LETTER TO FANNY FORESTER.
Dear Fanny: Would your dark eyes vouchsafe
to wonder how I come to write to you? Thus it
befell: —
You live in the country and know what log-hauling
is like — over the stumps in the woods. You have,
many a time, mentally consigned, to condign axe and
fire, the senseless trunk that, all its life, had found
motion enough to make way for every silly breeze
that flirted over it, but lay in unyielding immoveableness
when poor oxen and horses were tortured to make
it stir! If you knew what a condition Broadway is in
— what horses have to suffer to draw omnibuses — and
how many pitiless human trunks are willing doggedly
to sit still to be drawn home to the fire by brute agony —
you would see how, while walking in Broadway, I was
reminded of log-hauling — then of the country — and
then, of course, of Fanny Forester.
Before setting the news to trickle from my full
pen let me quote from a book (one that is my present
passion), a fine thought or two on the cruelty to animals
that has, this day, in Broadway, made me — no
better than Uncle Toby in Flanders!
“Shame upon creation's lord, the fierce unsanguined despot:
What! art thou not content thy sin hath dragged down
suffering and death
Upon the poor dumb servants of thy comfort, and yet must
thou rack them with thy spite?
For very shame be merciful, be kind unto the creatures thou
hast ruined;
Earth and her million tribes are cursed for thy sake;
Liveth there but one among the million that shall not bear
witness against thee,
A pensioner of land or air or sea, that hath not whereof it
will accuse thee?
From the elephant toiling at a launch, to the shrew-mouse
in the harvest-field,
From the whale which the harpooner hath stricken, to the
minnow caught upon a pin,
From the albatross wearied in its flight, to the wren in her
covered nest,
From the death-moth and the lace-winged dragon-fly, to the
lady-bird and the gnat,
The verdict of all things is unanimous, finding their master
cruel:
The dog, thy humble friend, thy trusting, honest friend,
The horse, thy uncomplaining slave, drudging from morn
to even,
The lamb, and the timorous hare, and the laboring ox at
plough,
And all things that minister alike to thy life and thy comfort
and thy pride,
Testify with one sad voice that man is a cruel master.
The galled ox can not complain, nor supplicate a moment's
respite;
The spent horse hideth his distress, till he panted out his
spirit at the goal;
Behold, he is faint with hunger; the big tear standeth in
his eye;
His skin is sore with stripes, and he tottereth beneath his
burden;
His limbs are stiff with age, his sinews have lost their
vigor,
And pain is stamped upon his face, while he wrestleth
unequally with toil;
Yet once more mutely and meekly endureth he the crushing
blow;
That struggle hath cracked his heart-strings — the generous
brute is dead!”
I doubt whether fifty years of jumping toothache
would not be a lesser evil, hereafter, than the retribution
charged this day against each passenger from
Wall street to Bleecker. And, as if to aggravate the
needlessness of the sin, the sidewalk was like the side-walks
in June — dry, sunny, and besprinkled with adorable
shoppers. With the sides of the street thus
clean and bright, the middle with a succession of pits,
each one of which required the utmost strength of a
pair of horses to toil out of — the wheels continually
cutting in to the axletrees, each sinking of the wheels
bringing down the whip on the guilty horses, and,
with all the lashing, cursing, toiling and breaking of
harness, people (with legs to carry them) remaining
heartlessly inside the omnibuses. Oh, for one hour's
change of places — horses inside and passengers in
harness!
But why break your country heart for sins in
Broadway? Think rather of the virtues and the
fashions. Large parasols (feminized, from male umbrellas,
only by petticoats of fringe and the changeableness
of the silk) are now carried between heaven
and bright eyes, to the successful banishment of the
former. Ladies sit in the shops smoking camphor
cigars while their daughters buy ribands. French
lap-dogs, with maids to lead them, are losing singularity,
as pairs of spectacles. People in the second
story are at the level of very fine weather. Literature
is at a dead stand-still. The “father of evil” has not
yet told us what the next excitement is to grow out
of; and meantime (to-night) we are to have an English
song from Madam Pico at the Tabernacle.
So you have been ill and are mortal after all!
Well! I presume — whatever stays to keep the violets
company — “Fanny Forester” goes to Heaven; so you
must have your reminders, like the rest of us, that
the parting guest is to be looked after. What a to-morrow-dom
life is! Eve's fault or Adam's — to-day
was left in Eden! we live only for what is to come. I
am, for one, quite sick of hoping; and if I could put
a sack of money at my back to keep my heels from
tripping, I would face about and see nothing but the
to-day of the children behind me. (Bless me, how
grave I am getting to be!)
Write to me, dear Fanny! As I go to market on
this river of ink, write me such a letter as will ride
without damage in the two-penny basket that brings
this to you.
And now adieu — or rather au soin de Dieu — for I
trust that the first lark that goes up with the spring
news will bid the angels not to expect you, yet awhile.
Take care of your health.
