 | People I have met, or, Pictures of society and people of mark, drawn under a thin veil of fiction |  |
BORN TO LOVE PIGS AND CHICKENS.
The guests at the Astor House were looking mournfully out of
the drawing-room windows, on a certain rainy day of an October
passed over to history. No shopping—no visiting! The morning
must be passed in-doors. And it was some consolation, to
those who were in town for a few days to see the world, that
their time was not quite lost, for the assemblage in the large
drawing-room was numerous and gay. A very dressy affair is the
drawing-room of the Astor, and as full of eyes as a peacock's tail
—(which, by the way, is also a very dressy affair). Strangers
who wish to see and be seen (and especially “be seen”) on rainy
days, as well as on sunny days, in their visits to New York,
should, as the phrase goes, “patronize” the Astor. As if there
was any patronage in getting the worth of your money!
Well—the people in the drawing-room looked a little out of
the windows, and a great deal at each other. Unfortunately, it is
only among angels and underbred persons that introductions can
be dispensed with, and, as the guests of that day at the Astor
House were mostly strangers to each other, conversation was very
fitful and guarded, and any movement whatever extremely conspicuous.
There were four very silent ladies on the sofa, two
ottomans, silent ladies in the chairs at the corners, and one silent
lady, very highly dressed, sitting on the music-stool, with her
back to the piano. There was here and there a gentleman in the
room, weather-bound and silent; but we have only to do with one
of these, and with the last-mentioned much-embellished young
lady.
“Well, I can't sit on this soft chair all day, cousin Meg!” said
the gentleman.
“'Sh!—call me Margaret, if you must speak so loud,” said the
lady. “And what would you do out of doors this rainy day?
I'm sure it's very pleasant here.”
“Not for me. I'd rather be thrashing in the barn. But there
must be some `rainy-weather work' in the city as well as the
country. There's some fun, I know, that's kept for a wet day,
as we keep corn-shelling and grinding the tools.”
“Dear me!”
“Well—what now?”
“Oh, nothing!—but I do wish you wouldn't bring the stable
with you to the Astor House.”
The gentleman slightly elevated his eyebrows, and took a leaf
of music from the piano, and commenced diligently reading the
mystic dots and lines. We have ten minutes to spare before the
entrance of another person upon the scene, and we will make use
of the silence to conjure up for you, in our magic mirror, the
semblance of the two whose familiar dialogue we have just jotted
down.
Miss Margaret Pifflit was a young lady who had a large share
of what the French call la beauté du diable—youth and freshness.
(Though, why the devil should have the credit of what never
look at, she was certainly a human being in very high perfection.
Her cheeks were like two sound apples; her waist was as round
as a stove-pipe; her shoulders had two dimples just at the back,
that looked as if they defied punching to make them any deeper;
her eyes looked as if they were just made, they were so bright and
new; her voice sounded like “C sharp” in a new piano; and her
teeth were like a fresh break in a cocoa-nut. She was inexorably,
unabatedly, desperately healthy. This fact, and the difficulty of
uniting all the fashions of all the magazines in one dress, were her
two principal afflictions in this world of care. She had an ideal
model, to which she aspired with constant longings—a model resembling
in figure the high-born creatures whose never-varied
face is seen in all the plates of fashion, yet, if possible, paler and
more disdainful. If Miss Pifflit could have bent her short wrist
with the curve invariably given to the well-gloved extremities of
that mysterious and nameless beauty; if she could but have sat
with her back to her friends, and thrown her head languishingly
over her shoulder without dislocating her neck; if she could but
have protruded from the flounce of her dress a foot more like a
mincing little muscle-shell, and less like a jolly fat calm; in brief,
if she could have drawn out her figure like the enviable joints of
a spy-glass, whittled off more taperly her four extremities, sold
all her uproarious and indomitable roses for a pot of carmine, and
compelled the publishers of the magazines to refrain from the
distracting multiplicity of their monthly fashions—with these
little changes in her allotment—Miss Pifflit would have realised all
her maiden aspirations up to the present hour.
A glimpse will give you an idea of the gentleman in question.
He was not much more than he looked to be—a compact,
brown face, (where it was not shaded by the rim of his hat,)
curling brown hair, and an expression of fearless qualities,
dashed just now by a tinge of rustic bashfulness. His dress was
a little more expensive and gayer than was necessary, and he
wore his clothes in a way which betrayed that he would be more
at home in shirt-sleeves. His hands were rough, and his attitude
that of a man who was accustomed to fling himself down on the
nearest bench, or swing his legs from the top rail of a fence, or
the box of a wagon. We speak with caution of his rusticity,
however, for he had a printed card, “Mr. Ephraim Bracely,”
and he was a subscriber to the “Spirit of the Times.” We shall
find time to say a thing or two about him as we get on.
“Eph.” Bracely and “Meg” Pifflit were “engaged.” With
the young lady it was, as the French say, faute de mieux, for her
beau-ideal (or, in plain English, her ideal-beau) was a tall, pale
young gentleman, with white gloves, in a rapid consumption.
She and Eph. were second cousins, however, and as she was an
orphan, and had lived since childhood with his father, and, moreover,
had inherited the Pifflit farm, which adjoined that of the
Bracelys, and, moreover, had been told to “kiss her little husband,
and love him always” by the dying breath of her mother,
and (moreover third) had been “let be” his sweetheart by the
unanimous consent of the neighborhood, why, it seemed one of
those matches made in Heaven, and not intended to be travestied
on earth. It was understood that they were to be married as
soon as the young man's savings should enable him to pull down
the old Pifflit house and build a cottage, and, with a fair season,
that might be done in another year. Meantime, Eph. was a loyal
keeper of his troth, though never having had the trouble to win the
whether or no; and was, besides, somewhat unsusceptible of the
charms of moonlight, after a hard day's work at haying or harvesting.
The neighbors thought it proof enough of his love that
he never “went sparking” elsewhere, and, as he would rather
talk of his gun or his fishing-rod, his horse or his crop, pigs,
polities, or anything else, than of love or matrimony, his companions
took his engagement with his cousin to be a subject upon
which he felt too deeply to banter, and they neither invaded his
domain by attentions to his sweetheart, nor suggested thought by
allusions to her. It was in the progress of this even tenor of
engagement, that some law business had called old Farmer
Bracely to New York, and the young couple had managed to
accompany him. And, of course, nothing would do for Miss
Pifflit but “the Astor.”
And now, perhaps, the reader is ready to be told whose carriage
is at the Vesey street door, and who sends up a dripping
servant to inquire for Miss Pifflit.
It is allotted to the destiny of every country-girl to have one
fashionable female friend in the city—somebody to correspond
with, somebody to quote, somebody to write her the particulars of
the last elopement, somebody to send her patterns of collars, and
the rise and fall of tournures, and such other things as are not
entered into by the monthly magazines. How these apparently
unlikely acquaintances are formed, is as much a mystery as the
eternal youth of post-boys, and the eternal duration of donkeys.
Far be it from me to pry irreverently into those pokerish corners
of the machinery of the world. I go no farther than the fact, that
Miss Julia Hampson was an acquaintance of Miss Pifflit's.
Everybody knows “Hampson and Co.”
Miss Hampson was a good deal what the Fates had tried to
make her. If she had not been admirably well dressed, it would
have been by violent opposition to the united zeal and talent of
dressmakers and milliners. These important vicegerents of the
Hand that reserves to itself the dressing of the butterfly and lily,
make distinctions in the exercise of their vocation. Wo be to an
unloveable woman, if she be not endowed with taste supreme.
She may buy all the stuffs of France, and all the colors of the
rainbow, but she will never get, from those keen judges of fitness,
the loving hint, the admiring and selective persuasion, with which
they delight to influence the embellishment of sweetness and loveliness.
They who talk of “anything's looking well on a pretty
woman,” have not reflected on the Lesser Providence of dressmakers
and milliners. Woman is never mercenary but in monstrous
exceptions, and no tradeswoman of the fashions will sell
taste or counsel; and, in the superior style of all charming women,
you see, not the influence of manners upon dress, but the affectionate
tribute of these dispensers of elegance to the qualities they
admire. Let him who doubts, go shopping with his dressy old
aunt to-day, and to-morrow with his dear little cousin.
Miss Hampson, to whom the supplies of elegance came as
naturally as bread and butter, and occasioned as little speculation
as to the whence or how, was as unconsciously elegant, of course,
as a well-dressed lily. She was abstractly a very beautiful girl,
though in a very delicate and unconspicuous style; and by dint of
absolute fitness in dressing, the merit of her beauty, by common
observers at least, would be half given to her fashionable air and
unexceptionable toilet. The damsel and her choice array,
indeed, seemed the harmonious work of the same maker. How
much was Nature's gift, and how much was bought in Broadway,
admirer.
But we have kept Miss Hampson too long upon the stairs
The two young ladies met with a kiss, in which (to the surprise
of those who had previously observed Miss Pifflit) there was no
smack of the latest fashion
“My dear Julia!”
“My dear Margerine!” (This was a romantic variation of
Meg's, which she had forced upon her intimate friends at the
point of the bayonet.)
Eph. twitched, remindingly, the jupon of his cousin, and she
introduced him with the formula which she had found in one of
Miss Austin's novels.
“Oh, but there was a mock respectfulness in that deep
courtesy,” thought Eph. (and so there was—for Miss Hampson
took an irresistible cue from the inflated ceremoniousness of the
introduction).
Eph. made a bow as cold and stiff as a frozen horse-blanket.
And if he could have commanded the blood in his face, it would
have been as dignified and resentful as the eloquence of Red
Jacket—but that rustic blush, up to his hair, was like a mask
dropped over his features.
“A bashful country-boy,” thought Miss Hampson, as she
looked compassionately upon his red-hot forehead, and forthwith
dismissed him entirely from her thoughts.
With a consciousness that he had better leave the room, and
walk off his mortification under an umbrella, Eph. took his seat,
and silently listened to the conversation of the young ladies.
Miss Hampson had come to pass the morning with her friend,
and she took off her bonnet, and showered down upon her dazzling
his angry humiliation, the young farmer felt a thrill run through
his veins as the heavy curls fell indolently about her shoulders.
He had never before looked upon a woman with emotion. He
hated her—oh, yes! for she had given him a look that could
never be forgiven—but for somebody, she must be the angel of the
world. Eph. would have given all his sheep and horses, cows,
crops, and hay-stacks, to have seen the man she would fancy to be
her equal. He could not give even a guess at the height of that
conscious superiority from which she individually looked down
upon him; but it would have satisfied a thirst which almost made
him scream, to measure himself by a man with whom she could be
familiar. Where was his inferiority? What was it? Why had
he been blind to it till now? Was there no surgeon's knife, no
caustic, that could carve out, or cut away, burn or scarify, the
vulgarities she looked upon so contemptuously? But the devil
take her superciliousness, nevertheless!
It was a bitter morning to Eph. Bracely, but still it went like
a dream. The hotel parlor was no longer a stupid place. His
cousin Meg had gained a consequence in his eyes, for she was the
object of caress from this superior creature—she was the link
which kept her within his observation. He was too full of other
feelings just now to do more than acknowledge the superiority of
this girl to his cousin. He felt it in his after thoughts, and his
destiny then, for the first time, seemed crossed and inadequate to
his wishes.
(We hereby draw upon your imagination for six months, courteous
reader. Please allow the “teller” to show you into the
middle of the following July.)
Bracely farm, ten o'clock of a glorious summer morning—Miss
Pifflit extended upon a sofa in despair. But let us go back a
little.
A week before, a letter had been received from Miss Hampson,
who the delight and surprise of her friend Margerine, had
taken whim to pass a month with her. She was at Rockaway,
and was sick and tired of waltzing and the sea. Had Farmer
Bracely a spare corner for a poor girl?
But Miss Pifflit's “sober second thought” was utter consternation.
How to lodge fitly the elegant Julia Hampson? No
French bed in the house, no boudoir, no ottomans, no pastilles,
no baths, no Psyche to dress by! What vulgar wretches they
would seem to her! What insupportable horror she would feel at
the dreadful inelegance of the farm! Meg was pale with terror
and dismay as she went into the details of anticipation.
Something must be done, however. A sleepless night of reflection
and contrivance sufficed to give some shape to the capabilities
of the case, and, by daylight the next morning, the whole
house was in commotion. Meg had, fortunately, a large bump
of constructiveness, very much enlarged by her habitual dilemmas
of toilette. A boudoir must be constructed. Farmer Bracely
slept in the dried-apple room, on the lower floor, and he was no
sooner out of his bed, than his bag and baggage were tumbled up
stairs, his gun and Sunday whip were taken down from their
nails, and the floor scoured, and the ceiling white-washed. Eph.
was, by this time, returned from the village with all the chintz
that could be bought, and a paper of tacks, and some new straw
carpeting; and, by ten o'clock that night, the four walls of the
apartment were covered with the gayly-flowered material, the car
pet was nailed down, and old Farmer Bracely thought it a
and he soon knocked together some boxes, which, when covered
with chintz, and stuffed with wool, looked very like ottomans;
and, with a handsome cloth on the round table, geraniums in the
windows, and a chintz curtain to subdue the light, it was not
far from a very charming boudoir, and Meg began to breathe
more freely.
But Eph. had heard this news with the blood hot in his temples.
Was that proud woman coming again to look at him with
contempt, and here, too, where the rusticity, which he presumed
to be the object of her scorn, would be a thousand times more
flagrant and visible? And yet, with the entreaty on his lip, that
his cousin would refuse to receive her, his heart had checked the
utterance—for an irresistible desire sprung suddenly within him
to see her, even at the bitter cost of tenfold his former mortification.
Yet, as the preparations for receiving Miss Hampson went on,
other thoughts took possession of his mind. Eph. was not a man,
indeed, to come off second best, in the long pull of wrestling with
a weakness. His pride began to show its colors. He remembered
his independence as a farmer, dependent on no man; and a little
comparison between his pursuits, and life, such as he knew it to
be, in a city, soon put him, in his own consciousness, at least, on
a par with Miss Hampson's connexions This point once attained,
Eph. cleared his brow, and went whistling about the farm as
usual—receiving without reply, however, a suggestion of his cousin
Meg's, that he had better burn his old straw hat, for, in a fit
of absence, he might possibly put it on while Miss Hampson was
there.
Well, it was ten o'clock on the morning after Miss Hampson's
in despair. Presuming that her friend would be fatigued with
her journey, she had determined not to wake her, but to order
breakfast in the boudoir at eleven. Farmer Bracely and Eph.
must have their breakfast at seven, however, and what was the
dismay of Meg, who was pouring out their coffee as usual, to see
the elegant Julia rush into the first kitchen, courtesy very sweetly
to the old man, pull up a chair to the table, apologise for being
late, and end this extraordinary scene by producing two newly-hatched
chickens from her bosom! She had been up since sunrise,
and out at the barn, down by the river, and up in the haymow,
and was perfectly enchanted with everything, especially the
dear little pigs and chickens!
“A very sweet young lady!” thought old Farmer Bracely.
“Very well—but hang your condescension!” thought Eph.,
distrustfully.
“Mercy on me!—to like pigs and chickens!” mentally ejaculated
the disturbed and bewildered Miss Pifflit.
But with her two chicks pressed to her breast with one hand,
Miss Hampson managed her coffee and bread and butter with the
other, and chattered away like a child let out of school. The
air was so delicious, and the hay smelt so sweet, and the trees in
the meadow were so beautiful, and there were no stiff sidewalks,
and no brick houses, and no iron railings, and so many dear
speckled hens, and funny little chickens, and kind-looking old
cows, and colts, and calves, and ducks, and turkeys—it was delicious—it
was enchanting—it was worth a thousand Saratogas and
Rockaways. How anybody could prefer the city to the country,
was, to Miss Hampson, matter of incredulous wonder.
“Will you come into the boudoir?” asked Miss Pifflit with a
languishing air, as her friend Julia rose from breakfast.
“Boudoir!” exclaimed the city damsel, to the infinite delight
of old Bracely, “no, dear! I'd rather go out to the barn! Are
you going anywhere with the oxen to-day, sir?” she added, going
up to the grey-headed farmer, caressingly, “I should so like to
ride in that great cart!”
Eph. was a little suspicious of all this unexpected agreeableness,
but he was naturally too courteous not to give way to a
lady's whims. He put on his old straw hat, and tied his handkerchief
over his shoulder, (not to imitate the broad riband of a
royal order, but to wipe the sweat off handily while mowing,) and,
offering Miss Hampson a rake which stood outside the door, he
begged her to be ready when he came by with the team. He and
his father were bound to the far meadow, where they were cutting
hay, and would like her assistance in raking.
It was a “specimen” morning, as the magazines say, for the
air was temperate, and the whole country was laden with the
smell of the new hay, which somehow or other, as everybody
knows, never hinders or overpowers the perfume of the flowers.
Oh, that winding green lane between the bushes was like an avenue
to paradise. The old cart jolted along through the ruts, and
Miss Hampson, standing up, and holding on to old Farmer
Bracely, watched the great oxen crowding their sides together,
and looked off over the fields, and exclaimed, as she saw glimpses
of the river between the trees, and seemed veritably and unaffectedly
enchanted. The old farmer, at least, had no doubt of
her sincerity, and he watched her, and listened to her, with a
broad, honest smile of admiration on his weather-browned countenance.
The oxen were turned up to the fence, while the dew dried off
the hay, and Eph. and his father turned to mowing, leaving Miss
Hampson to ramble about over the meadow, and gather flowers
by the river side. In the course of an hour they began to rake
up, and she came to offer her promised assistance, and stoutly
followed Eph. up and down several of the long swaths, till her
face glowed under her sun-bonnet as it never had glowed with
waltzing. Heated and tired at last, she made herself a seat, with
the new hay, under a large elm, and, with her back to the tree,
watched the labors of her companions.
Eph. was a well-built and manly figure, and all he did in the
way of his vocation, he did with a fine display of muscular power,
and (a sculptor would have thought), no little grace. Julia
watched him, as he stepped along after his rake on the elastic
sward, and she thought, for the first time, what a very handsome
man was young Bracely, and how much more finely a man looked
when raking hay, than a dandy when waltzing. And, for an
hour, she sat watching his motion, admiring the strength with
which he pitched up the hay, and the grace and ease of all his
movements and postures; and after a while she began to feel
drowsy with fatigue, and pulling up the hay into a fragrant pillow,
she lay down, and fell fast asleep.
It was now the middle of the forenoon, and the old farmer,
who, of late years, had fallen into the habit of taking a short
nap before dinner, came to the big elm to pick up his waistcoat
and go home. As he approached the tree, he stopped, and beckoned
to his son.
Eph. came up and stood at a little distance, looking at the
lovely picture before him. With one delicate hand under her
cheek, and a smile of angelic content and enjoyment on her finely
foot escaped from her dress, and one shoulder of faultless polish
and whiteness showed between her kerchief and her sleeve. Her
slight waist bent to the swell of the hay, throwing her delicate
and well-moulded bust into high relief: and all over her neck,
and in large clusters on the tumbled hay, lay those glossy brown
ringlets, admirably beautiful and luxuriant.
And as Eph. looked on that dangerous picture of loveliness,
the passion, already lying perdu in his bosom, sprung to the
throne of heart and reason.
(We have not room to do more than hint at the consequences
of this visit of Miss Hampson to the country. It would require
the third volume of a novel to describe all the emotions of that
month at Bracely farm, and bring the reader, point by point,
gingerly and softly, to the close. We must touch here and there
a point only, giving the reader's imagination some gleaning to do,
after we have been over the ground.)
Eph. Bracely's awakened pride served him the good turn of
making him appear simply in his natural character, during the
whole of Miss Hampson's visit. By the old man's advice, however,
he devoted himself to the amusement of the ladies after the
haying was over; and what with fishing, and riding, and scenery-hunting
in the neighborhood, the young people were together
from morning till night. Miss Pifflit came down, unwillingly, to
plain Meg, in her attendance on her friend in her rustic occupations,
and Miss Hampson saw as little as possible of the inside of
the boudoir. The barn, and the troops of chickens, and all the
out-door belongings to the farm, interested her daily, and with no
diminution of her zeal. She seemed, indeed, to have found her
natural sphere in the simple and affectionate life which her friend
the natural mate to such a spirit, and himself, in his own home,
most unconsciously worthy of love and admiration, gave himself
up irresistibly to his new passion.
And this new passion became apparent, at last, to the incredulous
eyes of his cousin. And that it was timidly, but fondly returned
by her elegant and high-bred friend, was also very apparent
to Miss Pifflit. And, after a few jealous struggles, and a
night or two of weeping, she gave up to it tranquilly—for, a city
life, and a city husband, truth to say, had long been her secret
longing and secret hope, and she never had fairly looked in the
face a burial in the country with the “pigs and chickens.”
She is not married yet, Meg Pifflit—but the rich merchant,
Mr. Hampson, wrecked completely with the disastrous times, has
found a kindly and pleasant asylum for his old age with his
daughter, Mrs. Bracely. And a better or lovelier farmer's wife
than Julia, or a happier farmer than Eph., can scarce be found
in the valley of the Susquehannah.
| People I have met, or, Pictures of society and people of mark, drawn under a thin veil of fiction | |