The Wit of Women. Sanborn Kate
style, and Kate Field has many a good thought in this shape, as: "Judge no one by his relations, whatever criticism you pass upon his companions. Relations, like features, are thrust upon us; companions, like clothes, are more or less our own selection."
Miss Jewett's style is less epigrammatic, but just as full of humor. Speaking of a person who was always complaining, she says: "Nothing ever suits her. She ain't had no more troubles to bear than the rest of us; but you never see her that she didn't have a chapter to lay before ye. I've got 's much feelin' as the next one, but when folks drives in their spiggits and wants to draw a bucketful o' compassion every day right straight along, there does come times when it seems as if the bar'l was getting low."
"The captain, whose eyes were not much better than his ears, always refused to go forth after nightfall without his lantern. The old couple steered slowly down the uneven sidewalk toward their cousin's house. The captain walked with a solemn, rolling gait, learned in his many long years at sea, and his wife, who was also short and stout, had caught the habit from him. If they kept step all went well; but on this occasion, as sometimes happened, they did not take the first step out into the world together, so they swayed apart, and then bumped against each other as they went along. To see the lantern coming through the mist you might have thought it the light of a small craft at sea in heavy weather."
"Deaf people hear more things that are worth listening to than people with better ears; one likes to have something worth telling in talking to a person who misses most of the world's talk."
"Emory Ann," a creation of Mrs. Whitney's, often spoke in epigrams, as: "Good looks are a snare; especially to them that haven't got 'em." While Mrs. Walker's creed, "I believe in the total depravity of inanimate things," is more than an epigram – it is an inspiration.
Charlotte Fiske Bates, who compiled the "Cambridge Book of Poetry," and has given us a charming volume of her own verses, which no one runs any "Risk" in buying, in spite of the title of the book, has done a good deal in this direction, and is fond of giving an epigrammatic turn to a bright thought, as in the following couplet:
"Would you sketch in two words a coquette and deceiver?
Name two Irish geniuses, Lover and Lever!"
She also succeeds with the quatrain:
A signal name is this, upon my word!
Great Juno's geese saved Rome her citadel.
Another drowsy Manlius may be stirred
And the State saved, if I but cackle well.
I recall a charming jeu d'esprit from Mrs. Barrows, the beloved "Aunt Fanny," who writes equally well for children and grown folks, and whose big heart ranges from earnest philanthropy to the perpetration of exquisite nonsense.
It is but a trifle, sent with a couple of peanut-owls to a niece of Bryant's. The aged poet was greatly amused.
"When great Minerva chose the Owl,
That bird of solemn phiz,
That truly awful-looking fowl,
To represent her wis-
Dom, little recked the goddess of
The time when she would howl
To see a Peanut set on end,
And called – Minerva's Owl."
Miss Phelps has given us some sentences which convey an epigram in a keen and delicate fashion, as:
"All forms of self-pity, like Prussian blue, should be sparingly used."
"As a rule, a man can't cultivate his mustache and his talents impartially."
"As happy as a kind-hearted old lady with a funeral to go to."
"No men are so fussy about what they eat as those who think their brains the biggest part of them."
"The professor's sister, a homeless widow, of excellent Vermont intentions and high ideals in cup-cake."
And this longer extract has the same characteristics:
"You know how it is with people, Avis; some take to zoölogy, and some take to religion. That's the way it is with places. It may be the Lancers, and it may be prayer-meetings. Once I went to see my grandmother in the country, and everybody had a candy-pull; there were twenty-five candy-pulls and taffy-bakes in that town that winter. John Rose says, in the Connecticut Valley, where he came from, it was missionary barrels; and I heard of a place where it was cold coffee. In Harmouth it's improving your mind. And so," added Coy, "we run to reading-clubs, and we all go fierce, winter after winter, to see who'll get the 'severest.' There's a set outside of the faculty that descends to charades and music and inconceivably low intellectual depths; and some of our girls sneak off and get in there once in a while, like the little girl that wanted to go from heaven to hell to play Saturday afternoons, just as you and I used to do, Avis, when we dared. But I find I've got too old for that," said Coy, sadly. "When you're fairly past the college-boys, and as far along as the law students – "
"Or the theologues?" interposed Avis.
"Yes, or the theologues, or even the medical department; then there positively is nothing for it but to improve your mind."
Listen to Lavinia, one of Mrs. Rose Terry Cooke's sensible Yankee women:
"Land! if you want to know folks, just hire out to 'em. They take their wigs off afore the help, so to speak, seemingly."
"Marryin' a man ain't like settin' alongside of him nights and hearin' him talk pretty; that's the fust prayer. There's lots an' lots o' meetin' after that!"
And what an amount of sense, as well as wit, in Sam Lawson's sayings in "Old Town Folks." As this book is not to be as large as Worcester's Unabridged Dictionary, I can only give room to one.
"We don't none of us like to have our sins set in order afore us. There was David, now, he was crank as could be when he thought Nathan was a talkin' about other people's sins. Says David: 'The man that did that shall surely die.' But come to set it home and say, 'Thou art the man!' David caved right in. 'Lordy massy, bless your soul and body, Nathan!' says he, 'I don't want to die.'"
And Mrs. A.D.T. Whitney must not be forgotten. "As Emory Ann said once about thoughts: 'You can't hinder 'em any more than you can the birds that fly in the air; but you needn't let 'em light and make a nest in your hair.'"
And what a capital hit on the hypocritical apologies of conceited housekeepers is this bit from Mrs. Whicher ("Widow Bedott"): "A person that didn't know how wimmin always go on at such a place would a thought that Miss Gipson had tried to have everything the miserablest she possibly could, and that the rest on 'em never had anything to hum but what was miserabler yet."
And Marietta Holley, who has caused a tidal-wave of laughter by her "Josiah Allen's Wife" series, shall have her say.
"We, too, are posterity, though mebby we don't realize it as we ort to."
"She didn't seem to sense anything, only ruffles and such like. Her mind all seemed to be narrowed down and puckered up, just like trimmin'."
But I must have convinced the most sceptical of woman's wit in epigrammatic form, and will now return to an older generation, who claim a fair share of attention.
CHAPTER II
HUMOR OF LITERARY ENGLISHWOMEN
In reviewing the bon-mots of Stella, whom Swift pronounced the most witty woman he had ever known, it seems that we are improving. I will give but two of her sayings, which were so carefully preserved by her friend.
When she was extremely ill her physician said, "Madam, you are near the bottom of the hill, but we will endeavor to get you up again;" she answered: "Doctor, I fear I shall be out of breath before I get up to the top."
After she had been eating some sweet thing a little of it happened to stick on her lips. A gentleman told her of it, and offered to lick it off. She said: "No, sir, I thank you; I have a tongue of my own."
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