself.

Besides making me tremble with fear and horrible apprehensions, a baby nonpluses me. I neither know how to act, what to say, which way to look, or what to do with myself. So with a species of desperation unknown under any other circumstances, I grab a portion of the garments on either side of the bundle of flesh, and hang on! To keep my stomach from turning treasonable, I call up all the prose and poetry I ever read, to help me to believe that they are sweet, angelic, and the other pretty things that some women and a few men have written about, but I never could see where the dear adjectives applied. I never could understand why some persons will go a long distance just to see a baby, when I would go as far the other way to avoid it. When you have seen one you have seen the whole craft, for they all look alike. Some one, in the Rural, some time ago, says he “would recommend no many to marry a woman who says ‘I hate babies!’” and adds that such a one “is not fit to be a wife,” &c. So I infer if a baby is brought into a room full of young women, the one who makes the greatest pow-wow over it, and thinks Heaven has one in every niche and corner, and Earth is rendered a Paradise by their presence, she is the one who would make a model married woman. I do not deny his statement. I rarely indulge in newspaper conflicts – I have too much regard for the editors. On the contrary, I think “Lead Pencil” is correct, for I most thoroughly dislike babies! Even when a five-year-old girl, if one came toward me with a baby, I would run as if a thousand snakes were after me. But being considerably older now, I kill the snakes and run from the babies. S I suppose, according to “Lead Pencil’s” phraseology, when a marriageable man meets me, he ought to turn his head away, and run for his dear life. That would hardly be advisable, for having a profound passion for imitating broadcloth, I might “put” after him, and bless him! (just imagine how that would look!) he would think is time had come, surely.

From Moore’s Rural New-Yorker in Rochester, NY

November 19^th, 1864

Girls and Their Treatment

From intelligent physicians, having extensive practice in this city, we learn that, of the women of New York embraced in that class whose circumstances raise them above the necessity of labor, nineteen-twentieths who have reached the age of thirty are seriously diseased, and of their daughters nine-tenths have impaired health at the age of eighteen. In this class of society, for the last ten years the deaths have exceeded the births, so that, if it were not recruited by accessions from the country  or from the lower class, it would disappear in a single generation. This may be an exaggerated statement, and we care not to insist upon the figures, but there is ground for alarm. The diseases are chiefly dyspepsia, nervous affections, spinal curvature, etc. The causes are easily found. Our artificial life, want of proper exercise, stimulating diet, emotional excitement. Our young ladies feast at the same table as their parents, using the same luxuries and stimulants. They enter into society before they enter their teens; they take but little exercise, and that spasmodically and the most injudicious kind – the exercise of the lower limbs. What is the remedy? Exercise in the open air, the use of the broom, spinning-wheel, the washtub, which would develop the muscles of the arms and chest, expand the lungs, and pump the blood vigorously through the veins. But, next to a properly regulated exercise, girls need a properly selected food, both physical and intellectual. It would be well also to let them know that there is a distinction between girls and women, and that the social enjoyments, the late hours and the emotional excitement which can be endured by the one cannot be so well endured by the other. All this may be little heeded no, but the time may come when young men in search of wives will deem a broom in the hand of a lady more ornamental than a curve on her back; a knowledge of mathematics better than an acquaintance with romances; and a group of healthy children more acceptable in a nursery than a council of eminent and distressed doctors.