Suburban Sketches | Page 3

in fact
nothing of this kind; simply, there were no lamps upon our street, and
Jenny, after spending Sunday evening with friends in East
Charlesbridge, was always alarmed, on her return, in walking from the
horse-car to our door. The case was hopeless, and Jenny and our
household parted with respect and regret.
We had not before this thought it a grave disadvantage that our street
was unlighted. Our street was not drained nor graded; no municipal cart
ever came to carry away our ashes; there was not a water-butt within
half a mile to save us from fire, nor more than the one thousandth part
of a policeman to protect us from theft. Yet, as I paid a heavy tax, I
somehow felt that we enjoyed the benefits of city government, and
never looked upon Charlesbridge as in any way undesirable for
residence. But when it became necessary to find help in Jenny's place,
the frosty welcome given to application at the intelligence offices
renewed a painful doubt awakened by her departure. To be sure, the
heads of the offices were polite enough; but when the young
housekeeper had stated her case at the first to which she applied, and
the Intelligencer had called out to the invisible expectants in the
adjoining room, "Anny wan wants to do giner'l housewark in
Charlsbrudge?" there came from the maids invoked so loud, so fierce,
so full a "No!" as shook the lady's heart with an indescribable shame
and dread. The name that, with an innocent pride in its literary and
historical associations, she had written at the heads of her letters, was
suddenly become a matter of reproach to her; and she was almost
tempted to conceal thereafter that she lived in Charlesbridge, and to
pretend that she dwelt upon some wretched little street in Boston. "You
see," said the head of the office, "the gairls doesn't like to live so far
away from the city. Now if it was on'y in the Port...."
This pen is not graphic enough to give the remote reader an idea of the
affront offered to an inhabitant of Old Charlesbridge in these closing
words. Neither am I of sufficiently tragic mood to report here all the
sufferings undergone by an unhappy family in finding servants, or to
tell how the winter was passed with miserable makeshifts. Alas! is it
not the history of a thousand experiences? Any one who looks upon
this page could match it with a tale as full of heartbreak and disaster,
while I conceive that, in hastening to speak of Mrs. Johnson, I approach

a subject of unique interest.
The winter that ensued after Jenny's departure was the true sister of the
bitter and shrewish spring of the same year. But indeed it is always
with a secret shiver that one must think of winter in our regrettable
climate. It is a terrible potency, robbing us of half our lives, and
threatening or desolating the moiety left us with rheumatisms and
catarrhs. There is a much vaster sum of enjoyment possible to man in
the more generous latitudes; and I have sometimes doubted whether
even the energy characteristic of ours is altogether to be praised, seeing
that it has its spring not so much in pure aspiration as in the instinct of
self- preservation. Egyptian, Greek, Roman energy was an inner
impulse; but ours is too often the sting of cold, the spur of famine. We
must endure our winter, but let us not be guilty of the hypocrisy of
pretending that we like it. Let us caress it with no more vain
compliments, but use it with something of its own rude and savage
sincerity.
I say, our last Irish girl went with the last snow, and on one of those
midsummer-like days that sometimes fall in early April to our yet bleak
and desolate zone, our hearts sang of Africa and golden joys. A Libyan
longing took us, and we would have chosen, if we could, to bear a
strand of grotesque beads, or a handful of brazen gauds, and traffic
them for some sable maid with crisped locks, whom, uncoffling from
the captive train beside the desert, we should make to do our general
housework forever, through the right of lawful purchase. But we knew
that this was impossible, and that, if we desired colored help, we must
seek it at the intelligence office, which is in one of those streets chiefly
inhabited by the orphaned children and grandchildren of slavery. To tell
the truth these orphans do not seem to grieve much for their
bereavement, but lead a life of joyous and rather indolent oblivion in
their quarter of the city. They are often to be seen sauntering up and
down the street by which the Charlesbridge