The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864
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Various >> The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864
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"But, my dear Mr. Carter," says the blushing child, as she reads, "we
have got to be so dreadfully economical!"
Fairest of your sex, there was never one of your sex, since Eve finished
the apple, lest any should be wasted, nor of my sex, since Adam grimly
champed the parings, thinking he was "in for it," who should not be
economical. A just economy is the law of a luxurious life. "Dreadful
economy" is the principle which is now to be unfolded to you.
Economy in itself is one of the most agreeable of luxuries. This I need
not demonstrate. Everybody knows what good fun it is to make a bargain.
Economy becomes dreadful, only when some lightning-flash of truth shows
us that our painful frugality has been really the most lavish waste.
So Lois and I, for nine years, lived without a corkscrew. We would buy
busts and chromoliths with our money instead,--we would go to the White
Mountains, we would maintain an elegant aesthetic hospitality, as they do
in Paris, with the money we should save by doing without a corkscrew. So
I spoiled two sets of kitchen-forks by drawing corks with them, I broke
the necks of legions of bottles for which Mr. Tarr would have credited
me two cents each, and many times damaged, even to the swearing-point,
one of the sweetest tempers in the world,--all that we might economize
on this corkscrew. But one day, at the corner-shop, I saw a corkscrew in
the glass show-case, lying on some pocket-combs and family dye-stuffs. I
asked the price, to learn that it cost seventeen cents. The resolution
of years gave way before the temptation. I bought the corkscrew, and
from that moment my income has equalled my expenses. So you see, my
sweet May-bud, just trembling on the edge of housekeeping, that true
economy consists in buying the right thing at the right time,--if you
only pay for it as you go.
"But, my dear Mr. Carter, I don't know what the right thing is!"
Sweet heart, I knew it. And your husband knows no more than you
do,--although he will pretend to know, that he may look cross when the
bills come in. Read what follows; hide the "Atlantic" before he comes
home; and you will know more than he knows on the most important point
in human life. Vainly, henceforth, will he quote Greek to you, or talk
pompous nonsense about the price of Treasury certificates, if you know
at what price eggs are really cheap, and at what price they are really
dear.
Listen, and remember! Then hide the "Atlantic" away.
When I engaged in the study of Hebrew, which was at that time a
"regular" at college, (for why should I blush to own that I am in my one
hundred and tenth year?) as I toiled through the rules and exceptions in
dear old Stephen Sewall's Hebrew Grammar, I ventured to ask him, one
desperately hot June day, whether he could not tell us, were it only for
curiosity's sake, which rule would come into play in every verse, and
which would be of use only once or twice in the whole Bible. "Ah,
Carter," said the dear old fellow, (he taught his beloved language with
his own book,) "it is all of use,--all!" And so we had to take it all,
and find out as we could which rules would be constant servitors to us,
and which occasional lackeys, hired for special occasions. Just so, dear
Hero, do you stand about your housekeeping. You wall be fretting
yourself to death to economize in each one of one hundred and seven
different articles,--for so many are you and Leander to assimilate and
make your own special phosphate and carbon, as this sweet honey-year of
yours goes on. Of that fret and wear of your sweet temper, child, there
is no use at all. Listen, and you shall learn what are to be the great
constants of your expense,--what Stephen Sewall would have called the
regular verbs transitive of your being, doing, and suffering,--and how
many of the one hundred and seven are only exceptional Lamed Hhes, at
which you can guess or which you can skip, if the great central
movements of your economies go bravely on.
I do not know, of course, whether Leander is fond of coffee, and whether
you drink tea or no. I can only tell you what is in our family, and
assure you that ours is a model family. Such a model is it, that Lois
has just now counted up the one hundred and seven articles for me,--has
shown me that they all together cost us nine hundred and twenty-six
dollars and thirty-two cents in the year 1863, and how much each of them
cost. Now our family consists,--
1. Of the baby, who is king.
2, 3. Of two nurses, who are prime-ministers, one of domestic affairs,
one of private education.
4, 5. Of a cook and table-girl, who are chancellor and foreign
secretary. These four make the cabinet.
6-8. Three older children; these are in the government, but not in the
cabinet.
9 and 10. Lois and I,--who pay the taxes, fight common enemies, and do
what the others tell us as well as we can.
This family, you observe, consists of six grown persons, and three
children old enough to eat, who are equivalent to a seventh. I may say,
in passing, that it therefore consumes just seven barrels of flour a
year.
To feed it, as Lois has just now shown you, cost in the year 1863 nine
hundred and twenty-six dollars and thirty-two cents. That is the way we
chose to live. We could have lived just as happily on half that sum,--we
could have lived just as wretchedly on ten times that sum. But, however
we lived, the proportions of our expense would not have varied much from
what I am now to teach you, dear Hero (if that really be your name).
BUTTER is the biggest expense-item of all. Of our nine hundred and
twenty-six dollars and thirty-two cents, ninety-one dollars and
twenty-six cents went for butter. Remember that your butter is one-tenth
part of the whole.
Next comes flour. Our seven barrels cost us seventy dollars and
eighty-three cents. We bought, besides, six dollars and seventy-six
cents' worth of bread, and six dollars and seventy-one cents' worth of
crackers,--convenient sometimes, dear Hero. So that your wheat-flour and
bread are almost a tenth of the whole.
Next comes beef, in all forms, ninety dollars and seventy-six cents;
there goes another tenth. The other meats are, mutton, forty-seven
dollars and sixty-seven cents; turkeys, chickens, etc., if you call them
meat, sixty-one dollars and fifty-six cents; lamb, seventeen dollars and
fifty-three cents; veal, eleven dollars and fifty-three cents; fresh
pork, one dollar and seventy-three cents. (This must have been for some
guest. Lois and I each had a grandfather named Enoch, and have Jewish
prejudices; also, fresh pork is really the most costly article of diet,
if you count in the doctor's bills. But for ham there is ten dollars and
twenty-two cents. Ham is always available, you know, Hero. For other
salt pork, I recommend you to institute a father or brother, or cousin
attached to you in youth, who shall carry on a model farm in the
country, and kill for you a model corn-fed pig every year, see it salted
with his own eyes, and send to you a half-barrel of the pork for a _gage
d'amour_. It is a much more sentimental present than rosebuds, dearest
Hero,--and it lasts longer. That is the way we do; and salt pork,
therefore, does not appear on our bills. But against such salt pork I
have no Hebrew prejudice. Try it, Hero, with paper-sliced potatoes fried
for breakfast.) All other forms of meat sum up only two dollars and
twenty-three cents. And now, Hero, I will explain to you the philosophy
of meats. You see they cost you a quarter part of what you spend.
Know, then, my dear child, that the real business of the three meals a
day,--of the neat luncheon you serve on your wedding-silver for Mrs.
Dubbadoe and her pretty daughter, when they drive in from Milton to see
you,--of the ice-cream you ate last night at the summer party which the
Bellinghams gave the Pinckneys,--of the hard-tack and boiled dog which
dear John is now digesting in front of Petersburg,--the real business, I
say, is to supply the human frame with carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and
nitrogen in organized forms. It must be in organized matter. You might
pound your wedding-diamonds for carbon, you might give water from Jordan
for oxygen and hydrogen, and the snow-flakes of the Jungfrau might serve
the nitrogen for Leander's dinners, but, because these are not
organized, Leander's cheek would pale, and his teeth shake in their
sockets, and his muscles dwindle to packthreads, as William Augustus's
do in the Slovenly-Peter books, and he would die before your eyes, Hero!
Yes, he would die! Do not, in your love of him, therefore, feed him on
your diamonds. Give him organized matter. Now, in doing this, you have
been wise in spending even a tenth of your substance on wheat. For wheat
is almost pure food; and wheat contains all you want,--more carbon than
your diamonds, more oxygen and hydrogen than your tears, more nitrogen
than the snow-flake,--but not nitrogen enough, dear Hero.
"More nitrogen!" gasps Leander, "more nitrogen, my charmer, or I die!"
This is the real meaning of the words, when he says, "Let us have
roast-beef for dinner," or when he asks you to pass him the butter.
Although beef, then, has little more than a quarter as much food in it
as wheat has, you must have some beef, or something like it, because
Leander, and you too, my rosy-cheek, must have nitrogen as well as
carbon.
I beg you not to throw the "Atlantic" away at this point, my child. Do
not say that Mr. Carter is an old fool, and that you never meant to live
on vegetables. A great many people have meant to, and have never known
what was the matter with them, when the real deficiency was nitrogen.
Besides, child, though wheat is the best single feeder of all, as I have
told you, because in its gluten it has so much nitrogen, this is to be
said of all vegetables, that, so far as we live on them, we exist
slowly; to a certain extent we have to ruminate as the cows do, and not
as men and women should ruminate, and all animal or functional life goes
more slowly on. Now, Hero, you and Leander both have to lead a rapid
life. Most people do in the autumn of 1864. So give him meat, dear Hero,
as above.
As for my being an old fool, my dear, I have said I am one hundred and
nine, which is older than old Mr. Waldo was, older than everybody except
old Parr. And after forty, everybody is a fool--or a physician.
Let us return, then, to our mutton,--always a good thing to return to,
especially if the plates are hot, as yours, Hero, always will be. For
mutton, besides such water as you can dry out of it, contains
twenty-nine per cent. of food,--for meat, a high percentage.
Let us see where we are.
Our butter costs us one-tenth.
Our flour and wheat-bread cost us almost one-tenth.
Our beef costs us one-tenth.
Our other meats cost us a tenth and a half of what we spend for eating
and drinking.
"Where in the world does the rest go, Mr. Carter? Here is not half. But
I could certainly live very well on these things."
Angel, you could. But if you lived wholly on these, you would want more
of them. You see we have said nothing of coffee and tea,--the princes or
princesses of food,--without which civilized man cannot renew his
brains. In such years as these, Hero, when our brave soldiers must have
coffee or we can have no victories, coffee costs me and Lois fifty
dollars,--cheap at that,--for, without it, did we drink dandelion like
the cows, or chiccory like the asses, how were these brains renewed?
"Tea and coffee are the same thing," says Liebig; at least, he says that
_Theine_, the base of tea, and _Caffeine_, the base of coffee, are the
same. What I know is, that, when coffee costs fifty dollars a year, tea
costs thirty dollars and eighty-nine cents.
For tea and coffee, Hero, allow about another tenth,--the cocoa and
cream will bring it up to that.
Our sugar cost us fifty-four dollars and twenty-two cents; our milk
fifty dollars and sixty-two; our cream ten dollars seventy-seven.
"Buy your cream separate," says Hero, "if you have as good a milkman as
Mr. Whittemore."
You have not as many babies as we, Hero. When you have, you will not
grudge the milk or the sugar. Lots of nourishment in sugar! Sugar and
milk are another tenth.
I do not know if you are a Catholic, Hero; but I guess your kitchen is;
and so I am pretty sure that you will eat fish Fridays. I know you are a
person of sense, so I know you will often delight Leander, as he rises
from the day's swim which, for your sake, Hero, he takes across the cold
Hellespont of life,--(all men are Leanders, and all women should be
their Heros, holding high love-torches for them,)--as he rises, I say,
with "a sound of wateriness," I know you will often delight him with
oysters, scalloped, fried, or plain, as _entremets_ to flank his
dinner-table. For fish count two per cent., for oysters two more, for
eggs three or four, and for that stupid compound of starch which some
men call "indispensable," and all men call "potato," count three or four
more. My advice is, that, when potatoes are dear, you skip them.
Rice-_croquets_ are better and cheaper. There goes another tenth.
Tea and coffee, etc., one-tenth.
Sugar and milk, one-tenth.
Fish, eggs, potatoes, etc., one-tenth.
Thus is it, Hero, that three-quarters of what you eat will be spent for
your bread and butter, your meat, fish, eggs, and potatoes, your coffee,
tea, milk, and sugar,--for twenty-one articles on a list of one hundred
and seven. Fresh vegetables, besides those named, will take one-fifth of
what is left: say five per cent. of the whole expense. The doctor will
order porter or wine, when your back aches, or when Leander looks thin.
Have nothing to do with them till he does order them, but reserve
another five per cent. for them. The rest, Hero, it is mace, it is
yeast, it is vinegar, pepper, and mustard, it is sardines, it is
lobster, it is the unconsidered world of trifles which make up the
visible difference between the table of high civilization and that of
the Abyssinian or the Blackfoot Indian. Let us hope it is not much
cream-of-tartar or saleratus. It is grits and grapes, it is lard and
lemons, it is maple-sugar and melons, it is nuts and nutmeg, or any
other alliteration that you fancy.
Now, pretty one, I can see you smile, and I can hear you say,--"Dear old
Mr. Carter, I am very much obliged to you. I begin to see my way a
little more clearly." Of course you do, child. You begin to see that the
most desperate economy in lemons will not make you and Leander rich, but
that you must make up your mind at the start about beef and about
butter. Hear, then, my parting whisper.
Disregard the traditions of economy. What is cheap to-day is dear
to-morrow. Do not make a bill-of-fare, and, because everything on it
tastes very badly, think it is cheap. Salt codfish is cheap sometimes,
and sometimes very dear. Venison is often an extravagance; but, of a
winter when the sleighing is good, and when the hunters have not gone
South, it is the cheapest food for you. Eggs are dear, if they tempt you
to cakes that you do not like. But no eggs can be sent to our brave
army, so, if you do choose to make a bargain with your Aunt Eunice at
Naugatuck Neck to send you four dozen by express once a week, they will
be, perhaps, the cheapest food you can buy. What you want, my child, is
variety. However cheaply you live, secure four things: First, a change
of fare from day to day, so as to have a good appetite; Second,
simplicity, each day, in the table, so as to lose but little in chips;
Third, fitness of things there, as hot plates for your mutton and cold
ones for your butter, so that what you have may be of the best; and,
first, second, third, and last, love between you and Leander. This last
sauce, says Solomon, answers even for herbs. And you know the Emperors
Augustus and Nebuchadnezzar both had to live on herbs,--I am afraid,
because love had been wanting in both cases. If you have a stalled ox,
you will need the same sauces,--much more, unless it is better dressed
than the only one I ever saw, which was at Warwick, when Cheron and I
were going to Stratford-on-Avon. It was not attractive. You will need
three of these four things, if you are rich. Rich or poor, buy in as
large quantities as you can. Rich or poor, pay cash. Rich or poor, do
not try to do without carbon or nitrogen. Rich or poor, vary steadily
the bills-of-fare. Now the minimum of what you can support life upon, at
this moment, is easily told. Jeff Davis makes the calculation for you.
It is quarter of a pound of salt pork a day, with four Graham hard-tack.
That is what each of his soldiers is eating; and though they are not
stout, they are wiry fellows, and fight well. The maximum you can find
by lodging at the Brevoort, at New York,--where, when I last went to the
front, I stopped an hour on the way, and, though I had no meals, paid
two dollars and eighty cents for washing my face in another man's
bedroom. A year of Jeff Davis's diet would cost you and Leander, if you
bought in large quantities, sixty dollars. A year at Rye Beach just now
would cost you two or three thousand dollars. Choose your dinner from
either bill; vary it, by all the gradations between. But remember,
child, as you would cheer Leander after his swim, and keep within your
allowance, remember that what was dear yesterday may be cheap
to-day,--remember to vary the repast, therefore, from Monday round to
Saturday; eschew the corner-shop, and buy as large stores as Leander
will let you; and always keep near at hand an unexhausted supply of
Solomon's condiment.
FOOTNOTES:
[35]
"All hail, thou Connecticut, who forever hast ran,
Bringing shad to South Hadley, and pleasure to man!"
BEFORE VICKSBURG.
MAY 19, 1863.
While Sherman stood beneath the hottest fire
That from the lines of Vicksburg gleamed,
And bomb-shells tumbled in their smoky gyre,
And grape-shot hissed, and case-shot screamed;
Back from the front there came,
Weeping and sorely lame,
The merest child, the youngest face
Man ever saw in such a fearful place.
Stifling his tears, he limped his chief to meet;
But when he paused, and tottering stood,
Around the circle of his little feet
There spread a pool of bright, young blood.
Shocked at his doleful case,
Sherman cried, "Halt! front face!
Who are you? Speak, my gallant boy!"
"A drummer, Sir:--Fifty-Fifth Illinois."
"Are you not hit?" "That's nothing. Only send
Some cartridges: our men are out;
And the foe press us." "But, my little friend"--
"Don't mind me! Did you hear that shout?
What if our men be driven?
Oh, for the love of Heaven,
Send to my Colonel, General dear!"
"But you?" "Oh, I shall easily find the rear."
"I'll see to that," cried Sherman; and a drop
Angels might envy dimmed his eye,
As the boy, toiling towards the hill's hard top,
Turned round, and with his shrill child's cry
Shouted, "Oh, don't forget!
We'll win the battle yet!
But let our soldiers have some more,
More cartridges, Sir,--calibre fifty-four!"
OUR VISIT TO RICHMOND.
WHY WE WENT THERE.
Why my companion, the Rev. Dr. Jaquess, Colonel of the Seventy-Third
Regiment of Illinois Volunteers, recently went to Richmond, and the
circumstances attending his previous visit within the Rebel lines,--when
he wore his uniform, and mixed openly with scores of leading
Confederates,--I shall shortly make known to the public in a volume
called "Down in Tennessee." It may now, however, be asked why I, a
"civil" individual, and not in the pay of Government, became his
travelling-companion, and, at a time when all the world was rushing
North to the mountains and the watering-places, journeyed South for a
conference with the arch-Rebel, in the hot and dangerous latitude of
Virginia.
Did it never occur to you, reader, when you have undertaken to account
for some of the simplest of your own actions, how many good reasons have
arisen in your mind, every one of which has justified you in concluding
that you were of "sound and disposing understanding"? So, now, in
looking inward for the why and the wherefore which I know will be
demanded of me at the threshold of this article, I find half a dozen
reasons for my visit to Richmond, any one of which ought to prove that I
am a sensible man, altogether too sensible to go on so long a journey,
in the heat of midsummer, for the mere pleasure of the thing. Some of
these reasons I will enumerate.
First: Very many honest people at the North sincerely believe that the
revolted States will return to the Union, if assured of protection to
their peculiar institution. The Government having declared that no State
shall be readmitted which has not first abolished Slavery, these people
hold it responsible for the continuance of the war. It is, therefore,
important to know whether the Rebel States will or will not return, if
allowed to retain Slavery. Mr. Jefferson Davis could, undoubtedly,
answer that question; and that may have been a reason why I went to see
him.
Second: On the second of July last, C. C. Clay, of Alabama, J. P.
Holcombe, of Virginia, and G. N. Sanders, of nowhere in particular,
appeared at Niagara Falls, and publicly announced that they were there
to confer with the Democratic leaders in reference to the Chicago
nomination. Very soon thereafter, a few friends of the Administration
received intimations from those gentlemen that they were Commissioners
from the Rebel Government, with authority to negotiate preliminaries of
peace on something like the following basis, namely: A restoration of
the Union as it was; all negroes actually freed by the war to be
declared free, and all negroes not actually freed by the war to be
declared slaves.
These overtures were not considered sincere. They seemed concocted to
embarrass the Government, to throw upon it the odium of continuing the
war, and thus to secure the triumph of the peace-traitors at the
November election. The scheme, if well managed, threatened to be
dangerous, by uniting the Peace-men, the Copperheads, and such of the
Republicans as love peace better than principle, in one opposition,
willing to make a peace that would be inconsistent with the safety and
dignity of the country. It was, therefore, important to discover--what
was then in doubt--whether the Rebel envoys really had, or had not, any
official authority.
Within fifteen days of the appearance of these "Peace Commissioners,"
Jefferson Davis had said to an eminent Secession divine, who, late in
June, came through the Union lines by the Maryland back-door, that he
would make peace on no other terms than a recognition of Southern
Independence. (He might, however, agree to two governments, bound
together by a league offensive and defensive,--for all external purposes
_one_, for all internal purposes _two_; but he would agree to nothing
better.)
There was reason to consider this information trustworthy, and to
believe Mr. Davis (who was supposed to be a clear-minded man) altogether
ignorant of the doings of his Niagara satellites. If this were true, and
were proven to be true,--if the _great_ Rebel should reiterate this
declaration in the presence of a trustworthy witness, at the very time
when the _small_ Rebels were opening their Quaker guns on the
country,--would not the Niagara negotiators be stripped of their false
colors, and their low schemes be exposed to the scorn of all honest men,
North and South?
I may have thought so; and that may have been another reason why I went
to Richmond.
Third: I had been acquainted with Colonel Jaquess's peace-movements from
their inception. Early in June last he wrote me from a battle-field in
Georgia, announcing his intention of again visiting the Rebels, and
asking an interview with me at a designated place. We met, and went to
Washington together. Arriving there, I became aware that obstacles were
in the way of his further progress. Those obstacles could be removed by
my accompanying him; and that, to those who know the man and his
"mission," which is to preach peace on earth and good-will among men,
would seem a very good reason why I went to Richmond.
Fourth,--and this to very many may appear as potent as any of the
preceding reasons,--I had in my boyhood a strange fancy for
church-belfries and liberty-poles. This fancy led me, in
school-vacations, to perch my small self for hours on the cross-beams in
the old belfry, and to climb to the very top of the tall pole which
still surmounts the little village-green. In my youth, this feeling was
simply a spirit of adventure; but as I grew older it deepened into a
reverence for what those old bells said, and a love for the principle of
which that old liberty-pole is now only a crumbling symbol.
Had not events shown that Jeff. Davis had never seen that old
liberty-pole, and never heard the chimes which still ring out from that
old belfry? Who knew, in these days when every wood-sawyer has a
"mission," but _I_ had a "mission," and it was to tell the Rebel
President that Northern liberty-poles still stand for Freedom, and that
Northern church-bells still peal out, "Liberty throughout the land, to
_all_ the inhabitants thereof"?
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