Holidays at the Grange; or, A Week's Delight. Emily Mayer Higgins
'When iron monsters, with breath of flame,
Shall blot from earth the fairy name.'"
"Steam engines and locomotives?" said Louis.
"Nothing else," replied Ellen. "I do not doubt in the least that the whole of that Fairy Wood has been carefully surveyed and graded, and iron tracks run directly through the palace itself."
"Oh what a shame!" cried Harry.
"'Tis very sad, indeed, to have all romance spoiled in this way," said Mrs. Wyndham. "But we have a modern substitute for the magic of Elfdom—this very steam-engine, which works such wonders; the electric telegraph, which beats time itself, making news depart from Philadelphia for St. Louis, and reach its destination an hour before it started, if you may believe the clock. And some of those toys, originally invented by the Fairy Queen, if we may credit Ellen—the telescope, bringing down the moon so near to you, that you feel inclined to take a long step, and place yourself in another planet—and photography, which enables you in one moment to possess upon metal or paper an exact fac-simile of your friend. If these things do not surpass all we read of in Fairy Land, I know nothing about it."
"I have one very serious objection to your Fairy Queen, Cousin Ellen," said Charlie Bolton, trying to keep a long, sober face.
"What is that? Poor Queen, how she is criticised! If she were here, she would show her temper now, I think!"
"She is such a horrid blue. It's all very well for her to dance, and mix the rainbow, and sprinkle the dew upon her flowers, and wear the evening star on her forehead, if she does not find its weight oppressive—that's all feminine enough. But when she tries to come over us as an esprit fort—a strong-minded woman—it's rather too much. Oxygen and hydrogen, and all the ologies—I never can stand that sort of thing in a woman."
"Just as if we had not a right to knowledge as well as the lords of the creation! And besides, I want to know, Master Charlie, which is the most disgusting—for a woman to lisp learning, or for a man to talk politics, as the creatures will do!"
"Oh, I beg your pardon—I very humbly retract, my dear Coz. I must use the words of that sensible 'Coon, who has earned immortality by meeting his death like a philosopher—'Is that you, Captain Scott?' 'Yes.' 'Then you need not fire—don't take the trouble to raise your rifle—if it's you, Captain Scott, I might as well come down.' So, if it's you, Miss Cornelia Wyndham, you can spare your shot, for I'll come down at once;—I would rather face the Woman's Rights' Convention, in full conclave assembled, than my Cousin Cornelia, when she stands up for the rights of her sex to be pedantic and disagreeable!"
"I was quite amused at the Queen's experiments in education," said Mr. Wyndham. "She is not the only one who has tried to force knowledge upon unwilling minds, and to develop children as we would spring peas and asparagus, by subjecting them to hot-house stimulants. These fancy methods of training the young idea do not appear to succeed very well; to see some of the cards used in infant schools, and to read occasional school advertisements, you would deem it quite impossible that any dunces could escape the elevating processes now applied to the unfortunate little ones—yet, happily, the constitutions of most children are very elastic, and there are not as many instances of dropsy on the brain as we might expect."
"I wonder the Fairy did not take a hint from the bees," remarked Mary.
"How is that? Have they any particular mode of training?"
"Very much so: when they want to rear up a sovereign who shall be fitted to govern the hive with wisdom, they take any one of their hundred little grubs at random, and put it under tutors and governors. These cram it, not with lectures on political economy, books on international law, or any thing of that sort, but with food much more to its taste—the very best honey, and a kind of royal food, which I suppose it is considered high treason for a subject to touch. Day by day, the grub becomes more and more the princess, and finally expands into queenly magnificence, when, of course, she must have a hive of her own, or do as Dido of Tyre—colonize, and found a Carthage."
"Quite amusing! But is it true?"
"Yes, actually; and if only some such process could be applied to children, would it not save trouble?"
"And wouldn't we like it!" cried George Wyndham, "Ah, but I'd make a bonfire of my Euclid and Virgil, and all the other worthies, or bury them, as the fellows do yearly at Yale College—I had much rather be fed with some essence of knowledge, like the bees."
"This talk about fancy modes of mental culture," remarked Mr. Wyndham, "reminds me of a Life I lately read of Mr. Day, the author of that delightful book, Sandford and Merton. He was a remarkably benevolent and excellent man, but visionary, and had some peculiar crotchets about education. When quite a young man, he took charge of two poor, pretty orphan girls, and had them trained up in accordance with his own ideas, intending to make one of them his wife. Both grew to be fine women, but to spoil the romance, fell in love with other men! so that he enjoyed the pleasure of sedulously educating good wives for two worthy tradesmen, and being left in the lurch himself. A second experiment turned out yet worse, for it cost him his life: he had doubtless had enough of girls, so he took another animal, which he thought might be tamer and more tractable—a horse. He would not allow it to be broken in the usual method, which he considered very cruel: he would talk to it, caress it, make it his friend, win it by kindness. But unfortunately for his experiment, the horse killed him, by a kick, I believe, before it had succeeded."
"Poor Day! Uncle, you remind me of the cow that the man wanted to train so as to consider eating a superfluity—she was coming on admirably, but unfortunately for the full success of the experiment, she perversely died, the very day her owner had reduced her to one straw."
"How very unlucky!"
"Aunt Lucy," said Alice, "when Ellen gave us the Queen's theorizing in education, I could not help thinking of the old saw, 'Bachelors' wives and old maids' bairns are always the best guided.' It's very easy to manage dream children; but when you come to real flesh and blood, it's quite another matter. It does not appear to me that all this systematizing and speculation does much good."
"Not a bit of it," cried George Wyndham. "We boys must be boys to the end of the chapter; and I tell you, some of us are pretty tough subjects! The only hope is that we may turn out not quite so horrid, when we grow up."
"I once heard a plan proposed for getting rid of boys of your age, brother George," said Cornelia.
"Much obliged; what was that?"
"To bury them at seven, and dig them out at seventeen; how do you like it?"
"'Tis a bad plan. There would be nobody left in the world to run errands for older sisters—it would never do."
"When little Rudolph was so fond of his vegetable friends," said Mary, "and found them so good, so sweet, so much to his taste, I thought of an account I had somewhere read, written, I think, by the witty Sydney Smith, of a conversation a new missionary in the South Sea islands held about his predecessor, who had been eaten by the cannibals. He asked the natives if they had known him—we will call him Mr. Brown, as it's rather fabulous. 'Mr. Brown? Oh yes! very good man—Mr. Brown! very good.' 'And did you know his family?' 'Oh yes! such sweet little children! so nice and tender! But Mrs. Brown was a bad woman—she was so very tough.' She was not to their taste."
"But, Cousin Ellen," said Amy, "I want to know about those vegetable friends of Rudolph. I know that Capsicum is a kind of pepper, and I have often met Nasturtium, crowned with his orange-flowers; I suppose, of course, that Solanum and Farinacea are potatoes—but who is that sharp Cochlearia, who told Solanum he was a mealy-mouthed fellow?"
"Horse-radish—which Solanum thought enough to bring tears into anybody's eyes."
"And Daucus—was he a carrot?"
"Yes; and Raphanus, with his brilliant complexion, was a radish. Maranta was arrow-root, Zea was Indian corn, and Brassica, a turnip—we often enjoy their society at table."
"I