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

loved, to whose home that paragraph may come like a poisoned arrow, wounding the innocent, paralyzing the hand which was powerless enough before to struggle with its hapless fate; for not on the guilty does such blight fall heaviest. The young boy – the toiling, unprotected daughter – the aged mother – ah! what if they were yours?

      About Doctors. – We wish doctors could ever agree. One's head gets muddled, reading their books on health, by antagonistic opinions on the same subject, from eminent sources. Experience is an excellent doctor, though he never had a diploma. What is good for you, you know is good for you although it may not be good for another. There is one point on which doctors all agree, and that is, they very rarely give physic to their own families. Why not? A friend suggests that it is from sheer benevolence, in order that they may have more left for other people.

      MY NOTION OF MUSIC

      I've been defending myself from the charge of "not knowing what music is." Perhaps I don't know. But when I go to a fashionable concert, and the lady "artiste," I believe that is the regulation-word, comes out in her best bib and tucker, with a gilt battle-axe in her back hair, and a sun-flower in her bosom, led by the tips of her white gloves, by the light of a gleaming bracelet, and stands there twiddling a sheet of music, preparatory to the initiatory scream, I feel like screaming myself. Now if she would just trot on, in her morning gown, darning a pair of stockings, and sit naturally down in her old rocking-chair, and give me "Auld Robin Gray," instead of running her voice up and down the scales for an hour to show me how high and how low she can go without dropping down in a fit, I'd like it. One trial of her voice that way, to test its capacity, satisfies me. It is as good as a dozen, and a great deal better. I don't want to listen to it a whole evening. I will persist, that running up and down the scales that way isn't "music." Then if you only knew the agony I'm in, when drawing near the end of one of her musical gymnastics, she essays to wind up with one of those swift, deafening don't-stop-to-breathe finales, you would pity me. I get hysterical. I wish she would split her throat at once, or stop. I want to be let out. I want the roof lifted; I feel a cold perspiration breaking out on my forehead. I know that presently she will catch up that blue-gauze skirt and skim out that side-door, only to come and do it all over again, in obedience to that dead-head encore. You see all this machinery disenchants me. It takes away my appetite, like telling me at dinner how much beef is a pound. I had rather the ropes and pulleys of music would keep behind the curtain.

      Of course my "taste is not cultivated," and moreover, the longer I live the less chance there is of it. On that point, I'm what country folks call "sot." Sometimes, when passing one of these concert-rooms of an evening, I have caught a note that I took home with me. Caught it with the help of the darkness and the glimmering stars, and the fresh wind on my forehead, and a blessed ignorance of the distorted mouth and the heaving millinery that sent it forth. But take me in, and you'll have an hysterical maniac. The solemn regulation faces, looking at that "music," set me bewitched to laugh and outrage that fashion-drilled and kidded audience. Bless you, I can't help it. I had rather hear Dinah sing "Old John Brown" over her wash-tub. I had rather go over to Mr. Beecher's church some Sunday night and hear that vast congregation swell forth Old Hundred, with each man and woman's soul so in it, that earthly cares and frets are no more remembered, than the old garments we cast out of sight.

      When the words of a favorite hymn are read from the pulpit, and I am expecting the good old-fashioned tune, that has been wedded to it since my earliest recollection, and instead, I am treated to a series of quirks and quavers by a professional quartette, I can't help wishing myself where the whole congregation sing with the heart and the understanding, in the old-fashioned manner. I can have "opera" on week-days, and scenery and fine dresses thrown in. Sunday I want Sunday, not opera in negligé.

      Of course it is high treason for me to make such an avowal; so, while I am in for it, I may as well give another twist to the rope that is round my neck. The other night I went to hear "The Messiah." The words are lovely, and as familiar to my Puritan ears as the "Assembly's Catechism;" but when they kept on repeating, "The Lord is in his hol – the Lord is in – is in his hol – is in – the Lord is in his hol" – and when the leader, slim, and clothed in inky black, kept his arms going like a Jack in a box, I grew anything but devout. The ludicrous side of it got the better of me; and when my companion, who pretends to be no Christian at all, turned to me, who am reputed to be one, in a state of exaltation, and said, "Isn't that grand, Fanny?" he could have wished that the tears in my eyes were not hysterical, from long-suppressed laughter. He says he never will take me there again, and I only hope he will keep his word. All the "music" I got out of it was in one or two lovely "solos."

      Now what I want to know is, which has the most love for genuine music – he or I?

      The fact is, I like to find my music in unexpected, simple ways, where the machinery is not visible, like the Galvanic gyrations of that "leader," for instance. That kind of thing recalls too vividly my old "fa-sol-la" singing-school, where the boys pulled my curls, and gave me candy and misspelt notes.

      There is evidently something wanting in my make-up, with regard to "music," when I can cry at the singing of the following simple verses, by the whole congregation in church, and do the opposite at the scientific performance of "The Messiah." Listen to the verses:

      "Pass me not, O gentle Saviour,

      Hear my humble cry;

      While on others Thou art smiling,

      Do not pass me by.

      Saviour, Saviour,

      Hear my humble cry.

      "If I ask Him to receive me,

      Will he say me Nay?

      Not till earth and not till heaven

      Shall have passed away."

      "BUDDING SPRING" – IN THE CITY

      We of the city do not appreciate the blessing of closed windows and silence, until budding Spring comes. The terrific war-whoop of the milkman inaugurates the new-born day long before we should otherwise recognize it. Following him is the rag-man, with his handcart, to which six huge jangling, terrific cow-bells are fastened, as an accompaniment to the yet louder yell of "r-a-g-s." Then comes the "S-t-r-a-w-b-e-r-r-y" man, with lungs of leather, splitting your head, as you try to sip your coffee in peace. Close upon his heels, before he has hardly turned the corner, comes the pine-apple man, who tries to outscreech him. Then the fish-man, who blows a hideous tin trumpet, loud enough to rouse the Seven Sleepers, and discordant enough to set all your nerves jangling, if they had not already been taxed to the utmost. You jump up in a frenzy to close the window, only to see that the fish-man has stopped his abominable cart at the door of a neighbor, who keeps a carriage and livery, and is therefore fond of cheap, stale fish; where he is deliberately cleaning and splitting them, and throwing the refuse matter in the street, as a bouquet for your nostrils during the warm day. Then comes a procession of heavy carts, the drivers of which are lashing their skeleton nags to fury, with loud cracks of their whips, to see which shall win in the race, while every one of your window-panes shakes as if an earthquake were in progress, as they rumble over the stones. By this time comes a great mob of boys, with vigorous lungs, tossing each other's caps in the air, and screeching with a power perfectly inexplicable at only six, ten, or twelve years of practice. Indeed, the smaller the boy the bigger is his war-whoop, as a general rule. Then comes a wheezy organ-grinder, who, encouraged by the fatal show of plants in your windows, imagines you to be romantically fond of "The Morning Star," and immediately begins, in verse, to describe how he "feels." Nothing short of fifty cents will purchase his absence, which encouragement is followed by some miserable little rats of boys, anxious to succeed him on the violin and harp.

      By this time your hair stands on end, and beads of perspiration form upon your nose. You fly for refuge to the back of the house. Alas! there is a young thing of "sixteen summers" and no winters running up and down the gamut on a tin-kettle piano. In the next house is a little dog barking as if his last hour was coming; while upon the shed are two cats, in the most inflamed state of bristle, glaring like fiends, and "maow" – ing in the most hellish manner at each other's whiskers. You go down into