Caper-Sauce: A Volume of Chit-Chat about Men, Women, and Things.

DIGNITY OF HUMAN NATURE

The philosopher is fond of talking to me about what he calls "the dignity of human nature." The pains he takes to bolster himself up in this shaky belief of his, would do credit to a better cause. Obstinacy of course is at the bottom of it, for he no more believes in it than I do. How can he, and he living and breathing in this sublunary sphere himself? That's just what I said to him this morning; for, thank Providence, I can generally speak my mind on most points. What did he say? That's my affair; suffice it to say, he sticks to it. I made him sit down; then I sat down on his knee, to make sure of a listener. Then I took in my hand the morning papers. In the first place, there was a man of sixty who had been coaxed in where he shouldn't go, and robbed while there. Secondly, there was a justice of the peace sentenced to the Penitentiary for robbery. Thirdly, there was a clergyman convicted of bigamy. Fourthly, there was a husband, who had been trying, with an iron shovel, to find out whether his wife had any brains. Fifthly, there was another who had decided an argument by biting off a portion of his antagonist's nose. Sixthly, there were two lads, of the respective ages of eight and thirteen, who had been murderously perforating each other's intestines with sharp penknives. Seventhly, there was a man in Massachusetts who had lately numbered his twenty-fifth child. Eighthly, there was a "gentleman" found, in the small hours, sitting on the cold sidewalk in – street, hiccupping for a waiter "to bring him another bottle of champagne."

"Well," says the philosopher, when I stopped to take breath, "these are only the exceptions that prove the rule." Exceptions, quotha! when I hadn't yet dug into the nauseous kennel of the advertising list! Exceptions? but what's the use of talking? Does not every morning's new issue furnish similar "exceptions"? Certainly. Besides, didn't I put this catechism to him? How came – to give the wife of an official high in power that splendid grand piano? There's a dignified way to secure, through a wheedling female tongue, a fat office. Not to mention a carriage and horses unexpectedly placed at the disposal of Senator – 's wife. Last, but not least, look at "Jeff.," first and last, from his attempted flight to his boyish refusal to eat his prison fare, bestowing it gratuitously in the faces of his guards; and then kicking and swearing, while his naughty little hands and feet were being fastened together therefor. Dignity? when I look at human beings, and think of what they daily and hourly do, I am seized with convulsions of laughter at the idea. Sometimes the devil possesses me, in the presence of some solemn "hark from the tombs" kind of an individual, to picture it, till I am tied up with cramps trying to keep from laughing. Nobody will ever know what I've suffered in this way. Dignity? You should see it with its boots up on the window-sill of some hotel lounging-room facing Broadway, with its mouth wide open, thus – O; its hat rakishly set on one temple, and its eyes somnolently closed to the charms of the lady pedestrians, who wouldn't miss the picture for sixpence. Dignity? Yesterday I saw a man nearly cut in two with corsets. Another trying to hop round hilariously in a pair of corn-murdering boots. Another roaring out in an omnibus like a mad bull because the cold-fingered driver gave him a "soiled stamp."

Dignity of human nature? Where is it when a man is in the dentist's chair? Where, when a waiter spills coffee on his shirt-bosom or hot soup on his trousers? One might as well not stiffen himself up against facts like these, said I to the philosopher. We don't stop being children, this side the grave, that ever I could find out. The toys we mostly scramble for, like those that dangle from the Christmas-tree, suit but the present hour, and, with all their gilding and glittering lights, will one day be but broken rubbish on our hands. When a man is dead he looks dignified; but while he is alive, with a pipe stereotyped to his lips, or alternately dipping his soup-erfluous mustache in a plate of soup and sopping it with a napkin; or, as the country-woman said of her pet minister, "sitting down, spitting round socionable," I really can't entertain the idea of "Dignity." The more I try the more I laugh. Frivolous, I grant; but what were woman without frivolity? Not a man would speak to us.

What Ministers Need. – We have often thought that ministers need their congregations as much, if not more, than congregations need their ministers. Parishioners are not apt to look at it in this way. The matter of salary nowadays, thank God, is, as a general thing, properly considered; but the matter of "holding up his hands" spiritually, is not. Remember, he is a man like yourselves, subject to discouragement, and needs – oh, more often than you know who only look on his face once a week – that affectionate relationship which you delight in between your own children and yourself. You wish their respect, but would you be satisfied with only that? Do you not delight in the beaming eye and constant, kindly, heartfelt recognition of your presence? Just so your minister feels toward you, else he were no minister. Then do not treat him as you would a Fourth-of-July orator, or a stray lecturer, to be paid and dismissed, and forgotten when his message is delivered, careless after that whether he be crushed or shipwrecked on his way home. Remember the phrase, "holding up his hands." It has a world of significance, looked at in this light.

ALL ABOUT DOCTORS

There be many kinds of Doctors; allopathic – homœpathic – and mongrel. Luckily every family swears by its own, and believes in no salvation beyond his dictum. There is your fashionable Doctor who lives in a fine house; rides to his "cases" with a servant in livery; utterly eschews all gutter localities, and never troubles himself to go out when his head aches, or in bad weather. His manner of drawing off his gloves is pompous and impressive. Nurse in the corner sinks down into her slippers, utterly quenched by it. While he warms his hands silently at the fire, he is impressing all present with an idea of his immense profundity. This done, he fixes his eyes on the ceiling, and counts his patient's pulse; then comes the tongue examination; after which he relapses into another profound contemplation of the ceiling; during which time every tick of the clock seems solemn as fate. Then follows the cabalistic writing; a dead letter to everybody but this Grand Mogul and the apothecary. The gloves are then drawn on, and bowing to the thin air, our elegant Doctor delivers himself again into the care of his liveried servant.

Then there is your old-fashioned Doctor; whose patients "will have him," though he has wanted gradually to leave off practice for several years, in favor of new aspirants. The cut of his coat is a matter that don't affect his practice. He smiles blandly as the other Doctor, with the liveried servant, drives past, while he trudges independently on foot, and mentally shakes his head at "new fashions." He is civil without regard to externals. A baby is a baby to him, whether it comes into the world with a nice wardrobe ready for its back, or the contrary. He is perfectly willing to tell a man who places his stomach in his hands what he is going to put into it, and what he expects it to do to him. He is interested philanthropically, as well as scientifically, in the most minute symptom of the most ordinary patient, who is encouraged by the sympathetic magnetism of his voice and eye to "tell him just how he feels." He scribbles no unnecessary recipes for his own benefit, or the apothecaries'; and speaks so cheerfully when he leaves, that the sick man half doubts, after all, if anything is the matter with him.

Then there is your young, new-fledged Doctor, who gives physic as a little boy touches off a firecracker, rather uncertain whether it will blow him, or his neighbor, or both, sky-high.

Then there is your Ladies' Doctor, "the handsome creature," who lifts his eyes with well-acted astonishment that these dear beings can endure a pain, or an ache, and still live; who says just what they want him to, in the way of prescribing "little journeys" and savory messes; and coaxes all their little troubles over their lips till they are more astonished at themselves than the Doctor is at them.

Then there is your blunt pop-gun Doctor, who has no time nor inclination for nonsense, and jerks out his opinion as he would a mouthful of tobacco; and they who don't like it, are welcome to move out of the way. Who feels your pulse, and pronounces you a prospective dead man, or woman, as coolly as if the intelligence concerned you no more than himself.

Then there is the eccentric Doctor, who advertises himself by some peculiarity of costume, like knee-breeches, or cocked hat, or long, flowing hair, and is never better pleased than when everybody is saying: "Who can that be?"

Then there is your celebrated Surgeon, who has long since bade good-by to his own nerves, and who looks at every man, woman, and child with a view to their "cutting up." When about to commence an operation before a class of gaping students, mark the gleaming, circling flourish of his pet-knife in the air, before descending upon his chloroform-bound victim! The operation properly and deftly performed, his part is done. The Almighty is responsible for the rest.

Finally, and lastly, it is all very nice to laugh at Doctors when one is sound and well; but let a good smart pain come, and none so ready, as those who do so, to send a telegraphic summons for their speedy appearance. With this substantial proof of their power, let them snap their fingers at criticism and be jolly.

How to Put the Children to Bed. —Not with a reproof for any of that day's sins of omission or commission. Take any other time but bedtime for that. If you ever heard a little creature sighing or sobbing in its sleep, you could never do this. Seal their closing eyelids with a kiss and a blessing. The time will come, all too soon, when they will lay their heads upon their pillows lacking both. Let them then at least have this sweet memory of a happy childhood, of which no future sorrow or trouble can rob them. Give them their rosy youth. Nor need this involve wild license. The judicious parent will not so mistake my meaning. If you have ever met the man or the woman whose eyes have suddenly filled when a little child has crept trustingly to its mother's breast, you may have seen one in whose childhood's home "Dignity" and "Severity" stood where Love and Pity should have been. Too much indulgence has ruined thousands of children; too much Love not one.

LETTER TO HENRY WARD BEECHER

"There has been a very jolly set of children in my house since the box [of mixed candies] came. I have made a scientific analysis with such means as I had at hand – my tongue and palate – and am of opinion that it is pure, and am sure that it is good (I know that Fanny Fern is sorry that she ever wrote a word against candy, and stands pouting, to think that I have all the sweets on my side)." —Mr. Beecher in N. Y. Ledger.

Pouting? Not a bit of it. After I make up my mind a thing is past being helped, I always turn my giant mind to something else.

Now, "your riverence," your love for "sweets" is not a thing of yesterday. I mind me of a young man, of your name, who once came to a boarding-school, where I, at sixteen, was placed for algebra and safe-keeping, both of which I hated, and who invited me to take several surreptitious rides with him, which I did; and which will probably first come to the knowledge of his sister, my teacher, through this number of the New York Ledger. What Plymouth church has escaped, in the way of an infliction, by that young man's going to college about that time, and my return to the "bosom of my family," to learn the "Lost Arts," bread-making and button-hole stitching, Plymouth church may now for the first time learn.

And now, having paid you off for your little public dig at me, I proceed magnanimously to admit, that I believe a bit of pure candy, given to a child as dessert after a wholesome meal, is perfectly harmless. But not even the gifted pastor of Plymouth church, whose sermons, to me, are like a spring of water in the desert, can ever make me believe that an indiscriminate nibble of even pure candy between meals is good for any child.

Now, Mr. Beecher, we are both grandfathers – I mean, you are a grandfather, and I am a grandmother. I now propose to pit my grandchild against yours on the candy question, and see which, in the future, brings us the heaviest dentist and doctor's bills. We won't scratch each other's eyes out now, both on account of "auld lang syne," and on account of the dignity of our position – I mean the dignity of yours.

I have one thing against you besides candy, and that is, that I can never get a seat at your church. As everybody is giving you advice, of which, by the way, I too have plenty, I advise you to remove to New York, that I may be able, without getting up in the middle of the night in order to cross the ferry, to get a seat in one of your pews. You have been in Brooklyn now for a long time, and if the people over there haven't yet become angels, it is high time you tried your hand on the other kind in New York.

I propose the site of the present Bible House, as being a nice walk from my residence, which is the main thing to be considered. I will agree to find your pulpit in flowers – (not of oratory; that is for you!)

Hoping that you will be able to turn from your beloved box of candy to an early consideration of this question, I am – leaving out candy —

One Kind of Fool. – It is very instructive sometimes, at a place of country resort, to watch the woman who has come only to exhibit her changes of wardrobe. For a day or two, possibly longer, she goes through her solitary dress-rehearsals. Finding at last that the rest of the boarders wear rubbers and water-proofs, and live out of doors in all weathers, the woman who came to dress, gets weary of waiting for admirers, and reluctantly joins the sensible majority, rather than be left alone; but generally with an apologetic, "How odd it seems, not to dress for dinner as one does in the city," by way of letting herself gently down from her snobbish pedestal. We are happy to add, however, that the number of women who go into the country to dress is becoming fewer every year; folly in this regard having reached its ultimatum of loathsomeness.

THE AMENITIES OF THE TABLE

Fastidiousness, in any regard, is a misfortune, as two-thirds of mankind have no such word in their dictionary. But in matters of the table we claim for every human being a large margin of license as to peculiarities of taste. Now helping at table is a science. To tact and skill your helper must needs add benevolence. He or she must be capable of comprehending that too large a slice, or too brimming a spoonful, may save the trouble of helping twice, in more ways than one, as it may effectually destroy the appetite. Your helper must not suppose that safely to land a piece of meat on the plate, instead of the table-cloth, his or her duty is done; on the contrary, the boundary line between squash and spinach, cranberry sauce and cauliflower, may be distinctly defined with advantage to many stomachs and palates. Nor must your helper close his or her eyes to the fact that some specified joint, or bone, or slice, may be disagreeable, through some unexplainable though very decided antipathy. Nor must he or she disdain to be informed, if ignorant of the fact, that a bit of butter has a better relish if it be not flattened down on your plate, after the manner of an apothecary spreading a plaster. Then gravy is undoubtedly a meritorious liquid when one has a confidential physician, and money enough to fee him; but as this is not always the case, one may be pardoned for not wishing to have it taken for granted that it is to be soused over his food, without permission. Once I saw a philanthropic carver. His patience and assiduity were beyond all praise; but in an evil day, in a philosophical mood, inspecting him too closely with admiring eyes, I discovered the fatal spring of his amiability. It was only a blind for the secretion of his favorite titbits till, his labors over, the delicious process of mastication should commence for him! That's what comes of looking too closely into things. It has happened to me before.

The Smiths believe that edibles were made to eat; and that digestion is a humbug invented by the doctors; and that milk and cider, and pastry and vinegar, and candy and raisins, and flapjacks and pickles, and jellies, can be eaten in successive strata at any hour in the twenty-four, and in any condition of body or mind, and repose quietly together like "the Happy Family." The Smiths believe in getting up in the middle of the night to eat and then going to bed upon it; they believe in taking a bath alike on a full or an empty stomach, and they utterly despise exercise. If they are sick, it is never on account of any of these barbaric heresies.

Now, the Joneses, having studied physiology, look upon food as a necessary evil. No Rabbi could more utterly sniff down pork. Grease in every form is tabooed; preserves and pastry sent to Coventry, or only set before company, who have an undoubted right to kill themselves if fashion requires it. The Joneses, when helping you at table, always prefix the offered morsel with, Pray take it, it is so healthful; or, It will assist your digestion; or, It is an excellent corrective; till the association between potatoes and physic, meat and medicine, is so intimate, that one ceases to regard these edibles in the light of food. You are cautioned against veal because of necessity it must be young meat; against fish, lest it may aggravate a possible scrofulous tendency; against tea, because the leaves may have been dried on copper; against milk, because you are unacquainted with the pedigree of the cow from whence it came. Bread is microscopically inspected for imaginary adulterations, and after all these precautions the timid Joneses, restricted to the simplest forms of two or three permissible and monotonous eatables, swallow even these nervously, and with an eye to the undertaker; and if attacked by headache, submit to it meekly, as a penance for some unknown infringement of nature's law.

Now the Adamses believe in quantity, not quality. An ounce of paving-stones is as good as an ounce of mutton; in other words, you may eat your grandmother with impunity, if you only confine yourself to a small piece, and are jolly over it. Luckily for butchers, confectioners, grocers, doctors, and sextons, each of these hobbies finds its followers.

I believe in eating. The person who affects to despise it either comforts himself with private bites, or is unfitted by disease to eat at all. It does not disenchant me, as it does some, to see "a woman eat." I know that the dear creatures cannot keep up their plumpness on saw-dust, or the last "Lady's Book." I look at them as the future mothers of healthy little children; and I say mentally, Eat, my dears, and be satisfied; but be sure that you take a good walk after you have digested your food. Still there may be limits to one's tolerance even in this regard. The other morning, at a hotel breakfast, I had been contemplating with great interest a fair creature, who took her seat opposite to me, in all the freshness of a maiden's morning toilette. Smooth hair, tranquil brow, blue eyes, and a little neat white collar finishing off a very pretty morning-robe; and here you will permit me to remark that, if women did but know it, but they don't, and never will, a ball-room toilette is nothing to a neat breakfast dress. Well, my fairy read the bill of fare, while I admired the long eyelashes that swept her cheek. Straightway she raised her pretty head, and lisped this order to the colored waiter at her elbow:

"John! Coffee, Fried Pigs' Feet, Fried Oysters, Omelette, Pork Steak."

MANY MEN OF MANY MINDS

It is very curious with what different eyes different people may look upon the same object. Not long since a lady and gentleman in travelling arrived at the hotel of one of our largest watering-places just at the dinner-hour. The lady, preferring a warm meal to an elaborate toilette, proposed going in "just as they were." Seating themselves in the places designated by that important personage, the head waiter, they inspected the tempting bill of fare, gave their orders, and bided their time, longer or shorter, for their completion; the hotel being overcrowded, it proved to be longer. The lady solaced herself by reviewing the guests. Presently, touching her companion's arm, she exclaimed: "Look! did you ever see a more beautiful woman? Look at her throat, and the poise of her head, and her lovely profile. See! how she smiles! hasn't she a lovely mouth?" "Pshaw!" replied the gentleman, "I dare say she's well enough, but do you suppose that boiled mutton I ordered will ever arrive?"

The other day a beautiful child came into an omnibus with its nurse. It commenced smiling at all the passengers, pointing its tiny forefinger at this one and that, by way of making acquaintance. One old gentleman in the far comer responded by a series of signals with a red-silk pocket handkerchief, to which the social little baby made ready response. Another gentleman near, upon whose newspaper the smiling child laid its hand with trusting fearlessness, looked over his spectacles at it with a frown, gave an ugly grunt, and shortly turned his back, to prevent a repetition of the familiarity.

"How did you like the Rev. Mr. – 's sermon?" asked a gentleman of another, as they were leaving the church. "Solid gold, every word of it," replied he; "sound doctrine eloquently presented." "Strange!" replied the querist; "for my own part, I was so disgusted, that I could with difficulty keep my seat." "What! a minister raise a smile on the faces of his audience in such a solemn place! I wonder what my old pastor, Dr. Dry-Starch would have thought of such a proceeding! He always taught us that this was a solemn world; and that the man who laughed in it might very likely be laughing over the very spot where in time he might be buried."

"How do you like Mr. Theophilus Tennant's new novel?" asked one lady of another. "Well, if you want my honest opinion," replied the latter, "I consider it a shallow, egotistical, inflated affair, whatever paid critics may assert to the contrary." "Possible?" exclaimed the querist; "why, I was so delighted with it that I had serious thoughts of addressing a letter of thanks to the owner for the pleasure he had afforded me, although I never saw or spoke to him."

"What a splendid specimen of a man!" exclaimed Miss Twenty to Mrs. Thirty-five. "It makes one feel stronger and better to be in the same room with him." "Heavens!" exclaimed the matron; "I can think of nothing when I see him but a great, lumbering, overgrown, Newfoundland dog. A man with so much surplus body to look after can't have much time for anything else."

And so we might multiply instances ad infinitum (which is about all the Latin I know). For my own part I don't quarrel with that diversity of taste which finds pretty wives for ugly husbands, fine, smart husbands for silly women, full congregations for prosy ministers, overflowing audiences for flat lecturers, and a reading parish, notwithstanding her faults, for Fanny Fern.

MY NOTION OF A WALKING COMPANION

Of all small miseries, an uncongenial walking companion is the most annoying. Some people take a walk as they would study the multiplication table. It is a necessary performance, to be got over as soon as possible. I am not alluding to that class of human oyster, but to those who, after close application, or the exhausting wear and fret of everyday life, feel as though the four walls about them were gradually contracting, and their chance for breath growing fainter and fainter; to whom fresh air and the blue sky are as necessary as is dew and sunshine to flowers; and like them, without which, they as certainly droop and die; – such will understand what I mean by that misused term —a walk. Not a dawdle, not a feminine "calling" tour; nor an errand of any sort, for any purpose under heaven, that can be construed into business; but a dreamy lounge, irrespective of anything but the cool feel of the air on the heated temples, and the great, ceaseless, murmuring wave of life beating against the shore of time, bearing you and others on its bosom wheresoever God willeth. People pass you like moving shadows, you hear the pleasant hum of their voices, but do not know in your somnambulistic mood whether they are familiar faces or not. You only thank God for unfettered limbs, and fresh air, and motion; beyond that, for the time being, you desire to know nothing. Ah, then– to be unexpectedly linked to some human fidget! Whose limbs jerk this way and that, as if they were pulled by invisible wires; who goes first fast, then slow; then pulls you up with a short jerk to look at something; who bothers you with infinitesimal small talk; who ceaselessly interlards inquiries which chain you remorselessly to the tug-boat of his or her ideas, without leave of mental absence for one reprieving moment; and all this very likely accompanied with the most friendly and amiable intentions on the part of your entertainer (?). To say "No" and "Yes" recklessly – and laugh in the wrong place, and go home a million times more weary than when you started, beside feeling that you have hopelessly excluded yourself from the list of sane human beings – that's what I call misery.