Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 314 pages of information about Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862.

Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 314 pages of information about Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862.
might die, might to-day go out in utter nothingness like a falling star, and it would be away in the year two thousand before he would be missed,—­we have learned to do our own devil-work so rarely.  Meanwhile the well-wound world—­as a music-box plays over the same tunes—­would go on sinning over the same old sins.  Satan is a great economist, but a paltry deviser,—­he has not invented a new sin since the flood.  My thoughts thus danced along to the music, when they were brought to a dead stop by its cessation; and it was time, you will think....

But, permit me to remind you that my name is not acquired, but inherited.

At your service,

MOLLY O’MOLLY.

NO.  II.

I detest that man who bides his time to repay a wrong or fancied wrong, who keeps alive in his hardened nature the vile thing hatred, and would for centuries, did he live thus long,—­as the toad is kept alive in the solid rock.  Hugh Miller says he is ’disposed to regard the poison bag of the serpent as a mark of degradation;’ this venomous spite is certainly a mark of degradation, and it is only creeping, crawling souls that have it, but the creeping and crawling are a part of the curse.

Yet I have a respect for honest indignation, righteous anger, such as the O’Mollys have ever been capable of.  And all the O’Molly blood in my veins has been stirred by the contemptuous manner in which some men have spoken of woman.  ‘Weak woman,—­inconstant woman;’ they have made the wind a type of her fickleness.  In this they are right; for it has been proved that the seasons in their return, day and night, are not more sure than the wind.  Such fickleness as this is preferable to man’s greatest constancy.  Woman weak! she’s gentle as the summer breeze, I grant;—­but, like this same breeze, when she’s roused—­then beware!  You have doubtless heard of that gale that forced back the Gulf Stream, and piled it up thirty feet at its source.

Take care how you sour woman’s nature,—­remember that, once soured, all the honey in the universe will not sweeten it.  There is such a thing as making vinegar of molasses, but I never heard of making molasses of vinegar.  Do you wish to know the turning process?  Grumbling—­everlasting fault-finding—­at breakfast, dinner, and supper, the same old tune.  I don’t see how the man who boards can endure it; he is obliged to swallow his food without complaint.  The landlady at the head of the table is a very different-looking individual from the meek woman he afterwards calls wife,—­not a word can he say, though he morning after morning, in his breakfast, recognizes, through its various disguises, yesterday’s dinner.  By the way, this is after Dame Nature’s plan; she uses the greatest economy in feeding her immense family of boarders; never wastes a refuse scrap, or even a drop of water.  If one of these boarders dies, it is true he is not, like ’the poor work-house boy,’ served up as one dish, but he becomes an ingredient in many ’a dainty dish’ fit to ‘to set before a king.’  But I am not, like ’Miss Ophelia’ in ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin,’ going to explore the good dame’s kitchen,—­will rather eat what is set before me, asking no questions; which last, what man ever did, if he could help it?

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Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.