Complete Works of Harriet Beecher Stowe

by Harriet Beecher Stowe

  “Why, how now?” he Baid. “You look as your mother used to when I went a-courtin’. Girls always get the knack of fixin’ up when their time comes.”

  And that night the father said to the mother, “I say, wife, you must get Pussy a new bonnet.”

  “I’ve been braiding the straw for one all winter,” said the wife. “Last fall we picked and sorted the straw, and got the very nicest, and I have enough now done to make a nice straw hat. I will soon have it sewed, and then when you drive over to Elverton, you can get it pressed in Josiah’s bonnet factory.”

  “And I’ll buy her a ribbon myself,” said the father. “No, no, father; after all, it would be better to let me have the wagon and the old horse, and take her over to Worcester to choose for herself. Girls have their own notions.”

  “Well, perhaps that ‘ere’s the best way, mother. I tell you what, — that child has been a treasure to us, and I wouldn’t stand for expense; get her a new gown too. I won’t stand for money. If you have to spend ten dollars, I wouldn’t mind it, to have her dressed up as handsome as any gal that sits in the singers’ seats on Sunday.” What would little Emily Proudie have thought of a spring outfit that could be got for ten dollars? One of her dresses was trimmed with velvet that cost thirty dollars, and Emily cried when it was brought home because it was the wrong shade of color, and sent it back to Madame Tulleruche, to have all the velvet ripped off, and thirty dollars’ worth of another shade put on. But what did she know or care how much it cost?

  The next morning, after the worthy couple had arranged for Pussy’s spring prospects, her father was so full of the subject that he could not forbear opening it to her at once.

  So at breakfast he pulled forth a great leather pocket-book, out of which he took a new ten-dollar bill, which he laid on Pussy’s plate.

  “Why, father, what is this?” said Pussy.

  “Well, I noticed last night how pretty you looked with your posies on, and I told your mother the time was come when you’d be a-wantin’ folderols and such like, — as girls ought to have when they come to the right age; and, as you’ve been always a good daughter, and never thought of yourself, why, we must think for you; and so there ’tis. Get yourself any bit of finery you want with it. I don’t grudge it.”

  Now Pussy had never in her life had a dollar of her own before, and if, instead of ten dollars, it had been ten thousand, she could scarcely have been more delighted. She laughed and cried and jumped for joy, and she and her mother calculated over and over again how this large sum should be invested. Pussy insisted that half of it should be spent for mother; but mother very firmly insisted that every bit of it should go to Pussy’s spring outfit.

  “Let her have her way, child,” said the father. “Don’t you see that you are herself over again? She has her young days again in dressing you.”

  And so the straw braid was sewed into a little flat straw hat; and the straw was be white and delicate, and the braid so fine, that all the gossips round about said that the like of it had never been seen in those parts. And when she sent it over to the bonnet factory at Elverton, Josiah Stebbin8 — who was at the head of the factory, and was a cousin of Pussy’s mother, and, some say, an old sweetheart too — he put the precious little hat through all the proper processes, and delivered it at last, safe and shining, to her, and would not take a cent in pay; so that there was Pussy’s little fortune still untouched.

  Then they had a glorious day, going over to Worcester, shopping. They had a friend in town with whom they could stay over night; and so, though it was a good twenty miles’ drive, they did not mind it.

  There they bought a white cambric dress, and a blue ribbon, and a wreath of lovely white daisies, mixed with meadow-grass, which the shopman said had been made in Paris. Pussy wondered in her heart how Paris milliners could know so exactly how meadow-flowers looked. The young man at first asked so much for the wreath that Pussy quite despaired of being able to get it; but when he saw the blue eyes fixed so longingly on it, and noticed the pretty light on her curls as she turned her head in the sunshine, somehow he began (like a great many other young men) to wish that a pretty girl could have her own way; so finally he fumbled at the lid of the box, and looked at the price-mark, and said that it was the last of the set, and that they were closing out the stock, and ended by letting her have it for just half the price he originally asked. So Pussy returned home the next day delighted, with what seemed to her a whole wardrobe of beautiful things.

  Very fast flew her little fingers as she fixed the wreath of daisies and meadow-grass around the shining crown of the delicate straw hat, and then tied it with long strings of blue ribbon, and found, to her delight, that there was enough still remaining to make a sash to her white dress.

  Her mother fitted the dress, and Pussy sewed it; and the next Sunday Pussy’s father took her to church with a delighted heart. He was observed to keep wide awake all sermon-time, staring straight up into the front gallery, where Pussy sat in the singers’ seats, with her pink cheeks, her blue eyes and blue ribbons, and nodding wreath of daisies and meadow-grass. He disturbed his wife’s devotion several times while the choir were singing, “While the lamp, holds oat to bam.

  The vilest sinner may return,” with his “Mother! mother!” (with a poke of the elbow.) “What is it, father?”

  “Do look up at her.”

  “I have looked.”

  “But, mother,” (another poke,) “isn’t she the prettiest girl you ever saw?”

  “Father, dear, don’t talk now.”

  “I declare,” said the father, as they were driving home, “I don’t grudge that ‘ere ten dollars one grain.”

  CHAPTER IX

  AND SO it became an established fact that our little Pussy Willow was very pretty to look at, as well as good for use. Now, for our part, we are not of the class of those who think it is no sort of matter how one looks if one is only good. Our kind Father in heaven has set us the example of making all his useful works ornamental. A peach-tree might have been made to bear good peaches without having any ornament about it; in fact, peaches might have been made just as they come into market, in rough bushel-baskets; but, instead of that, only see the beauty that is lavished on a peach-tree! There is no flowering shrub that one can get for one’s front door-yard that is more beautiful There is, first, the beauty of its long, narrow green leaf, which grows with so rich a luxuriance, and then the beauty of its lovely pink blossoms, and after that the charming velvet peach, colored-so beautifully with a rosy bloom on one side. And so, in the same manner, apple and pear-trees are in the spring of the year covered with the most delicate and delicious flowers. Now, as not more than one in a dozen of these thousands of blossoms ever sets for fruit, it is plain that our good Father meant them for ornament alone.

  And so the impulse which makes men and women wish to ornament the houses they live in, and to wear delicate and beautiful clothing, is quite in agreement with the will of our great Creator, who has made everything beautiful in its season.

  So that when our little Pussy, on Sunday morning, felt such pleasure in tying on her pretty, fair straw hat, crowned with nodding daisies and meadow-grasses, she was just as good a little Christian as she was when she was getting breakfast and helping her mother about the daily work, or reciting her lesson in the Bible class at her Sunday school.

  It is not wrong for you, my little girl who reads this, to wish to look pretty, any more than it is wrong to wish to be good; and it is not in the least true that it is of no sort of importance how you look if you are only good. It is true, though, that it is a great deal more really beautiful to be good than to have a pretty face, or be well dressed. Think this over by yourself, and see if you do not find it so. If you have two schoolmates, one of whom is very pretty and wears the prettiest of clothes, and the other of whom is plain, and wears very plain clothes, at first you like the pretty one the best. But if she is ill-tempered and cross, if she frowns and scolds and is disobliging, by and by she r
eally begins to look homely to you. And if your plain friend is always bright and cheerful and good-tempered and ready to oblige you, you begin to think her quite pretty; she looks pretty to you because you love her.

  Now the great trouble about girls and women is, not that they think too much of outside beauty, but that they do not think enough of inside beauty. If Pussy thought of nothing but how to dress herself, if her whole mind were taken up with thoughts about her clothes, she would be on the way to lose what is her best beauty, and her most lasting one, — that is, her unselfish and sweet disposition.

  So there is not the least harm, also, in loving to be admired, — especially if you prefer the admiration of your own dear, true friends to that of strangers. There are some young girls who do not care how they look at home, who do not care that their fathers and mothers and brothers should see them with tumbled and tom dresses, and rough hair, while they will spend hours and hours in getting ready to shine in some party or ball. But our little Pussy was delighted to have her mother pleased, and her father happy, and to see that her brothers were proud of her. She looked at herself in the glass when she came home from church, and saw that she was very pretty, and thanked her Heavenly Father for it, and thought what a good girl she must try to be to those dear parents who loved her so dearly.

  She felt as if ten dollars spent on her dress was almost an extravagant sum, but thought she would try to make it up by being very industrious and economical; and she began directly to be very busy, in secret, braiding straw to make her mother a bonnet that should be even finer and nicer than her own. She had learned so well that she could braid straw while she was reading or studying, and her little fingers were never idle, even while her mind was away on other things.

  The love of beauty did not stop with her own dress. She began to consider what could be done to make their home attractive. There had been always a best room at the farmhouse, but it had been rather a bare place. Not one of the thousand little pretty things and knick-knacks which dress up modem parlors could they have at the farmhouse. The floor had not even a carpet, but was covered with clean white sand, crinkled with great art and care, so as to resemble the rippled sand on the sea-beach.

  But Pussy set her eyes on this room, and resolved to make it pretty. First she persuaded her mother to let her open the windows and take away some heavy, dark paper curtains, so that the bright light of the sun might be let in. Then she searched the buffet, in the corner of the best room, and found there an old India china bowl that belonged to her mother’s wedding tea-set, and this she set upon the table and kept constantly full of mignonette and other sweet flowers that perfumed the air of the room. Then she arranged mosses and ferns in various little fanciful plots upon various dishes and plates. Her brothers, seeing her object, lent her the aid of their strong arms, and dug up for her roots of plumy ferns, which they brought home all waving with their great fan-like leaves, and planted for her in the lower half of a cask which they sawed in two for the purpose. This was set in the fireplace, and then Pussy busied herself in covering the sides of the cask with green moss. The looking-glass she ornamented with wreaths of evergreen, intermingled with the long gray moss that grew on the boughs of pine-trees, and brightened by red berries. In short, after a while the little parlor looked like some of those quaint mossy bowers in the woods, where one loves to sit and enjoy the sunshine.

  There were tall, climbing rose-bushes which grew up over the window and looked in with a hundred rosy, inquiring faces, all through the month of June; and by the time the roses had passed away, there were morning-glories planted at the roots of the bushes which kept up a constant succession of bright blossoms through the summer.

  Pussy had induced her brother to make her a rough frame for a lounge, which she cushioned and stuffed, and then covered with a pretty, neat green chintz. A couple of rough boxes, cushioned and covered with the same material, made a pair of ottomans to match this lounge; and the room really began to wear quite an inviting appearance.

  Pussy had persuaded her father to allow her the milk of one cow, which he cheerfully did, for he knew she was a deft little dairy-maid. Pussy was happy and busy enough taking charge of Clover, — for so her cow was called. She prepared a breakfast for her every morning with her own hands, and Clover would come up and stand with her head over the fence waiting for it. Pussy would stroke her head, and pat her, and talk to her, and tell her that she must try and be a good cow, and give her a plenty of milk to make butter of; and Clover would look at her attentively out of her great, clear, soft eyes, where you could see the shadow of the lashes just as you can see the rushes in a brook. The fact is, Pussy grew so fond of Clover that she spent a great deal of time petting her. Clover learned some of the arts of civilized life with great rapidity; she would eat cake and gingerbread and apples out of Pussy’s hand, and Pussy would sometimes put a wreath of buttercups and daisies round her horns, and lead her by one horn to look at herself in the brook, and see how she liked herself. What Clover thought of all this she never mentioned; but she showed her regard for her young mistress in the best way that a cow could devise, by giving the most uncommon quantity of nice rich milk. And then Pussy’s brothers went to work and built a milk-room out in the pasture directly over the brook, so that the little stream pattered directly through it; and here Pussy’s pans of milk were set to raise their cream, and here was her seat when she used to chum and work her butter. Pussy’s butter became quite celebrated in the neighborhood, and sold for an extra price, and Pussy counted the money with a glad heart. In six months she had saved enough to buy a neat little shelf of books to put in the parlor; and many and many a happy hour at home grew out of that shelf of books. No ornament of a house can compare with books; they are constant company in a room, even when you are not reading them.

  Pussy used sometimes to take a book out and show it to Clover, and say, “Thank you for this, dear Clover,” — all which Clover accepted in perfect serenity.

  CHAPTER X

  LITTLE PUSSY had now grown up to be quite a young woman. She was sixteen years old, tall of her age, and everybody said that, though she wasn’t handsome, she was a pretty girl. She looked so open-hearted and kind and obliging, — she was always so gay and chatty and full of good spirits, — so bright and active and busy, — that she was the very life and soul of all that was going on for miles around.

  Little Emily Proudie was also sixteen, and everybody said she was one of the most perfectly elegant girls that walked the streets of New York. Everybody spoke of the fine style of her dress; and all that she wore, and all she said and did, were considered to be the height of fashion. Nevertheless, this poor Emily was wretchedly unhappy, —— was getting every day pale and thin, and her heart beat so fast every time she went up stairs that all the household were frightened about her, and she was frightened herself.

  She spent hours in crying, she suffered from a depression of spirits that no money could buy any relief from, and her mother and aunts and grandmothers were all alarmed, and called in the doctors far and near, and had solemn consultations, and in fact, according to the family view, the whole course of society seemed to turn on Emily’s health. They were willing to found a water-cure, — to hire a doctor on purpose, — to try homoeopathy or hydropathy, or allopathy, or any other pathy that ever was heard of, — if their dear elegant Emily could only be restored.

  “It is her sensitive nature that wears upon her,” said her mamma. “ She was never made for this world; she has an exquisiteness of perception which makes her feel even the creases in a rose-leaf.”

  “Stuff and folderol, my dear madam,” said old Dr. Hard hack, when the mamma had told him this with tears in her eyes.

  Now Dr. Hardback was the nineteenth physician that had been called in to dear Emily, and just about this time it was quite the rage in the fashionable world to run after Dr. Hardhack, principally because he was a plain, hard-spoken old man, with manners so very different from the smooth politeness of ordinary doctor
s that people thought he must have an uncommon deal of power about him to dare to be so very free and easy in his language to grand people.

  So this Dr. Hardhack surveyed the elegant Emily through his large glasses, and said, “Hum! — a fashionable potato-sprout! — grown in a cellar! — not a drop of red blood in her veins!”

  “What odd ways he has, to be sure!” said the grandmamma to the mamma; “but then it’s the way he talks to everybody.”

  “My dear madam,” said the Doctor to her mother, “you have tried to make a girl out of loaf-sugar and almond paste, and now you are distressed that she has not red blood in her veins, that her lungs gasp and flutter when she goes up stairs. Turn her out to grass, my dear madam; send her to old Mother Nature to nurse; stop her parties and her dancing and her music, and take off the corsets and strings round her lungs, and send her somewhere to a good honest farmhouse in the hills, and let her run barefoot in the morning dew, drink new milk from the cow, romp in a good wide barn, learn to hunt hens’ eggs, —— I’ll warrant me you’ll see another pair of cheeks in a year. Medicine won’t do her any good; you may make an apothecary’s shop of her stomach, and matters will be only the worse. Why, there isn’t iron enough in her blood to make a cambric needle!”

  “Iron in her blood!” said mamma; “I never heard the like.”

  “Yes, iron, — red particles, globules, or whatever you please to call them. Her blood is all water and lymph, and that is why her cheeks and lips look so like a cambric handkerchief, — why she pants and puffs if she goes up stairs. Her heart is well enough, if there were only blood to work in it; but it sucks and wheezes like a dry pump for want of vital fluid. She must have more blood, madam, and Nature must make it for her.”

  “We were thinking of going to Newport, Doctor.”

  “Yes, to Newport, to a ball every night, and a flurry of dressing and flirtation every morning. No such thing! Send her to a lonesome, unfashionable old farmhouse, where there was never a more exciting party than a quilting-frolic heard of. Let her learn the difference between huckleberries and blackberries, — learn where checkerberries grow thickest, and dig up sweet-flag root with her own hands, as country children do. It would do her good to plant a few hills of potatoes, and hoe them herself, as I once heard of a royal princess doing, because queens can afford to be sensible in bringing up their daughters.”