People and I | AdventAI

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, Cal. · May 1, 1879

People and I.

SAID I to my wife: "My dear, I don't see why we should not stay where we are. We have lived in this house twenty years; our children were born here; some have died here. Every room has some recollection of our past life. I like the house—we like the house. It is convenient—it is get-at-able. Why should we go?"

"My dear," urged my wife, "it is so far down town; and the milliners and dentists are crowding into the street now; and, besides, what would people say? We should lose our place in society."

After this conversation, with variations, had taken place at least once a week for a year, seeing my wife in such great dread of what people might say, I began to think that very likely she was right, and I moved up town. I bought a tall, slim, brown stone-house, in a distinguished neighborhood, and felt that whatever people might say after that, they certainly could say nothing about me. Mistaken man! I had only placed myself, it seems, more conveniently to be observed, as I found on proposing to retain some of our old furniture.

My wife nearly fell into hysterics.

"Are you crazy, Mr. Smith? Hair-cloth furniture and three-ply carpets here? What would people say? We had better have staid where we were. There, such things at least were unheard of. Here, who do you suppose would enter the house the second time?"

It is no use to humor a woman half-way. I gave in; my wife had what furniture she liked, and I supposed that "people" were satisfied. Please to imagine my horror when I discovered that "people" were after me again. "People" were astonished that I attended an old-fashioned church, made up of plain people. "People" knew none of its church members. "People" were getting ready to say something—according to my wife—unless I hired a pew at once in the fashionable church near by. I was disposed to make a stand, for I loved the old church! I respected its honest members, and the pastor was my warm friend. But my wife had already been obliged to tell six distinct fibs to hide the facts about our church-going, and my daughters on various occasions had suffered agonies of mortification. What man, who is not a brute and a ghoul, would allow his wife to fib, and his daughters to suffer agonies, if he could help it? I hired the desired pew, and "people's" mouth was stopped.

Stopped! No it wasn't. "People" followed me up sharp, and were on the very verge of discovering that my wife and daughters assisted in the domestic work of the house. If "people" made the discovery fairly nothing less would happen than that my daughters' prospects in life would be blasted. That was not to be thought of, and we added two ladies of the Irish "persuasion" to our force.

Would you believe it, that I could not have done anything worse for myself? Before, "people" had been at the necessity of guessing about me and my affairs; but I learned now from my wife that these Irish ladies were spies for the "people" and were always about to say something, and if anything was vulgar or poor in my house, "people" would now be informed of it, by one of the ladies aforesaid, at first hand. Nothing remained now but to bring my house and style of living, if my means would allow, up to the standard of the two Irish ladies, who, I found, were very severe and very lofty in their notions.

I began to grow very anxious, and, my wife said, mean. Recent losses made my heavy expenses difficult to meet; but when I mentioned economy, "people" sternly and disdainfully refused to hear a word of the subject, and I was rather weaker in the knees and less able to hold my own, because of a dreadful incident that occurred about this time.

As I was walking down the street, who should I meet but Peter Parker, an old neighbor, and one of the best fellows living.

"Hillo!" says Peter, "I guess you have forgotten old friends. My wife says she hasn't set eyes on you since you moved."

"Not a bit of it," said I. "But we have been so busy. Mrs. Smith will be delighted to see you. Come home and dine with me today and see what you think of my new house."

Peter did not need much urging. Why should he? We had almost lived in each other's house. And forgetting all about "people" I walked home, jolly enough, with my arm tucked into Peter's and marched him straight into the parlor to surprise Mrs. Smith.

Mrs. Smith had company. Mrs. Smith was dressed in a mauve silk, and the girls in all the colors of the rainbow. Mrs. Smith turned white and red; she looked reproachfully at me and furiously at Peter, who, worthy man, saw nothing of it, but burst out in a great laugh and shook her hands, and shook them over again, and wouldn't let go of them.

"I declare," said Peter, "you have growed young and handsome. Fine feathers does make fine birds—don't it, Smith? I should say she was twenty years younger now."

"Thank you," answered Mrs. Smith, stiffly. And drawing herself up with dignity said aside to me, "How could you do such a thing? Clara and Herbert Eglantine are here to dinner."

It was all very fine to say, "How could you do such a thing?" but the thing was done. Peter was delighted in my house, with the girls, with every thing he saw. It was no use for Clara and Herbert at each of his sallies to put up their eye-glasses and look at him. Peter could not take a hint, and even I found myself thinking that he had grown decidedly vulgar, or my tastes had changed entirely.

I heard my daughters telling Clara privately that he was an old but excellent person, whom I had befriended and whom they allowed all sorts of liberties.

But just as I was thinking that this was a neat little shield against the sharp things that people would say, when informed by Mr. and Mrs. Herbert of what they had seen, that horrible Peter smashes my daughter's neat little lie after this fashion:

"I say, Smith, this is a world of changes, an't it? Why, I can scarcely believe that I am here, and that you own a house like this. Do you remember when you lived in the second floor of our house? In those days we rather thought we had the best of you."

Wasn't that a stunner? And what is more, it turned out that Peter was not so innocent after all! I hear that he tells the story every where, how when he found Mrs. Smith was going to put on airs, he brought down her colors before her grand friend. Not a blush of anger, not a gesture was on him; so that I tell my wife that it might have been better if she had received him kindly; but she insists that I was entirely to blame, and that the whole affair is another illustration of how an entire family may be dragged down from gentility by one person of vulgar tendencies.

In my secret heart I had rejoiced, for I supposed that people would now have so much to say that out of sheer desperation we might now do as we pleased—a consideration which I found very pleasing, as I began to be embarrassed by my expenses. I discovered, however, that instead, we were to double our exertions by way of setting ourselves right! This view was so exasperating, that the most patient of men, I was filled with wrath, against this shadowy persecutor, who was hunting and dogging me to my ruin. I determined that if he had a name I would find it out, and if he had a whereabouts I would go and remonstrate with him.

Full of this determination I went home to my wife.

"My dear," said I, "you are continually asking me what will people say, and because I did not know I have bought a new house, furnished it expensively, entered a new church, cut all my old acquaintances, and I find I have run myself seriously in debt. If I had been required to do all this, by any form of government, I should have denounced it as the greatest tyranny, and fought against it to the death."

"Dear me, what nonsense you do talk!" cried my wife.

"Nonsense or not," said I, "I am determined to know who it is that is badgering me out of all comfort. When you say 'what will people say,' who do you mean, Mrs. Smith?"

"La me!" answered my wife. "No one in particular; Mrs. Grundy, you know."

"You mean, then, that I bought this house for fear of no one in particular."

"Why, no. How queer you are! I mean folks, people who know us. There were the Judsons and the Piersalls, you know."

"O, the Judsons and Piersalls!"

At the first opportunity I hailed old Jacob Judson.

"See here, Judson," said I, "suppose we had staid in our old house, what would you have thought about it?"

"Why, I sincerely wish you had," answered Judson; "for as long as you staid, I said to Mrs. Judson, 'Well, the Smiths stay where they are. If they can stand it we can!' but as soon as you were gone, there was my big gun muzzled, and my wife she gave me no peace till we moved too."

"Humph!" said I, and then went off to find Ogden Piersall.

"Ogden," said I, "what is your real opinion about joining the church where you attend?"

"My real opinion!" Mr. Piersall looked puzzled. "Why, I don't know that I ever thought about it. I never heard any body say anything about it. It is a matter of taste and preference, of course."

Mrs. Grundy was not in the Judsons and Piersalls then. In the course of a week I examined the majority of my acquaintances, and found that, as a rule, they had been so busy about their own affairs that they had not thought of mine: or else their wives and daughters had been preaching up mine to them.

I went home and reported to Mrs. Smith.

"Dear me!" screamed Mrs. Smith, "you don't go around and talk in that way, do you? O, I wish you were like any one else! What will people say?"

"Mrs. Smith," said I, "give no more money to the missions sent out to convert the poor, ignorant savages from the folly of worshiping blocks and stones, that have no life in them, till the home missions have first converted those silly American women, who, blinder than the savages, worship things that have not so much claim to worship as a block, since they do not exist at all."—Ladies' Repository.