Fern Leaves from Fanny's Port-folio. Second SeriesFern, Fanny
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Fern Leaves from Fanny's Port-folio. Second Series
Fern, Fanny
American essays -- 19th century; Short stories, American
“Insignificant love!!” I like that. More especially when out of ten
couple you meet, nine of the wives are as far above their husbands, in
point of mind, as the stars are above the earth. For the credit of the
men I should be sorry to say how many of them would be minus coats,
hats, pantaloons, cigars, &c., were it not for their wives’ earnings;
or how many smart speeches and able sermons have been concocted by
their better halves, (while rocking the cradle,) to be delivered to the
public at the proper time, parrot fashion, by the lords of creation.
Wisdom will die with the men, there’s no gainsaying that!
Catch a smart, talented, energetic woman, and it will puzzle you to
find a man that will compare with her for goaheadativeness. The more
obstacles she encounters, the harder she struggles, and the more you
try to put her down, the more you won’t do it. Children are obliged
to write under their crude drawings, “this is a dog,” or, “this is a
horse.” If it were not for coats and pants, we should be obliged to
label, “this is a man,” in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred!
“Insignificant love!” Why does a man offer himself a dozen times
to the same woman? Pity to take so much pains for such a trifle!
“Insignificant love!” Who gets you on your feet again, when you fail
in business, by advancing the nice little sum settled on herself
by her anxious pa? Who cheers you up, when her nerves are all in a
double-and-twisted knot, and you come home with your face long as the
moral law? Who wears her old bonnet three winters, while you smoke,
and drive, and go to the opera? Who sits up till the small hours, to
help you find the way up your own staircase? Who darns your old coat,
next morning, just as if you were a man, instead of a brute? And who
scratches any woman’s eyes out, who dares insinuate that her husband is
superior to you!
“Insignificant love!” I wish I knew the man who wrote that article!
I’d appoint his funeral to-morrow, and it should come off too!!
A MODEL MARRIED MAN.
Cobbett says that for two years after his marriage, he retained
his disposition to flirt with pretty women; but at last his
wife--probably having lost all hope of his reforming
himself--gently tapped him upon the arm, and remarked--
“Don’t do that. I do not like it.”
Cobbett says:--“That was quite enough. I had never thought on
the subject before; one hair of her head was more dear to me than
all other women in the world; and this I knew that she knew; but
now I saw that this was not all that she had a right to from me.
_I saw that she had the further claim upon me that I should
abstain from everything that might induce others to believe that
there was any other woman for whom, even if I were at liberty, I
had any affection._”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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