The Hartford herald. [volume] (Hartford, Ky.) 1875-1926, 1879-12-17
American Heather.

.uStO1l, anu dt every OnWdru step tue /
drops and bugles on her mantle shook,
and the hard ball trimming on herdress
ratified, and the beads around her throat |
and her hoop earrings struck |
the beads, adding to the clatter, andthe
dangling ornaments ON her bonnet |
struck like tinkling cymbals.
There was Missionary In the pulpit |
that day, a man Drowned with foreign
suns, who had come to tell the fashion,
able New York audience of the benight-
ed heather whom the Church of Christ
was trying to convert.
He told them of the Feejee Islanders
who arrayed themselves in fantastic
garments covered with curious orna-
ments and draped with fringes of beads
and balls. He described the rings they
wore pendant from their noses, and the
bracelets that encircled their arms and
ankles.
The audience listened attentively, and
their sanctimonious faces said, as plain
as words could say 1t: "From all such
folly, good Lord, deliver us!''
An old-fashioned fellow sitting under
the gallery, one Common Sense, tho
roughly unprecedented, and somewhat
unpopular, looked hard at Mrs. Living
stone Guyer, and taking into account
the fringes, beads, and ornaments on
her dress, the hoops pendent from her
ears, and the bracelets on her arms,
thought there was distinction without
a difference between this woman and a
Feejee Islander.
The Missionary told his audience Of
the Burmese women who colored their
faces to make them beautiful, and dis
colored their teeth by chewing betel-
nuts. He gave account also of the Afri-
cans who blackened their eyebrows with
anthony, and stained their finger nails
red.
The faces of the audience expressed
surprise at such unnatural practices; but
the old-fashioned fellow in the corner
fell to studying the face of belle pres
ent, whitened by some preparation of
chalk, and Redeemed by rouge, and he
regarded attentively the teeth Of a man
discolored by the use of tobacco. He
knew, moreover, there were complex
ions in that audience bleached by eating
arsenic, eyes frightened by the use of
belladOnna, and masses of hair changed
by some decOction from the natural tint
to fashionable hue, and he couldn't
for the life of him see why the heather
were worse i'm this respect than these
people i'm high state of civilization.
The Missionary informed his audience
that heather devotees tortured their
bodies by unnatural compressions and
painful attitudes, thinking to appease
the anger of offended deity.
The faces of the audience indicated
pity for such Ignorance; but Common
Sense glanced over To a man whose
boots were instruments of torture tn
him, and to woman whose head was
poised i'm an unnatural attitude, should
ers thrown distressingly high, and waist
compressed until her muscles, sinews,
diaphragm, heart, lungs, and liver failed
TO do the work allotted them by nature;
and, rejecting that this bodily contor-
ton was adopted to propitiate the god
dess Fashion, he wondered If the Mis-
siOnary might not return to foreign
lands with tales of American heather.
The Missionary told his audience of
heather mothers who threw their chill
dren into the Ganges and cast them be-
fore Juggernaut, offerings to their gods.
The audience shuddered convulsively
ut the monstrous tale, but Common
Sense had his eye fixed on u shivering
child standing within the cold shadows
cast by the church. Its neck and arms
were bare; and its little knees, blue with
the biting cold, knocked together pain
fully rs the child waited for the nurse
who held protracted discussion with n
boon companion. Common Sense rec
sgnized the child as the representative
of IA large class given up by their moth
ers to the absurdities of fashionable
dress and incOmpetency of servants,
until disease and premature death was
the result; and he wondered If heather
mothers in their sacrifices were more
culpable than American mothers in
their neglect.
The Missionary told his audience of
the divisions of caste. He informed
them that the higher orders despised in
ferior grades; and If person fell to an
inferior rank his old companions I'm the
former caste had right to subject him
to insult, and put upon him every In
dignity their scorn might conceive.
Great establishment was written ON the
faces Of an audience, but Common
Sense looked straight at a fashionable
woman who shrank from her poor
neighbor In the pew, and that very day
had refused to speak to a woman whose
social position had once been equal with
hers, but who, through reverses of for
tune, HAD sunk to lower station. He
thought, with such examples before him,
that the orders of caste i'm heathen So
ciety had a parallel i'm the social divis-
ions of American communities.
The Missionary told his audience of
the heather belief in Oracles and omens,
and their practice of consulting jugglers
n. in, "a ~
The audience smiled contemptuously at
their fOllyi hut Common Sense thought
of the multitudes who consult fOrtuAe-
tellers and clairvoyants In important
affairs, and saw before him men and
women who believed i'm signs and old
witches fables, and latterly had even
put faith In board called Planchette,
and he pronounced them not one whit
less heathenish than the nations in
foreign lands,
The Missionary Mortified his audience
by his account of heather parents who
sold their beautiful daughters into slav-
cry, and for a consideration doomed
them to life worse than death.
The audience wept over wickedness
like this; but Common Sense reInem-
bered a marriage ceremony in that
Christian Church, where the bride was
young and beautiful and the bridegroom
old and ugly. He remembered the
smiles of the brides parent NJ be gave
away the fair sirl 20 the oruel-visaged
foreigner, and the disgust ON the brides
face as she shrank away from the man
who claimed her as his wife. "Gave
her away" were the words the parent
Used; but they were not true. Sold her
away, he should have said; sold her into
slavery for money and position. That
parent sat within the house of God that
day, aud In his heart condemned the
heather bargain; but Common Sense,
with his clear-sighted vision, saw that
the Christian contrast was alike crimi-
nal.
The Missionary told his audience OF
the heather festivals, with their Offer
ings ef geld, fruits, aud flowers. and