The Wit of Women

Lovely, isn’t it? Solitaire.

Nearly made Maud Hinton turn

Green with envy and despair.

Her’s ain’t half so nice, you see.

Did I write you, Belle, about

How she tried for Charley, till

I sailed in and cut her out?

Now, she’s taken Jack McBride,

I believe it’s all from pique—

Threw him over once, you know—

Hates me so she’ll scarcely speak.

Oh, yes! Grace Church, Brown, and that—

Pa won’t mind expense at last

I’ll be off his hands for good;

Cost a fortune two years past.

My trousseau shall outdo Maud’s,

I’ve carte blanche from Pa, you know—

Mean to have my dress from Worth!

Won’t she be just RAVING though!

—_Scribner’s Monthly Magazine, 1874._

Women are often extremely humorous in their newspaper letters, excelling in that department. As critics they incline to satire. No one who read them at the time will ever forget Mrs. Runkle’s review of “St. Elmo,” or Gail Hamilton’s criticism of “The Story of Avis,” while Mrs. Rollins, in the Critic, often uses a scimitar instead of a quill, though a smile always tempers the severity. She thus beheads a poetaster who tells the public that his “solemn song” is

“Attempt ambitious, with a ray of hope

To pierce the dark abysms of thought, to guide

Its dim ghosts o’er the towering crags of Doubt

Unto the land where Peace and Love abide,

Of flowers and streams, and sun and stars.”

“His ‘solemn song’ is certainly very solemn for a song with so cheerful a purpose. We have rarely read, indeed, a book with so large a proportion of unhappy words in it. Frozen shrouds, souls a-chill with agony, things wan and gray, icy demons, scourging willow-branches, snow-heaped mounds, black and freezing nights, cups of sorrow drained to the lees, etc., are presented in such profusion that to struggle through the ‘dark abyss’ in search of the ‘ray of hope’ is much like taking a cup of poison to learn the sweetness of its antidote. Mr. –- in one of his stanzas invites his soul to ‘come and walk abroad’ with him. If he ever found it possible to walk abroad without his soul, the fact would have been worth chronicling; but if it is true that he only desires to have his soul with him occasionally, we should advise him to walk abroad alone, and invite his soul to sit beside him in the hours he devotes to composition.”

Then humor is displayed in the excellent parodies by women—as Grace Greenwood’s imitations of various authors, written in her young days, but quite equal to the “Echo Club” of Bayard Taylor. How perfect her mimicry of Mrs. Sigourney!

A FRAGMENT.

BY L.H.S.

How hardly doth the cold and careless world

Requite the toil divine of genius-souls,

Their wasting cares and agonizing throes!

I had a friend, a sweet and precious friend,

One passing rich in all the strange and rare,

And fearful gifts of song.

On one great work,

A poem in twelve cantos, she had toiled

From early girlhood, e’en till she became

An olden maid.

Worn with intensest thought,

She sunk at last, just at the “finis” sunk!

And closed her eyes forever! The soul-gem

Had fretted through its casket!

As I stood

Beside her tomb, I made a solemn vow