第48章

Our landlady's daughter is a young lady of some pretensions to gentility.She wears her bonnet well back on her head, which is known by all to be a mark of high breeding.She wears her trains very long, as the great ladies do in Europe.To be sure, their dresses are so made only to sweep the tapestried floors of chateaux and palaces; as those odious aristocrats of the other side do not go draggling through the mud in silks and satins, but, forsooth, must ride in coaches when they are in full dress.It is true, that, considering various habits of the American people, also the little accidents which the best-kept sidewalks are liable to, a lady who has swept a mile of them is not exactly in such a condition that one would care to be her neighbor.But then there is no need of being so hard on these slight weaknesses of the poor, dear women as our little deformed gentleman was the other day.

--There are no such women as the Boston women, Sir,--he said.

Forty-two degrees, north latitude, Rome, Sir, Boston, Sir! They had grand women in old Rome, Sir,--and the women bore such men--children as never the world saw before.And so it was here, Sir.I tell you, the revolution the Boston boys started had to run in woman's milk before it ran in man's blood, Sir!

But confound the make-believe women we have turned loose in our streets! --where do they come from? Not out of Boston parlors, Itrust.Why, there is n't a beast or a bird that would drag its tail through the dirt in the way these creatures do their dresses.

Because a queen or a duchess wears long robes on great occasions, a maid-of-all-work or a factory-girl thinks she must make herself a nuisance by trailing through the street, picking up and carrying about with her pah! --that's what I call getting vulgarity into your bones and marrow.Making believe be what you are not is the essence of vulgarity.Show over dirt is the one attribute of vulgar people.

If any man can walk behind one of these women and see what she rakes up as she goes, and not feel squeamish, he has got a tough stomach.

I wouldn't let one of 'em into my room without serving 'em as David served Saul at the cave in the wilderness,--cut off his skirts, Sir!

cut off his skirts!

I suggested, that I had seen some pretty stylish ladies who offended in the way he condemned.

Stylish women, I don't doubt,--said the Little Gentleman.--Don't tell me that a true lady ever sacrifices the duty of keeping all about her sweet and clean to the wish of making a vulgar show.Iwon't believe it of a lady.There are some things that no fashion has any right to touch, and cleanliness is one of those things.If a woman wishes to show that her husband or her father has got money, which she wants and means to spend, but doesn't know how, let her buy a yard or two of silk and pin it to her dress when she goes out to walk, but let her unpin it before she goes into the house;--there may be poor women that will think it worth disinfecting.It is an insult to a respectable laundress to carry such things into a house for her to deal with.I don't like the Bloomers any too well,--in fact, I never saw but one, and she--or he, or it--had a mob of boys after her, or whatever you call the creature, as if she had been a-----The Little Gentleman stopped short,--flushed somewhat, and looked round with that involuntary, suspicious glance which the subjects of any bodily misfortune are very apt to cast round them.His eye wandered over the company, none of whom, excepting myself and one other, had, probably, noticed the movement.They fell at last on Iris,--his next neighbor, you remember.

--We know in a moment, on looking suddenly at a person, if that person's eyes have been fixed on us.

Sometimes we are conscious of it before we turn so as to see the person.Strange secrets of curiosity, of impertinence, of malice, of love, leak out in this way.There is no need of Mrs.Felix Lorraine's reflection in the mirror, to tell us that she is plotting evil for us behind our backs.We know it, as we know by the ominous stillness of a child that some mischief or other is going-on.Ayoung girl betrays, in a moment, that her eyes have been feeding on.

the face where you find them fixed, and not merely brushing over it with their pencils of blue or brown light.

A certain involuntary adjustment assimilates us, you may also observe, to that upon which we look.Roses redden the cheeks of her who stoops to gather them, and buttercups turn little people's chins yellow.When we look at a vast landscape, our chests expand as if we would enlarge to fill it.When we examine a minute object, we naturally contract, not only our foreheads, but all our dimensions.

If I see two men wrestling, I wrestle too, with my limbs and features.When a country-fellow comes upon the stage, you will see twenty faces in the boxes putting on the bumpkin expression.There is no need of multiplying instances to reach this generalization;every person and thing we look upon puts its special mark upon us.

If this is repeated often enough, we get a permanent resemblance to it, or, at least, a fixed aspect which we took from it.Husband and wife come to look alike at last, as has often been noticed.It is a common saying of a jockey, that he is "all horse"; and I have often fancied that milkmen get a stiff, upright carriage, and an angular movement of the arm, that remind one of a pump and the working of its handle.

All this came in by accident, just because I happened to mention that the Little Gentleman found that Iris had been looking at him with her soul in her eyes, when his glance rested on her after wandering round the company.What he thought, it is hard to say;but the shadow of suspicion faded off from his face, and he looked calmly into the amber eyes, resting his cheek upon the hand that wore the red jewel.

--If it were a possible thing,--women are such strange creatures!

Is there any trick that love and their own fancies do not play them?