 was engaged
to wed Edith Bartlett. She, like myself, rode on the top of the coach. That is
to say, not to encumber ourselves further with an illustration which has, I
hope, served its purpose of giving the reader some general impression of how we
lived then, her family was wealthy. In that age, when money alone commanded all
that was agreeable and refined in life, it was enough for a woman to be rich to
have suitors; but Edith Bartlett was beautiful and graceful also.
    My lady readers, I am aware, will protest at this. »Handsome she might have
been,« I hear them saying, »but graceful never, in the costumes which were the
fashion at that period, when the head covering was a dizzy structure a foot
tall, and the almost incredible extension of the skirt behind by means of
artificial contrivances more thoroughly dehumanized the form than any former
device of dressmakers. Fancy any one graceful in such a costume!« The point is
certainly well taken, and I can only reply that while the ladies of the
twentieth century are lovely demonstrations of the effect of appropriate drapery
in accenting feminine graces, my recollection of their great-grandmothers
enables me to maintain that no deformity of costume can wholly disguise them.
    Our marriage only waited on the completion of the house which I was building
for our occupancy in one of the most desirable parts of the city, that is to
say, a part chiefly inhabited by the rich. For it must be understood that the
comparative desirability of different parts of Boston for residence depended
then, not on natural features, but on the character of the neighboring
population. Each class or nation lived by itself, in quarters of its own. A rich
man living among the poor, an educated man among the uneducated, was like one
living in isolation among a jealous and alien race. When the house had been
begun, its completion by the winter of 1886 had been expected. The spring of the
following year found it, however, yet incomplete, and my marriage still a thing
of the future. The cause of a delay calculated to be particularly exasperating
to an ardent lover was a series of strikes, that is to say, concerted refusals
to work on the part of the brick-layers, masons, carpenters, painters, plumbers,
and other trades concerned in house building. What the specific causes of these
strikes were I do not remember. Strikes had become so common at that period that
people had ceased to inquire into their particular grounds. In one department of
industry or another, they had been nearly
