Owls Kill Humming-birds
True Flag
Dec. 11, 1852
Dec. 11, 1852
"We are not to suppose that the oak wants stability because its light and changeable leaves dance to the music of the breeze;—nor are we to conclude that a man wants solidity and strength of mind because he may exhibit an occasional playfulness and levity."
|
NO, INDEED! So, if you have the bump of mirthfulness developed, don't marry a tombstone. You come skipping into the parlor, with your heart as light as a feather, and your brain full of merry fancies. There he sits! stupid—solemn—and forbidding.
You go up and lay your hand on his arm; he's magnetized about as much as if an omnibus-driver had punched him in the ribs for his fare; and looks in your face with the same expression he'd wear if contemplating his ledger.
You turn away and take up a newspaper. There's a witty paragraph; your first impulse is to read it aloud to him. No use! He wouldn't see through it till the middle of next week. Well, as a sort of escape-valve to your ennui, you sit down to the piano and dash off a waltz; he interrupts you with a request for a dirge.
Your little child comes in,—Heaven bless her!—and utters some one of those innocent pettinesses which are dropping like pearls from children's mouths. You look to see him catch her up and give her a smothering kiss. Not he! He's too dignified!
Altogether, he's about as genial as the north side of a meeting-house.
And so you go plodding through life with him to the dead-march of his own leaden thoughts. You revel in the sunbeams; he likes the shadows. You are on the hill-tops; he is in the plains. Had the world been made to his order, earth, sea, and sky would have been one universal pall—not a green thing in it except himself! No vine would "cling," no breeze "dally," no zeyphr "woo." Flowers and children, women and squirrels, would never have existed. The sun would have been quenched out for being too mercurial, and we should have crept through life by the light of the pale, cold moon!
No—no—make no such shipwreck of yourself. Marry a man who is not too ascetic to enjoy a good, merry laugh. Owls kill humming-birds!
You go up and lay your hand on his arm; he's magnetized about as much as if an omnibus-driver had punched him in the ribs for his fare; and looks in your face with the same expression he'd wear if contemplating his ledger.
You turn away and take up a newspaper. There's a witty paragraph; your first impulse is to read it aloud to him. No use! He wouldn't see through it till the middle of next week. Well, as a sort of escape-valve to your ennui, you sit down to the piano and dash off a waltz; he interrupts you with a request for a dirge.
Your little child comes in,—Heaven bless her!—and utters some one of those innocent pettinesses which are dropping like pearls from children's mouths. You look to see him catch her up and give her a smothering kiss. Not he! He's too dignified!
Altogether, he's about as genial as the north side of a meeting-house.
And so you go plodding through life with him to the dead-march of his own leaden thoughts. You revel in the sunbeams; he likes the shadows. You are on the hill-tops; he is in the plains. Had the world been made to his order, earth, sea, and sky would have been one universal pall—not a green thing in it except himself! No vine would "cling," no breeze "dally," no zeyphr "woo." Flowers and children, women and squirrels, would never have existed. The sun would have been quenched out for being too mercurial, and we should have crept through life by the light of the pale, cold moon!
No—no—make no such shipwreck of yourself. Marry a man who is not too ascetic to enjoy a good, merry laugh. Owls kill humming-birds!
Fanny Fern
To cite this project: Fanny Fern, "Children's Rights," Fanny Fern Archive, Ed. Haley Jones (2020) http://fannyfernarchive.org.