The Molly O'Molly Papers.

No. I.

In addressing you for the first time, you will perhaps expect me to give some account of myself and my ancestry, as did the illustrious Spectator.

My remote ancestors are Irish. From them I inherited enthusiasm, a gun-powder temper, a propensity to blunder, and a name—Molly O'Molly. The origin of this name I have in vain endeavored to trace in history, perhaps because it belonged to a very old family, one of the prehistorics. As such it might have been that of a demigod, or, according to the development theory, of a demi-man. Or it might have been that of an old Irish gentleman, gentle in truth;—in the formative stage of society it is the monster that leaves traces of himself, as in an old geologic period the huge reptile left his tracks in the plastic earth, which afterward hardened into rock.

Then, too, I have searched in vain for anything like it in ancient Irish poetry, thinking that my progenitor's name might have been therein embalmed. 'The stony science'—mind you—reveals to us the former existence of the huge reptile, the fragmentary, mighty mastodon, and, imperfect, the mail-clad fish. But, wonder of wonders, we find the whole insect preserved in that fossil gum amber. And even so in verse, characters are preserved for all time, that could not make their mark in history, and that had none of the elements of an earthly immortality. Did I wish immortality I would choose a poet for my friend;—an In Memoriam is worth all the records of the dry chronicler.

But, it is not with the root of the family tree that you have to do, but with the twig Myself.

As for my physique,—I am not like the scripture personage who beheld his face in a glass, and straightway forgot what manner of man he was. I have, on the contrary, a very distinct recollection of my face; suffice it to say, that, had I Rafaelle's pencil, I would not, like him, employ it on my own portrait.

And my life—the circumstances which have influenced, or rather created its currents, have been trifling; not that it has had no powerful currents; it is said that the equilibrium of the whole ocean could be destroyed by a single mollusk or coralline,—but my life has been an uneventful one. I never met with an adventure, never even had a hair-breadth escape,—yes, I did, too, have one hair-breadth escape. I once just grazed matrimony. The truth is, I fell in love, and was sinking with Falstaff's 'alacrity,' when I was fished out; but somehow I slipt off the hook—fortunately, however, was left on shore. By the way, the best way to get out of love is to be drawn out by the matrimonial hook. One of Holmes' characters wished to change a vowel of the verb to love, and conjugate it—I have forgotten how far. Where two set out to conjugate together the verb to love in the first person plural, it is well if they do not, before the honey-moon is over, get to the present-perfect, indicative. Alas! I have thus far, in the first person singular, conjugated too many verbs, among them to enjoy. As for to be, I have come to the balancing in my mind of the question that so perplexed Hamlet—'To be, or not to be.' For, with all the natural cheerfulness of my disposition, I can not help sometimes looking on the dark side of life. But there is no use in setting down my gloomy reflections,—all have them. We are all surrounded by an atmosphere of misery, pressing on us fifteen pounds to the square inch, so evenly and constantly that we know not its fearful weight. To change the figure. Have you ever thought how much misery one life can hold in solution? Each year, as it flows into it, adds to it a heaviness, a weight of woe, as the rivers add salts to the ocean. I do not refer to the most unhappy, but to all. Some one says,—

'If singing breath, if echoing chord

To every hidden pang were given,

What endless melodies were poured,

As sad as earth, as sweet as heaven.'

If breath to every hidden prayer were given, could it be singing breath? Would it not be a wail monotonous as the dirge of the November wind over the dead summer, a wail for lost hopes, lost joys, lost loves? Or the monotony would be varied—as is the wind by fitful gusts—by shrieks of despair, cries of agony. No, no, there is no use in trying to modulate our woes,—'we're all wrong,—the time in us is lost.'

'Henceforth I'll bear

Affliction, till it do cry out itself,

"Enough, enough," and die.'

But why talk thus? why mourn over dead hopes, dead joys, dead loves? 'Tis best to bury the dead out of our sight, and from them will spring many humbler hopes, quieter joys, more lowly affections, which 'smell sweet' though they 'blossom in the dust,' and they are the only resurrection these dead ones can ever have. I have been reading, in Maury's Geography of the Sea, how the sea's dead are preserved; how they stand like enchanted warders of the treasures of the deep, unchanged, except that the expression of life is exchanged for the ghastliness of death. So, down beneath the surface currents do some deep souls preserve their dead hopes, joys, loves. Oh, this is unwise; this is not as God intended; for, unlike the sea's dead, there will be for these no resurrection.

Thus far I wrote, when the current of my thoughts was changed by a lively tune struck up by a hand-organ across the street. I am not 'good' at distinguishing tunes, but this one I had so often heard in childhood, and had so wondered at its strange title, that I could but remember it. It was 'The Devil's Dream.' Were I a poet, I would write the words to it;—but then, too, I would need be a musician to compose a suitable new tune to the words! The rattling, reckless notes should be varied by those sad enough to make an unlost angel weep—an unlost angel, for, to the hot eyes of the lost, no tears can come. 'The Devil's Dream'—perhaps it is of Heaven. Doubtless, frescoed in heavenly colors on the walls of his memory, are scenes from which fancy has but to brush the smoke and grime of perdition to restore them to almost their original beauty. I could even pity the 'Father of lies,' the 'Essence of evil,' the 'Enemy of mankind,' when I think of the terrible awaking. But does he ever sleep? Has there since the fall been a pause in his labors? Perhaps the reason this tune-time is so fast is because he is dreaming in a hurry,—must soon be up and doing. But it is my opinion that he has so wound up the world to wickedness, that he might sleep a hundred years, and it would have scarcely begun to run down on his awaking; when, from the familiar appearance of all things, he would swear 'it was but an after-dinner nap.' Indeed he 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?

For an insignificant man, originally but a cipher, who owes it to his wife that he is even the fraction that he is, to talk about 'woman knowing her place—he's head,' etc.! If he had given her the place that belonged to her, their value, not as individual figures, but as one number, would have been increased a thousand fold. I have made a calculation, and this is literally true, or rather, you will say, figuratively true. Well, this kind of figures can not lie.

'The rose,' the Burmese say, 'imparts fragrance to the leaf in which it is folded.' Many a man has had a sweetness imparted to his character by the woman he has sheltered in his bosom—though some characters 'not all the perfume of Arabia could sweeten;' and, strange as it seem, most women would rather be folded in a tobacco leaf than 'waste their sweetness on desert air.' Though it is a long time since I have been a man lover, I am not a man hater. I can not hate anything that has been so hallowed by woman's love,—its magnetism gives a sort of attractive power to him.

Notwithstanding all that has been said about woman's weakness, it is acknowledged that she has a pretty strong will of her own. Well, we need a strong will,—it is the great centrifugal force that God has given to all. Only it must be subordinate to the centripetal force of the universe—the Divine will.

It is said that the centripetal force of our solar system is the Pleiad Alcyon. I know not whether the other stars of that cluster feel this attraction; if they do, what a centrifugal force the lost Pleiad must have had, to break away from 'the sweet influences' which, through so immense a distance, draw the sun with all his train. This is not without a parallel—when 'the morning stars sang together' over the new-born earth, one 'star of the morning' was not there to join in the chorus.

But Old Sol will probably never so strongly assert his centrifugality as to set such an example of secession to his planets and comets.

Pardon this astronomical digression. I have just returned from hearing an itinerant lecturer, and it will take a week to get the smoke of his magic lantern out of my eyes. If there is any error in these observations, blame the itinerant, not me.

I had been low-spirited all day, had tried reading, work,—all of no avail. Dyspeptic views of life would present themselves to my mind. Some natures, and mine is of them, like the pendulum, need a weight attached to them to keep them from going too fast. But a wholesome sorrow is very different from this moping melancholy, when the thoughts run in one direction, till they almost wear a channel for themselves—when the channel is worn, there is insanity.

Neither are my gloomy religious views to-day those that will regenerate the world. Those lines of Dr. Watts,—

'We should suspect some danger nigh

When we possess delight,'—

it is said, were written after a disappointment in love—it was 'sour grapes' that morning—with the grave divine.

As a general rule, where we possess continued delight, there is no 'danger nigh.' Where an enjoyment comes between us and our God, it casts on us a shadow. When we have plucked a beautiful flower, if poisonous, it has such a sickening odor that we fling it from us. We do not 'pay too dear for our whistle,' unless it costs us a sin; then it soon becomes a loathed and useless toy. Otherwise, the dearer we pay, the sweeter its music.

And even if there is 'danger nigh'—because we are pleased with the beautiful foam, need we steer straight for the breakers? Not every tempting morsel is the enemy's bait, though we should be careful how we nibble;—he is no blunderer (a proof positive that he is not Irish), never leaves his trap sprung—and we may get caught.

This is a synopsis of the arguments, or rather assertions, with which I opposed those of the blues; but, finding they were getting the better of me, I started out for a walk. It was a chilly afternoon; the whole sky, except a clear place just above the western horizon, was covered with those heavy, diluted India-ink clouds; the setting sun throwing a dreary red light on the northern and eastern mountains, adding sullenness to the gloom, instead of dispelling it. But why describe this gloomy sunset, there are so many beautiful ones?—when, as the grand, old, dying Humboldt said, the 'glorious rays seem to beckon earth to heaven?'

Well, I walked so fast that I left my blue tormentors far in the rear. On the way I met a friend, who invited me to go to the astronomical lecture. Here you have it, after many digressions. My thoughts never strike a plane surface, but always a spherical, and fly off in a tangent.

Sydney Smith says, 'Remember the flood and be brief.' You know I belong to a very old family; and from an ancestor, who lived before the flood, has been transmitted through a long line of O'Mollys a disposition to spin out. Unfortunately an antediluvian length of time was not an heir-loom to

Your humble servant,

MOLLY O'MOLLY.