WHEW!

Which is meant to express a sigh of relief that Lent is over.

Isn't it nice?

This saving one's soul on fish when fish commands a premium, is expensive and monotonous.

Welcome the hens. Exit white-fish, enter eggs.

Whew!

Would that we lived in the grand old days when the sun danced in the sky on Easter morning; when the children played the pretty games with colored eggs; when the Aldermen went out on Easter morn for a little municipal game of ball; when it would have been my privilege to parade the streets and claim the privilege of lifting every woman three times from the ground, receiving as payment a kiss or a silver shilling, the women having the same privilege on the next day, in order to make things even.

Wouldn't it be nice? That is, if one didn't meet Parepa and undertake that little job.

When the men and women threw apples into the churchyard, and those who had been married during the year threw three times as many as the rest. It strikes me, however, that if this rule had been reversed, and those who had been divorced during the year were obliged to throw three times as many apples as the rest, the Chicago church-wardens would fare better.

And then to go to the minister's and feast on bread, cheese and ale, on bacon and tansy pudding.

As it is, the only relief one has now is the blessed feeling that he can go to sinning again. It is too much for any constitution to be strictly pious for six weeks, and live on beans and fish. Neither the moral nor the physical diet agrees with me. A little sin now will be an excellent tonic.

And it will agree with you, Celeste, also. You didn't look well sitting in black, picking fish bones. I knew all the time you were thinking of the flesh pots. It is useless for you to try to convince me that you have been an angel for the past six weeks. It won't do. There is not the slightest sign of a pin feather, even, on your pretty white shoulders. You are essentially human. I know that, eating your lentils, you sighed for the salads, and filets, and Burgundy. I know that, in your suit of serge, your eyes were prospectively fixed upon the new spring hat and all the pretty petals which would unfold about you on Easter, and turn you into a lily, to blossom to-morrow, in accordance with the provisions of the Council of Nice.

Isn't it nice?

When you kept saying to yourself, all through Lent, that you were a poor, weak, miserable creature, and that there was nothing but vanity in the world, I know you excepted that delightful fellow in black hair, with a divine moustache and taper fingers, who looked unutterably pretty things at you over the top of his prayer-book, divided his responses between you and Parson Primrose, and wore a diamond ring on his third finger, which he managed, somehow, to keep directly in the light which streamed through St. John on the stained window.

You are now absolved, my dear Celeste. Go in and sin just a little, and prove your humanity. You are not made to be an angel, but "a little lower than the angels," you know. Undrape your pretty rounded shoulders. Pile up your chignon. Put on those darling white slippers, which leave footsteps almost as small as those of the robins in the early spring. No more cypress and rue on your corsage, but the wicked camelia, and the flaunting azalia. Set your slow monastic march to a quicker tempo and, voila, the German. Sound fiddles and blow trombones, for Capuchin is now Columbine, and the gilded doors of Fashion swing quickly open for the maskers to enter. It is a merry procession. Sly glances flash through the masks, and there are rounded outlines in the dominoes. Bells tinkle on the gay robes. Who is who? What matters it, so you keep the masks on? Of course, the black mask, now and then, will enter and beckon to one or the other of us to come out with him to the anteroom and take off our masks, preparatory to a long journey with him.

Heigh ho! We shall never come back to the gay scene; but the revel will go on just the same as if you and I had never been in the set. The fiddles will only play a little more forte, just loud enough to drown the dirge outside, and we shall go into the dreamless sleep, and grope our way through the shadowy land to the light beyond. Pray God, we all lay ourselves down like true ladies and gentlemen, and that the bugles sing peace over us with all the world.

Which reminds me to say, that in looking over the advertising columns, a few mornings since, I observed a card published by some party who desired boarders—"a gentleman and lady without encumbrances."

Of course the "encumbrances" are children. I protest against the application of the term. If there be anything in the world which can make stale bread and hash palatable, it is a child. If there be anything which can bring a ray of sunshine into the dreary, gloomy desert of a boarding house, it is a child.

I am bound to protest against this opposition to children, which is growing fiercer every day. Occasionally you will find a family with soul enough in its collective breast to admit a party with one child, with a mental reservation that they are entitled to a crown of glory for so doing. But what are those fond parents, whose nest is full of these lively and demonstrative pledges of conjugal affection, to do? A house which has not a little blue and gold edition of humanity, fluttering through its rooms, dancing, singing, and crowing, as full of love as an egg is of meat, whose sky is all sunshine, or at most overcast by the thinnest of April clouds, sounding a jubilant peal of ecstasy in the morning, and making the coming night doubly holy and beautiful with its little prayer at evening, must be a very lonely house. A house which has not a little crib in the nursery; a mutilated battalion of dolls, minus legs, arms, and heads, looking for all the world as though they had just come from some Lilliputian battle; marvelous books, reciting the exploits of the matronly Goose, the good fortune of Cinderella, and the bad fortune of Polly Flinders, scattered about in every room, sans covers, and tattered and torn; little blue and red shoes and striped stockings in the drawers; little fingerprints about the door-knobs and marks of juvenile industry everywhere, such as combs in the coal scuttle, carving knives in the molasses jug, tea spoons in the stoves, a family bible illustrated with pencil marks, intended by the youthful Raphael to be letters to some distant aunt, or chefs d'oeuvres in natural history, sugar deftly mixed with the salt, Eau de Cologne in the slop jar, and your favorite arm chair harnessed with strings, and mustered into service as a horse-car—such a home must be as cheerful as the cell of a recluse.

The house which has not seen the day change into night, and all the blessed sun-light extinguished; which has not heard the music of childhood suddenly cease; which listens in vain for the little footfalls pattering from room to room; out from the doors of which a little coffin went one day, leaving a great blank, carrying with the little sleeper almost all our love, and hope, and faith; the house which is not connected more closely with Heaven by that little billow of turf which will soon be starred all over with daisies—such a house must be very dreary. Children, encumbrances! Bah! The man or woman who wrote that card—it could not have been a woman—will never be troubled with heart disease.

In the name, and for the sake of the children, I protest against this outrage upon these little people, whose mission it is to elevate, refine, and humanize us; into whose pure, innocent faces one can look with so much relief, after a day of intercourse with the rough, hard faces of the world; who are the only reminders that there ever was an Eden, and who make Heaven possible on earth.

I wouldn't trust a man with a torn five cent shin-plaster who didn't love a child. It is impossible for a woman not to love a child. There never was a woman so depraved, or so unwomanly, but that a little child could find a good spot in her heart.

And I not only protest against this term of "encumbrance," but I protest against the manner in which children are treated. The other day, I observed an elegantly dressed little child paddling along on the wet, muddy sidewalk, with the thinnest of blue paper shoes. Every step the little one took, must, inevitably, have dampened her feet. A foolish woman was walking by her side quite comfortably shod.

I don't know that that foolish woman knew what she was doing, but I will tell her. In allowing your child to go out with those shoes, you were sowing the seeds of disease, which will either kill her before she leaves childhood, or send her into womanhood wrecked for life, and finally to die of consumption. If your child dies before leaving childhood, you will undoubtedly mourn as sincerely as did Rachel, and your good minister will come to comfort you. He will assure you that "the Lord gave, and the Lord taketh away." He will tell you that whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth. He will also caution you against repining at an affliction wisely ordered by Divine Providence.

All this may do as a salve for your sorrow; but it isn't true. The Lord didn't take away your child. You yourself sent her away. This affliction was not ordered by Divine Providence. It was an affliction solely of your own preparation and consummation. No one else in the wide world is responsible for your child's death, and, but for you, she might have been living now. It may be very pleasant for you to cast the responsibility upon Divine Providence, but it isn't fair.

We are all of us too apt to shirk the responsibility, and, with a sort of meek, resigned, gracious wave of the hand, transfer the responsibility to Divine Providence. But it won't do. You can't deceive Heaven in that way.

You yourself hold that child's life in your hand. You can save her, or you can kill her by the mere matter of thickness of leather. If you don't take off those blue shoes, woman, your child will die. Divine Providence won't take off the shoes for you. The requisites for the life of your child are common sense and a shoemaker. It is criminally thoughtless for you to expose your child. It is cowardly for you, when your child dies, to try to shift the responsibility upon Heaven, which had nothing to do with it. If the epitaph was written properly or truthfully upon her little gravestone, hereafter, it would read somewhat after the following fashion:

Here Lies the Body of
****
WHO DIED OF THIN SHOES AND MATERNAL FOLLY.
Her Mother Did It.

If what I have said shall get a pair of thick shoes for even one child, my purpose will be answered.

March 27, 1869.