Ah! I see your courage will not brave laughter. You steal to the table, half ashamed of yourself as you set down your untasted peach. Your sudden zeal to relieve those ladies of their plates serves as a very good excuse for the relinquishment of your own. You have rescued yourself very well from your dilemma this time. Remember my advice for the future. Never accept a peach in company.
MISERIES.
No. 2.
A DARK NIGHT.
There are some people who seem to have the faculty which horses and dogs are said to possess,-of seeing in the dark. But I, alas! am blind and blundering as a beetle; I never can find my way about house in the evening, without a lamp to illumine my path. Many smarting remembrances have I of bruised nose and black eyes, the consequences of attempting to run through a partition, under the full conviction that I have arrived at an open door. My most prominent feature has been rudely assailed, also, by doors standing ajar, unexpectedly, which I have embraced with both outstretched arms. Crickets, tables, chairs (especially chairs with very sharp rockers), and other movable articles of furniture, have stationed themselves, as it would seem, with malicious intent to trip me up. Some murderous contusion makes me suddenly conscious of their presence. Then a feeling of complete bewilderment and helplessness and timidity comes over me. I have not the least idea in what part of the room I am. I am oppressed with a sense of chairs, scattered about in improbable places. I long most ardently for a lamp, or only for one gleam from a neighbor's window. It is no rare thing for me to discover, by a thrilling touch upon the cold glass, that I have been feeling my way exactly in the opposite direction from what I imagined. Strange how ideas of direction and distance are lost when the sight is powerless! Touch may find out mistakes, but cannot always prevent them. Touch may convince me that I have arrived at my bureau, but it is too careless to perceive (what the poor, straining eyes would have discovered at a glance) the open upper drawer that salutes my forehead as I stoop hastily to grasp the handles beneath. Touch is clumsy. It only serves to upset valuable plants, inkstands, solar lamps, &c., with an appalling crash, and then leaves me standing aghast, in utter uncertainty as to the extent of the catastrophe. In such emergencies a rush for the stairs is the first impulse. Ah! but those stairs!
I will pass over the startling plunge which begins my descent, the frantic snatch for the banisters, and the strange, momentary doubt as to which foot must move first, like what a child may feel when learning to walk. All this only serves to render me so over-careful, that, when I actually arrive at the foot of the staircase, I cannot believe it, until a loud scuff, and the shock that follows the interruption of my expected descent, assure me beyond a doubt. There is nothing more exasperating than this, unless it may be the corresponding disappointment in running up stairs, when you raise your foot high in air, and bring it down with an emphatic stamp exactly upon a level with the other.
But these are mere household experiences. Sad though they are, I esteem them as nothing in comparison with my adventures out of doors. In a dark night, and especially in a night both dark and stormy, I feel myself one of the most wretched beings in existence. Imagine a vessel lost in the wide ocean, and without a compass, and you will have some faint idea of my perplexity, discouragement, and loneliness at such a time. I have a strange propensity for shooting off into the gutter, or for shouldering the fences, under the impression that I am pursuing a straight course. I go quite out of my way to trip over chance stones, or to pick out choice bits of slippery ice. I splash recklessly through deep puddles, stumble over unfortunate scrapers, walk unexpectedly into open cellars, and lay my length upon wet stone doorsteps. I start back at visions of posts looming up in the darkness, and whitewashed fences and trees, all of which would be quite unlikely to be standing in the middle of the sidewalk, and which disappear at the first reasonable thought. I run into harmless passengers as if I would knock the breath of life out of them, and tangle our umbrellas together so fearfully that they spin round and round some time after their separation. O that umbrella of mine! Sometimes I hook it in the drooping branches of trees, and, losing my hold in the suddenness of the shock, have the gratification of feeling it tip up, and go down over my shoulder into the mud behind me. Its bone tips tap and scratch at the windows as I go by, and scrape against the tall fences, like fingers trying to catch at something to hold on by, and stop my progress. It hits a low branch, and its varnished handle slips through my woollen gloves, knocking my hat over my eyes, and extinguishing me for the time being. As if the night were not dark enough without!
My friends, I could go on much longer with my complaints, but I feel that I have drawn upon your sympathies sufficiently for the present. You will be as glad to leave me at my own house-door, as I am to find it.
MISERIES.
No. 3.
TWINE.
Under the general head of string, I might enumerate a long list of this world's miseries. Shoe-strings alone comprehend an amount of wretchedness, which is but feebly described in the tragical story of Jemmy String. Bonnet-strings and apron-strings, dickey-strings and watch-guards, curtain-cord, bed-cord, and cod-line, each and all have furnished enough discomfort to make out a long grumbling article. But I cannot linger to describe their treacherous desertions when their services are most needed, their unexpected weakness, and their obstinate entanglements when time presses. A certain pudding-bag string is commemorated in one of the beautiful couplets of Mother Goose's Melodies. I am sure you cannot have forgotten it, nor the staring spotted cat that is there represented racing away with her booty. That lamented pudding-bag string is but a type of strings in general. They are fleeting possessions, always hiding, always misplaced, never in order. You fit up a string-drawer, perhaps, with a fine assortment, and pride yourself upon its nice arrangement. Go to it a week after, and see if you can find one ball where you left it! Can you lay your hand upon a single piece that you want? No, indeed! Twine is considered common property. If any one has a use for it, he takes it without leave or license, without even inquiring who is the owner, and you may be sure he will never bring any of it back again. O the misery endured for the want of an errant piece of twine, when you are in a nervous hurry to do up a parcel, some one waiting at the door meanwhile! After an immense deal of pains, you have it at last folded to your liking, with every corner squared and even, every wrinkle smoothed. Then, clasping tightly with one hand the stiff wrapper, you search distractedly with the other for a ball of twine, which you distinctly remember tossing into the paper-drawer only the day before. In vain you surround yourself with newspaper and brown paper, and useless rubbish, tumbling your whole drawer into confusion. In vain you relinquish your nicely packed parcel, and see its contents scattered in all directions. In vain you grumble and scold. The ball is not forthcoming. Your little brother has seized it to fly his kite, or your sister is even now tying up her trailing morning-glories, or sweet peas, with the stolen booty. You plunge your hand exploringly into the drawer, and bring up a long roll wound thickly with twine of all kinds and colors. Your eyes sparkle at the prize; but, alas! the first energetic pull leaves in your hand a piece about four inches long, and a quantity of dangling ends and rough knots convince you that you have nothing to hope in that quarter. A second plunge brings up a handful of odds and ends, strong pieces clumsy and rough, coarse red quill-cord, delicate two-colored bits far too short, cotton twine breaking at a touch, fine long pieces hopelessly tangled together, so that not even an end is visible. The more you twitch at the loops, the more desperate is the snarl. Poor mortal! Your pride gives way before the urgency of haste. You send off your nice packet miserably tied together by two kinds of twine.