AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
343 
any thing but hope of relief. I opened another 
which presented to me a chasm which certainly 
reminded me of the bottomless pit! There 
were no more, and I sat down in hopeless im¬ 
prisonment. 
Soon I heard a step, and ran to tbe hall stair¬ 
case to speak. I saw a man, but he was stand¬ 
ing and walking, which was a little encour¬ 
aging. 
“ Where shall I go,” said I, in accents of mis¬ 
ery. “Down here” said he, and he led me to 
the bar room! There was a blazing fire, which 
was another comfort, for I was nearly frozen; 
there were also plenty of men, but they were 
sitting, and I again took courage. They were 
chewing, and smoking, and spitting, and sneez¬ 
ing, and there were plenty of evidences that they 
had been drinking. But I never fell into the 
company of even such men, when they did not 
immediately attempt to assume a decent deport¬ 
ment. If they would only wear it all the' time, 
how much better it would fit! They were very 
civil to me, and, after half an hour in their com¬ 
pany, I was again reminded that the boat would 
soon leave. 
“ Over moor, over mire, 
Through bush, and through brier,” 
I was escorted on my winding way to the river. 
It was very dark, my guide was a stranger, and 
our walk half a mile in length. Many were the 
resolutions I made never to travel “after this 
wise” again; but I reached the boat in safety, 
and was rejoiced to greet a woman once more, 
though, as state-room companion, she was not 
the most agreeable, being a Dutch sei’vant-girl, 
and none of the tidiest! 
THE INVALID WIFE. 
BY FANNY FERN. 
“ Every wife needs a good stock of love to begin with.” 
Don’t she? You are upon a sick bed; a lit¬ 
tle, feeble thing lies on your arm, that you might 
crush with one hand. You take those little vel¬ 
vet fingers in yours, close your eyes, and turn 
your head languidly to the pillow. Little broth¬ 
ers and sisters—Carry, and Henry, and Fanny, 
and Frank, and Willie, and Mary, and Kitty— 
half a score—come tiptoeing into the room, “ to 
see the new baby.” It is quite an old story to 
“nurse,” who sits like an automaton, while they 
give vent to the enthusiastic admiration of its 
wee toes and fingers, and make profound inqui¬ 
ries, w r hich nobody thinks best to hear. You 
look on with a languid smile, and they pass out, 
asking “ why they can’t stay with dear mamma,” 
and why they mustn’t play “ puss in the cor¬ 
ner,” as usual? You wonder if your little 
croupy boy tied his tippet on when he went to 
school, and whether Betty will see that your 
husband’s flannel is aired, and if Peggy has 
cleaned the silver, and washed off the front door 
steps, and what your blessed husband is about, 
and that he don’t come home to dinner. There 
sits old nurse, keeping up that dreadful tread¬ 
mill trotting “ to quiet the baby,” till you could 
fly through the key-hole in desperation. The 
odor of dinner begins to creep up stairs. You 
wonder if your husband’s pudding will be made 
right, and if Betty will remember to put wine in 
the sauce, as he likes it; and then the perspira¬ 
tion starts out on your forehead as you hear a 
thumping on the stairs, and a child’s suppressed 
scream; and nurse snatches the baby up in 
flannel to the tip of its nose, dumps it down in 
the easy chair, and tells you to leave the family 
to her and go to sleep. By-and-by she comes 
in—after staying long enough to get a refreshing 
cup of coffee, and walks up to the bedside with 
a bowl of gruel, tasting it, and then putting the | 
s poon into the bowl. In the first place, you 
tiate gruel; in the next, you couldn’t eat it if 
she held a pistol to your head, after that spoon 
had been in her mouth ; so you jneekly suggest 
that it be set on the table to cool—hoping, by 
some providential interposition, it may get tip¬ 
ped over. Well, she moves round your room 
with a pair of creaking shoes, and a bran new 
gingham gown, that rattles like a paper window 
curtain at every step; and smoothes her hair 
with your nice little head-brush, and opens a 
drawer by mistake, (?) “thinking it was the ba¬ 
by’s drawer.” Then you hear little nails scratch¬ 
ing on the door, and Charley whispers through 
the keyhole, “Mamma, Charley’s tired; please 
let Charley come in.” 
Nurse scowls, and says no; but you inter¬ 
cede—poor Charley, he’s only a baby himself. 
Well, he leans his head against the pillow, and 
looks suspiciously at that little moving bundle 
of flannel in nurse’s lap. It’s clear he had a 
hard time of it, what with tears and molasses! 
The little shining curls that you have so often 
rolled over your finger, are a tangled mass; and 
you long to take him and make him comfortable, 
and cosset him a little, aud then baby cries 
again, and you turn your head to the pillow 
with a smothered sigh. Nurse hears it, and 
Charley is taken struggling from the room. 
You take your watch from under your pillow, 
to see if husbaud won’t be home soon, and then 
look at nurse, who takes a pinch of snuff over 
your gruel, and sits down nodding drowsily, 
with the baby r in an alarming proxity to the 
fire. Now you hear a dear step on the stairs. 
Its your Charley! How bright he looks! and 
what nice fresh air he brings with him from out 
of doors! He parts the bed curtains, and looks 
in, and pats you on the cheek. You just want 
to lay your head on his shoulder, and have such 
a splendid cry ! but there sits that old Gorgon 
of a nurse—she don’t believe in husbands, she 
don’t! You make Charley a free mason sign 
to send her down stairs for something. He says 
—right out loud—men are so stupid! “What 
did you say, dear?” Of course you protest you 
didn’t say a word—never thought of such a 
thing! and cuddle your head down to your ruf¬ 
fled pillows, and cry because you are weak and 
weary, and full of care for your family and don’t 
want to see anybody but “ Charley.” Nurse 
says “ she shall have you sick,” and tells your 
husband “he’d better go down, and let you go 
to sleep.” Off he goes, wondering what on 
earth ails you to cry! wishes he had nothing to 
do but lie still, and be waited upon! After din¬ 
ner he comes to bid you good-bye, before he 
goes to his office—whistles “Nelly Bly,” loud 
enough to wake up the baby, whom he calls a 
“ comi al little concern,” and then puts his dear, 
thoughtless head down to your pillow, at a sig¬ 
nal from you, to hear what you have to say. 
Well, there’s no help for it, you cry again, and 
only say, “ Dear Charley;” and he laughs and 
settles his dickey, and says you are a “ nervous 
little puss,” gives you a kiss, lights his cigar at 
the fire, half strangles the new baby with the 
first whiff, and takes your heart off with him 
down the street! 
And you lie there and eat that gruel! and 
pick the fuzz off the blankets, and make faces 
at the nurse, under the sheet, and wish Eve had 
never ate the apple—Genesis iii. 16—or that 
you were “Abel to Cain” her for doing it! 
For the American Agriculturist. 
CREAM COOKIES.—ROSE SALVE. 
The following recipe I have used for many 
years, and think it very nice, particularly for 
children, as the cake is so plain: 
1 .pint of cream ; 2 coffee cups of sugar; 3 
eggs; 2 teaspoonfuls of soda, and 4 of cream of 
tartar; mix as soft as possible to roll it. 
A good Rose Salve for chapped lips] and 
hands: 
4 oz. Olive oil; 2 oz. White wax; 1 oz. 
Sperm; 12 drops Oil of Rose; warm and mix 
together. ' S****. 
-- 
Not Comfortable. —One of the wealthiest 
farmers on the Connecticut tells the following 
story : 
“ When I first came here to settle, about 40 
years ago, I told my wife I meant to be rich. 
She said she did not want to be rich—no, not 
she—all she wanted was enough to make her 
‘ comfortable.’ I went to wmrk and cleared up 
my land. I’ve worked hard ever since, and 
have got rich—as rich as I want to be. Most of 
my children have settled about me, and they 
have all good farms. But my wife ain’t com¬ 
fortable yet.” 
“ Go it old fellow,” said two idle scape-graces 
to an honest laborer at work—“ Work away 
while we play, you sow, and we’ll reap.” “ Very 
likely, me lads,” replied the old man, cooly, “ I’m 
sowing hemp.” 
“Please Insert this under your Editorial 
Head.” —A California editor recently received 
a number of documents from the Secretary of 
some Corporation at Sacramento, with a polite 
request that he would give the same a few in¬ 
sertions under his editorial head. He complied 
with the request literally, by inserting the whole 
package for three weeks between the pillows 
under his editorial head, when he went to bed, 
and says he trusts that the insertion will give 
satisfaction. He gives notice that others w’ho 
wish their business advertised gratis will be 
accommodated in the same way. 
Making it Equal. —An Irishman, who was 
near-sighted, and about to fight a duel, insisted 
that he should stand six paces nearer to his an¬ 
tagonist, than the latter did to him, and that 
they were both to fire at the same time. This 
beats Sheridan’s telling a fat man who was go¬ 
ing to fight a thin one, that the latter’s slim 
figure ought to be chalked on the other’s portly 
person, and if the bullet hit him outside of the 
line, it was to go for nothing. 
A Large Throat. — The Morning Star , pub¬ 
lished at Cincinnati, relates the following anec¬ 
dote of a young gentleman of the South who 
expended a large fortune—money, land, negroes, 
every thing in a course of intemperance and pro¬ 
fligacy. 
As he had just paid a last year’s grog bill of 
$900, one day he was walking in the streets 
leisurely, when seeing a physician on the oppo¬ 
site side he called out to him to come over. 
“ Doctor,” said he, “ I wish you’d just take a 
look down my throat.” 
“ I don’t discover any thing, sir,” said the doc¬ 
tor, after looking very carefully. 
“ You don’t,” said he, “ why that’s strange, 
will you be kind enough, sir to give another 
look.” 
“ Really, sir,” said the doctor after a second 
look, “I don’t see any thing.” 
“ No ? why, doctor; there is a farm, ten 
thousand dollars and twenty negroes gone down 
there !” __ 
An Indian on Lying. —The Cattaraugus 
Whig states that a suit was recently brought 
before a magistrate in the village of Randolph, 
and during its progress an Indian was brought 
forward to testify. His blank, expressionless 
face, and the general unmeaningness of his 
whole demeanor, gave rise to a serious doubt in 
the mind of the “ Court” as to the admissibility 
of his testimony Accordingly, he was asked 
what the consequence would be if he should tell 
a falsehood while under oath. The countenance 
of the Indian brightened a little as he replied in 
a solemn tone, “ Well, if I tell a lie, guess I be 
put in jail—great while may be. Bimeby I die 
—and then I ketch it again." The witness 
was permitted to proceed. 
■-- 
Ask thy purse what thuu shouldst buy. 
