Punch (18.1850)

PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.

171

A BIT OF MY MIND.

BIT THE SECOND.

being a bit op mbs. mouser's politics.

Aunt Peacock, who was never wrong, was never more right than
when she said—and how I remember the day ! It was before I married
Mouser ; and it was the first time he had ever seen me shed a tear,
and really he seemed as proud of it as if it had been a diamond of the
purest water—which of course it was, coming as it did from a young,
a loving, and a maiden heart, and it being dropped for him, he was
quite conceited about it, when aunt Peacock—and I shall never
forget her solemn countenance—said, " Amelia, you foolish thing !
where's your proper pride ? Couldn't you see that Alfred "—that's
Mouser's Christian name, and it isn't for me, after these years, to say
it 's a name too noble for him, which aunt Peacock, I remember,
once hoped it wasn't—" couldn't you see that the creature, when you
would in that headlong manner drop a tear because he would be jealous
of young Tarlington, not that he felt any more real jealousy than the
lion's head upon the knocker—couldn't you see that he was quite
proud of your trouble ? That upon that one tear he stood at least six
inches higher P "

No; I couldn't see it: for I was then young—not that I mean to
say I am old at this moment; certainly not: I should say quite the
reverse; as I gave Mr. Mouser himself to understand only yester-
day, when, looking at my new gown, he took it upon himself to wonder
what colour it was.

" Why," said I, " my dear," believing he felt all the pride it is a
husband's duty to feel, when he sees the wife of his bosom in anything
new—not that I believe Mouser would sometimes notice me (but then,
to be sure, it's all his aggravation) if I was to go like the Queen of
the Gold Coast, in glass beads and cockatoo's feathers—" why," said I,
" what do you think the colour is P"

Then he shook his head as if he didn't care to guess. " Look at it,"
said I; "isn't it beautiful? Well then, the colour is this—quite a
new thing—peach-blossoms shot with silver-grey."

"Indeed!" said Mouser, and I could see his face twitch, and the
corners of his mouth crisp up as they always do when anything wicked's
coming from him—and sometimes—not that I wish to sav anything
against Mouser—sometimes he cares no more for people's feelings,
than a wild boar cares for a rose-bush.

"Indeed," said he, "peach-blossoms shot with silver-grey! Very
proper; and quite suiting your time of life, Mrs. Mouser; for you
know, my dear,"—for that's the way he sometimes covers the sting with
the honey—" you know that your peach-blossoms, not but what you 're
good-looking still"—whereupon I told him to keep his compliments to
'himself; I wanted none of 'em—" you know, my darling "—and some-
times, when he's in that humour, he'll skip from dear to darling, and
perhaps to angel afore you can look—"you know, my bird of Paradise,
that your peach-blossoms have long since been shot with silver-grey;
dead shot, I should say, and no recovery."

Now, there was a time, when, at only a syllable of this, I should have
gone to my room, and cried. But, I flatter myself, I have put down that
weakness with a hand of adamant. No : for I have treasured and im-
proved upon the words of dear aunt Peacock. " Women, Amelia,"
said that dear soul to me, " women, like the lordly elephants, are made
what they are by men only for this reason ; the foolish creatures don't
know their own strength. Nature has done every thing for 'em, and
they will throw themselves away—they won't do anything for them-
selves. All the world's at their feet, and, instead of making the most
of it for their own advantage, and their own comfort, what do they do ?
Why, they take the world in their two hands, if I may so sav it, and
give it away from 'em with themselves into the bargain. They put
•chains upon their own wrists, and—well, I've no patience with 'em—
and think slavery becomes 'em. If they only knew their own strength,
wouldn't they cut the cards and play the game a little differently !
Yes, yes, my dear,"—poor aunt Peacock would say—" ever since that
first apple was bit, haven't the men, out of very spite, always kept the
sunny side of the pippin to themselves ? " And it's true—a truth, as
I say to Mooser, bitter as aloes.

However, for the time the world's going to last, it's quite worth
mending it, and it's my opinion—and I'm quite prepared to be laughed
at, gracious knows! I've been pretty well seasoned to that by Mouser;
not that I would speak against Mouser ; it doesn't become me, though
his jokes, as he calls 'em, have no respect for his wife, 'specially the wife
I've been to him—it's my opinion, that, if the world is to be mended
at all, it's the women only that can properly do it. Doesn't it stand
to reason ? Here have the men been having the world to themselves
thousands and thousands of years—all to themselves, as if the world
was no more than a bowl of punch, ladling out all the good of it for
their own pleasure—and pretty creatures they've often shown them-
selves, when they've got more of the good than has really been good
for 'em—ladling out as much as they liked, and the poor women put

aside—snubbed, neglected, sent to tea and muffins, anything to be got rid
of ? This is the way the men have ruled the world ever since they first
put their fo >t in it, never so much as letting the women call their souls
their own property; and in many places—for it's dreadful to look at a
globe (I have one in the parlour), and to turn it over and over, and see
what little specks there are, no more than I may say pins'-points in that
thirty-six-inch globe, whereupon woman has any rights at all—though,
gracious knows ! she has next to none here. To be sure, in Christian
countries, the men laugh at us—for, as I've often told Mouser, 1 know
they don't mean it—laugh at us, and call us their better halves.
" Better halves," said aunt Peacock once—she had been talking of
Turkey, where every man, she said, lived by a flowing river, with a
sack in the house—"if we're only better halves here, what are the
poor things in Constantinople ? Of course, a man—I mean an Otto-
man, or some monster of the sort—a man with eight wives hardly
considers 'em his better sixteenths ! "

I do declare when I sometimes look at that thirty-six-inch globe—it
was a birth-day gift the first year I lett school; but I was simple and
trusting, and by no means looked at the globe with the same eyes I do
now—when I sometimes consider it and twirl it round and round, now
looking at Jamaica, and weeping for my black sisters, and now at
Circassia, and dropping a tear for my white ones, and now at North
America, and heaving a sigh for the dear red daughters of our first
ill-used, and, as I really believe, persecuted mother—for after all,
who can say what she had to put up with, with no witnesses
by?—when, I say, I consider the globe in this manner, and think
of the poor souls the women upon it—there's the dear Exquimaux
things that, as I am credibly informed, go seal-fishing, while their
lazv husbands do nothing but stop at home drinking peach-brandy
and smoking pig-tail tobacco—when I consider this, as I do when
Mouser—that lord of the creation—is, for what I know, playing
at billiards—I am the more and more determined that the world can
never be put right, until women take it into their own hands, and roll
it after their own hearts ! And this is what I remarked to Mouser and
—no, I won't say, for whatever his faults are, still he's my husband;
and I took him with his faults, though I mav be allowed to observe, if
I had thought he'd had half the number I'd have seen him not at the
altar before I—but however, women—at least up to this time, were
made to suffer, and I strain every sinew, I may say, to smile at my fate.
But—it's not going to last.

I have been to Parliament—into the very House of Commons. I told
Mouser I would, and I've done it.

Well, the hypocrisy of men all over the world, 'specially the civilized;
for, after all, the savages are really and truly more of the gentlemen.
They mean what they say towards the sex, and act up to it; they don't
call the suffering creatures lilies, and roses, and angels, and jewels of
life, and then treat 'em as if they were weeds of the world, and pebbles
of the highway. But with civilized nations—as I fling it at Mouser—
they all of 'em make women the sign-post pictures of everything that's
beautiful, and behave to the dear originals as if they were born
simpletons.

"Lnok at Liberty, Mr. Mouser," said I. "Well, you want to
make Liberty look as lovely as it can be done, and what do you do ?
Why you 're obliged to come to woman for the only beautiful Liberty
that will serve you. You paint and stamp Liberty as a woman, and
then—but it's so like you—then you won't suffer so much as a single
petticoat to take her seat in the House of Commons.

"And next, Mouser"—for I would be heard—"and next, you want
the figure of Justice. Woman again! There she is, with her balance
and sword, as the sort of public-house sign for law, but—is a poor
woman allowed to wear false hair, and put a black gown upon her back,
and so much as once open her mouth in the Queen's Bench ? May she
put a tippet of ermine on herself—may she even find herself in a Jury ?
Oh, no : you can paint Justice, and cut her in stone, but you never let
the poor thing say a syllable.

"But that's the way, Mousek—and I will go on—that's the way we
are handed about the world in signs: to be looked at and talked about,
and there an end. What would England do, without a woman with a
three-pronged fork to project it ? They call Britannia—1 have heard
you do it, and don't deny it—the genius of the country. Poor soul! if
that's to be a genius, to be talked of and sung about, and not to have
a morsel of right, if that's to be a genius—

"But—I tell you—I have been in the House of Commons. And I
will say this, I went up into the gallery with—no, I won't at the present
tell you my feelings. But I will say this. How our good Queen—and
if I'd my way there shouldn't be another King in the world; no, they
should ail be Queens, like Queen Liberty, Queen Justice, Queen Mercy,
and so forth—how our good Queen, after tlie times she's looked at the
Parliament, and after the speeches she's made to them—how she must
look down upon the Lords (I mean of the creation) of the Parliament
assembled."

Upon this matter, however, you shall have more than A Bit oe My
Mind.

Yours to continue,
T/w Honeysuckles. Amelia Mouser.

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