THE CABINET.
(Committee's private study. Brigadier lounging in a
fauteuil.)
Com.—My dear general, what do you think, abstractly,
of industry? Does no shuddering consciousness
of awful platitude creep over you, in this
dreadfully exemplary career that we are pursuing? I
feel as if the very nose on my face were endeavoring
to “dress,” as you military men say—striving to come
down to the dull, cheek-bone level of tedious uniformity!
I declare I should be pleased to “hear
tell” of something out of the “way of business”—
sentiment of some sort!
Brig.—Listen to a song that I have just written.
There is a background of truth to it—the true sadness
of a lovely living woman—that would supply your
need of a sensation, if your imagination could picture
her.
Com.—It shall! Read away, my friend!
(Brigadier reads.)
Com.—That is a peculiarly musical and engaging
measure, and you have hung it upon hinges of honey.
It smacks of the days when poets wrote a song a
year, finishing, to the last vanishing point of perfection.
What do the women say to you for translating
their prose into angel-talk?
Brig.—They love poetry, mi-boy! The more poetical
you can make their life, the more they love life
and you! They would rather suffer than live monotonously.
So, beware the “even tenor!”
Com.—Even of prosperity, eh? I'll beware when
I see it coming!
Brig.—Ah, mi-boy, you have no idea of the intense
abstraction of mind necessary to bring a poetical imagination
down to habits of business.
Com.—Do you really wish to know what is to be
the new rage in society this winter?
Brig.—What?
Com.—Married belles! The 'teens dynasty is passing
away! The talk, this summer, at all the watering-places,
has been of beautiful women, who (if, perchance,
they have loved out their love) have not shone
out their shine! Heavens!—how many there are
completely shelved in American society, who have
never had more than two winters of vogue in the
world, and who are compelled to believe that, out of
thirty years of loveliness, only two are to be rescued
from the nursery—only two to intervene between the
nursery filial and the nursery maternal! What a
utensil woman is, in this way! For what did Heaven
give them their other powers? Heaven did not put
the smile of woman under her arm! No! it was
placed where it could not be covered without suffocation,
and, doubtless, with a purpose:—that the lips
and their outgoing should be kept open to society!
Till those lips fade—till the mind that speaks through
them loses its playfulness and attraction, woman can
not be monopolized without a manifest waste of the
gifts of nature—making that bloom for two years only,
that was constructed to bloom for forty! Besides—
these very charms are withdrawn from the world before
ripening—flowers permitted only to bud! There
never was a belle who was not more agreeable after
marriage than before. An unripe mind is far less
agreeable than a ripe one. The elegant repose of
lovely married women is far more enchanting than the
hoydenish romping or inexperienced sentiment of
girls. Speak up, brigadier! What say?
Brig.—It is highly natural, mi-boy, that this change
should be coming about, now! But it was both natural
and necessary that, hitherto—in the unornamental
foundation of American society, woman should
be reduced to her simple primitive mission—shining,
like the glow-worm, only long enough to attract the
male. When married, she passed into the condition
of an operative in a nation-factory—a working mother,
a working educatress, a working patriot-maker. Her
whole time was then needed for offices that are now
performed—(all but the first)—by schools, moral teachers,
surrounding example, and national routine. Lubricate
the child now with money, and it will slide on
to manhood over an inevitable railroad of education
and good influences. Of course, the mother is now
at liberty to shine as long as nature feeds the lamp:
and, indeed, it is in this way, only, that she can fulfil
her destiny—dispensing elsewhere the sweet influences
no longer needed exclusively by her children.
Com.—Statesmanlike and pellucid! Well, sir, this
great national metamorphosis is now coming about!
It has been secretly resolved, among the young married
men of New York, that there shall exist, this
winter, a post-connubial belle-ocracy; and that married
belles shall, accordingly, have the pas, in waltz,
quadrille, promenade, and conversation. How delicious!—isn't
it? It enlarges the field so! I believe,
general, that I, for one, shall “cast my slough,” and
try my youth on again!
“For when the life is quickened, out of doubt,
The wits that were defunct and dead before,
Break up their drowsy grave, and newly move
With casted slough and fresh legerity,”
and who knows? I may be agreeable in the reformed
baby-house of society!
Brig.—“Hope on—hope ever!”
