WRINKLES. BY EVERT A. DUYCKINCK. getting,' and the like. It is a very common mode of salutation, one which we can hardly induce ourselves to believe, proceeds from downright malevolence, for we have more faith in men's hearts than their heads, and are, therefore, inclined to set it down as sheer imbecility. It arises from that awful poverty of the imagination which afflicts nine-tenths of the world who go about their kindnesses with the good intention and wretched execution of La Fontaine's jackass caressing his master. We have all heard the story of the wager recorded and won, in the celebrated annals of the Quizzing Club, of a stout gentleman in perfect health, who being met along the road by relays of the brotherhood, each ringing for him these Duncan-like kuells of sympathizing dolefulness, taking him down a peg at every vibration, at the end of his short journey found himself in the bed of the village inn, delivered over, body and soul, to the rural Esculapius-where Heaven preserve him. It is the most unmannerly of social abuses. Lord Chesterfield used to complain of the impertinent street gossips who took him by the button; but what is the loss of a button, or even a coat, to the loss of your liver, or your lungs, or your eyes, or your ears? A button is valuable only for what it protects. Of what use is it if you shrink your victim into a consumption, or expand him into a dropsy? START not, reader, we are not about to inflict upon your sympathies an essay on Old Age, or circumvent your patient attention by an artful current of sensibility conducting to a puff on cosmetics. We are emulous neither of the elegiacs of Young, who could croak you out, rival of the owl, a Night Thought on the monitory theme, nor of the mercenary eloquence of Gouraud. We have not even the desire to wave the softest of melancholy's funeral feathers borrowed from the hearse of Horace, most pardonable of poet preachers. Wrinkles? pah! what has a magazine devoted to the elegancies and refinements of life-to wit, mirth, the song, the story, the magazine of beauty, womanhood, girlhood, childhood, the parlor, the boudoir, to say nothing of a magazine which bears every month in its front, an exquisite plate of ladies and gentlemen of the smoothest of faces, corsage and cravats incapable of a break because impossible of motion, gloves far superior to any human flesh in outline, painted vests, tighter fits than Prince Vortigern's, and continuations on legs which cut the eye with the mathematical precision of pairs of compasses—what has a magazine to do with the subject? Wrinkles here? The thing is impossible! The French nation has never heard of such a thing. Such pitfalls and dangerous extinguishments of love, graves of beauty and desire, it would cover with enamel, or varnish with rouge. Are we to be less polite? No, we do not mean when we talk of wrinkles, the furrows of age, or the lightning traces of Lear's anger, in "a brow of youth," those foot-prints of crows, curiously traced on the dry, sandy margin of eyes which were once liquid lakes of Como and delight, nor those huge crooked thrusts, awkward gashes of the gauche 'fleshless monarch of the hour-glass and the scythe;" earthquake fissures of the human physiognomy, which the most skilful and carefully-elegant, and to supply equally well the want of nurtured planting of whiskers and moustache, but indifferently conceal--we mean nothing of the kind. We know our duty and the tenure of a fashionable magazine much better than that. 66 This by the way. It is quite time we should explain what we mean by a wrinkle. A wrinkle then is neither more nor less than a new cant word introduced into the fashionable vocabulary of that class of capricious expletives not to be found in Johnson or Richardson, where they are ungratefully omitted, though they do a far larger share of the work of the language than any part of speech therein recorded. It has of late dawned on the town, and bids fair to be quite as useful, quite as thought and the deficiencies of education and expression, with such exhausted terms as "immense," "odd,” “prodigious," "the macaroni," the "potato," and other economical inventions for the use of gentlemen and ladies afflicted with an uncomfortable paucity of ideas. We fully accord with the spirit of the age in sympathy with all inventions which abbreviate or extinguish human misery; and of all attitudes there is none perhaps which surpasses, in ecstasy of torture, that of an unexceptionably-attired, long-waisted, patent-wrinkles, there are the Bowling Green Fountain, leathered, short-caned gentlemen, or a lady comme il faut, bien coiffée, bien gantée, bien chaussée, the centre of a circle of reverential admirers actually at a loss to display the elegance of nature's pearly teeth, (not quite so white as Parmly's,) or send a single arrow from Cupid's delicately-arched bow for the want of a single thought in the quiver. For such occasions and emergencies cant words were invented, and the letheon itself is not a greater blessing to mankind. If the politer species of cant words were to be abolished, one-half the wit and wisdom of the world would disappear in a twinkling. Polite society would be dumb. Some new species of Abbe Sicard would be needed to recover that portion of the human race. How could the Club, for instance, get along without so compendious a phrase as the wrinkle? See what a convenient and ready explanation it offers for all the oddities and half the solemnities of the world! A particular mode of doing a thing for no particular end, is a wrinkle. A habit of your own, which no one else in the world has, is a wrinkle. The gentler sorts of humbugs are wrinkles. Serious illogical proceedings are wrinkles. Anomalies of dress, of equipage, of living, are wrinkles. There are cosmopolitan, national, municipal, local, and personal wrinkles. The conversion of the Sandwich Islanders, according to Herman Melville, is a magnificent wrinkle; with the discovery of a Northwest passage, free trade and peace societies; but some of these wrinkles this age of railroads may, peradventure, iron out. Mr. Polk's pious, patriotic, chivalric "conquest of a peace," unless he means a very large piece, is a national wrinkle. Whether from the rugged, warty, mountainous character of the soil, or what not, there are a great many wrinkles in New England. In the south a milder climate soothes these little eccentricities, and there are fewer wrinkles. The most considerable municipal wrinkle of which we have any recollection, was Mayor Harper's great feat of dumping Rockland icebergs into the Park fountain, and hanging tin cups on the posts, as purses of gold were hung about England on the highways, according to ancient historians, under the excellent administration of King Alfred. Chroniclers tell us that they remained untouched; we are not informed whether Mayor Harper's cold-water Benjamins returned their cups to the City Hall pantries, or whether they permanently sacked them. Of local city which is wrinkle enough for the whole island; but we have a few others of the architectural sort. A church of the Puritans, in a quizzical-looking miniature of Catholic St. Denis, (copying even the defect of an imperfect tower,) with stained glass, is a wrinkle which would turn old Dr. Cotton in his grave. So, too, is the design of a Gothic church tower as a monument to the plain, republican, New-World simplicity of George Washington. The Italian Opera House may probably be a wrinkle, and not unlikely the Italian palaces of the Fifth Avenue. Diddlecraft's liveries in every fold of those capacious and multitudinous woollen capes, are wrinkles. Dr. Collyer's impersonations of the Fine Arts, is a wrinkle which the Greek Slave is not, for it is much nearer nature than his living models. Of personal wrinkles, every person of your acquaintance has, at least, two or three. There are impersonal wrinkles also -as the whole class of gimcrack contrivances. A penknife with sixty-four blades, including a corkscrew, tooth-pick, and boot-hook, is a wrinkle. A red umbrella is a wrinkle. A Gibus hat is a wrinkle. It would be impossible to recount all the wrinkles of this nature. Equally innumerable are the literary and artistic wrinkles. Mr. Longfellow's hexameters are wrinkles, and that splendid concluding hexameter Lighting his pipe, that was filled with sweet Natchitoches tobacco. Mr. Halleck's admiration of monarchy, aristocracy, and war, is a wrinkle, and Mr. Cooper's hatred of editors; George Jones' love of Shakspeare is a wrinkle. Typee is a wrinkle, but it is as charming as a smile, and lovely as a dimple itself. Some of Mr. Page's "experiments" are wrinkles, but of that class which successive Old Mortalities and Walter Scotts will ever keep continually fresh. Are the ladies exempt from this little pet weakness? Not while Madame George Sand smokes his cigars, Mrs. A. preaches, Mrs. B. legislates, and Mrs. Z. subjugates her husband while she emancipates the sex. These, however, are trifles which it is very ungallant to allude to. As nature has given dear, adorable woman a perfect contour, roundness, harmony and grace, while man is seamy, rough and angular, so morally and intellectually there can be no comparison of the perfections of the two. It is now many years since I was first sent to a boarding-school. I went with a heavy heart, for I had a thousand prejudices against such establishments. I had been a willing listener to all the ordinary and extraordinary stories concerning them, which disaffected scholars could invent, for I did not wish to leave home; and they wrought me into such a state of feeling, that I anticipated a semi-martyrdom. No one else thought me in danger, and circumstances proved them to be right. The school to which I was sent was not a large or fashionable establishment, though held in high estimation by common-sense, practical parents. I now consider it well worthy their good opinion; but in the days of which I write, I was not prepared to form the most correct judgment on any point. Under the influence of strong prejudices, it is not wonderful that I entered on my new sphere of existence with very little disposition to be made comfortable and happy. It had never entered my thoughts that teachers and pupils could have any common interests. I regarded them as two distinct classes: the former as a race employed by parents to supply their own deficiencies in discipline, and to communicate a certain amount of book-knowledge, at prices stipulated in their circulars; the proper objects of dislike, and fair subjects for all kinds of tricks and impertinence. Of course I did not venture to state my opinions in such bold words as these, but I cherished them secretly, and they did not bid fair to make me a very studious or tractable scholar. I do not know to what mischief they might not have led, but for the blessed influence of one kind, good spirit,--dear Lillis Robinson,or Miss Robinson, in school parlance, for she was one of my teachers, though not many years older than most of her pupils. I shall never forget the day of our first meeting. She was absent when I arrived, so that nearly a week passed before I saw her. I heard her name mentioned as one whom I should love, but just then I neither wished to like nor to be liked by anything or anybody around me. Of course I was as wretched as I desired to be, for I really loved my home and dear, indulgent parents, and it would have been enough to bear up against that heart-sickness which always accompanies the first separation. In vain did Mr. and Mrs. Williams, the kind principals of the school, make every reasonable effort to comfort me, for I was steeled against them; and in vain did one and another companion venture a consoling word. I wept and sighed, and gave no replies; in short, behaved as disagreeably as possible. Of course every one was disgusted, and I was finally left to myself. There is a degree of home-sickness in which all kind persons sympathize, as the yearning of an affectionate and tender heart; but when it becomes apparent that one is obstinately determined to be miserable away from home, there are few natures forbearing enough to continue their pity. So I found it at last, and this was quite a new feature of the case for me. It is one thing to possess and repulse the kind feelings of others; and altogether a different affair, not to have any such regard felt as to furnish an opportunity for rejection. So I was left to mope alone, and then I cried with double violence, for I felt truly deserted. This softened me a little. I longed for something to love,-for some object I had ever loved, and with this feeling came such thoughts of home and my mother's tenderness, that I laid my head upon the desk at which I was sitting, and wept aloud. Then I felt a gentle pressure on my shoulder, and I knew that some one was sitting down beside me; and a voice was heard, so sweet and kind, that I looked up instinctively. Even now, through the mist of years, I seem to see the lovely face which was then bent pityingly over me, though it went up long ago to shine among the angels ;-yet I cannot describe it. Sometimes I think there could not have been anything very definite in its outline, or I should recal the shape of features, and be able to designate the style of beauty to which they belonged. That I cannot do. I can only say that it was very fair and delicate, and so mild and calm in its expression, that even my stubborn nature felt subdued. I hardly know what this new comforter said to me, but they were words which made me a better girl. I saw that she was dressed in black, and the thought ran through my mind that she had lost her mother, and would therefore know how to care for me, just parted from the dear invalid at home, From that hour I clung to this new companion, and I can truly say, that her teachings were of more value than all the lessons of the school. That was Lillis Robinson. She first taught me self-control, and the folly of my prejudices, and led me to a truer estimate of others. It is of no consequence that I should trace the progress of our friendship, for to this our intercourse finally grew. I was permitted to share her apartment, and that was the commencement of a new era in my school existence. So three years passed away, and my friends still left me under her kind guardianship. During all this time I had heard nothing of her former history, though there were circumstances which now and then excited the curiosity of our school-girl community. The position and relationships of all connected with the establishment were many times the subject of conversation; each one of us furnishing a quota of information concerning ourselves, and adding our respective stock of news concerning the teachers. It did not escape our observation, that we knew remarkably little about Miss Robinson. We were aware that she was an orphan, and that her parents had been persons of wealth and distinction. She, too, never seemed embarrassed in her circumstances; and indeed we had been plainly told that she possessed some property, quite enough to support her indepen dently, without any of the labor of teaching. Here was a mystery to our inexperience,-that any person, not absolutely forced to it, should wear out flesh and spirit in the effort to train such an ungrateful generation as ours. Then again, she was always dressed in black, and we could not account for this long adherence to an uncomfortable color. It could not be worn for any ordinary friend, and her parents had been dead many years. I insisted that she had lost a lover, for I thought her worthy the life-long homage of some noble character. All this made none of our proper business, to be sure, but that is not a point which school girls regard. Our curiosity seemed likely to remain unsatisfied, for none of us dared to question Mrs. Williams, the only person who could give us the desired information. She evidently knew all about the past, and seemed to love the fair girl the more for it. There was one point upon which we did once venture to question Miss Robinson: "Had she any brothers and sisters?" and such an expression of pain passed over her face, that we never alluded to the matter again. All this was very mysterious, to be sure. Sometimes, when away from my room, and talking with my companions, I thought I would certainly ask her to tell me about her early life: but the resolution to do so was always repressed, if not conquered, by her serene but ever-sorrowful look. I could not intrude upon feelings evidently too sacred for voluntary expression. So days and months glided on, and the time for my final return home drew near. Among other objects of interest, which I wished to visit before leaving the State, was the prison, situated in a neighboring town. It was therefore decided that all the boarding pupils, some fifteen in number, should be allowed to go there, and after examining the various workshops and other apartments open to the inspection of visitors, remain until evening worship. It was a bright June day when we started on this expedition. The sky bent lovingly over us,the way-side flowers sent up a smile,—and the air was sweet with the smell of the freshly-mown grass. We were a light-hearted group, and our spirits bounded with the life of all things round us. The thought of our gloomy destination seemed never to shade our gladness, for we went as we would go to any other exhibition. Like other careless ones, we needed a directing word, to make us feel that we were not on our way to see a cage of wild beasts,-but human beings, once children and youth like ourselves, and then perhaps as free from sin and vice. Lillis Robinson was with us, but in our gaiety we did not observe the more deeply-saddened look she wore that afternoon. Once or twice, I did note it sufficiently to rally her upon her quietness; but I saw that my non |