Stowe_My_Wife_and_I.txt topic ['13', '324', '378', '393']
CHAPTER I
MY CHILD-WIFE
The Bible says it is not good for man to be alone.
This is a truth that has been borne in on my mind, with
peculiar force, from the earliest of my recollection. In
fact, when I was only seven years old I had selected my
wife, and asked the paternal consent.
You see, I was an unusually lonesome little fellow, be-
cause I belonged to the number of those unlucky waifs who
come into this mortal life imder circumstances when nobody
wants or expects them. My father was a poor country
minister in the mountains of Kew Hampshire with a salary
of six hundred dollars, with nine children. I was the
tenth. I was not expected; my immediate predecessor was
five years of age, and the gossips of the neighborhood had
already presented congratulations to my mother on having
"done up her work in the forenoon," and being ready to
sit down to afternoon leisure. Her well-worn baby clothes
were all given away, the cradle was peaceably consigned to
the garret, and my mother was now regarded as without
excuse if she did not preside at the weekly prayer-meeting,
the monthly Maternal Association, and the Missionary
meeting, and perform besides regular pastoral visitations
among the good wives of her parish.
No one, of course, ever thought of voting her any little
extra salary on account of these public duties which ab*
2 MY WIFE AND I
sorbed so much time and attention from her perplexing
domestic cares rendered still more severe and onerous by
my father's limited salary. My father's six hundred dol-
lars, however, was considered by the farmers of the vicinity
as being a princely income, which accoimted satisfactorily
for everything, and had he not been considered by them as
^^^ about the smartest man in the State," they could not
have gone up to such a figure. My mother was one of
those gentle, soft-spoken, quiet little women who, like oil,
permeate every crack and joint of life with smoothness.
With a noiseless step, an almost shadowy movement, her
hand and eye were everywhere. Her house was a miracle
of neatness and order, her children of all ages. and sizes
under her perfect control, and the accumulations of labor
of all descriptions which beset a great family where there
are no servants all melted away under her hands as if by
enchantment.
She had a divine magic too, that mother of mine; if it
be magic to commune daily with the supernatural She
had a little room all her own, where on a stand always lay
open the great family Bible, and when work pressed hard
and children were untoward, when sickness threatened,
when the skeins of life were all crossways and tangled, she
went quietly to that room, and kneeling over that Bible,
took hold of a warm, healing, invisible hand, that made
the crooked straight, and the rough places plain.
" Poor Mrs. Henderson another boy ! " said the gos-
sips on the day that I was bom. "What a shame! poor
woman. Well, I wish her joy ! ''
But she took me to a warm bosom and bade Grod bless
me! All that God sent to her was treasure. "Who
knows," she said cheerily to my father, "this may be our
brightest. "
" God bless him ! " said my father, kissing me and my
mother, and then he returned to an important treatise
MY CHILD-WIFE 8
which was to reconcile the decrees of Ood with the free
agency of man, and which the event of my entrance into
this world had interrupted for some hours. The sermon
was a perfect success I am told, and nohody that heard it
ever had a moment's further trouUe on that subject.
As to me, my outfit for this world was of the scantest
a few yellow flannel petticoats and a few slips run up
from some of my older sisters' cast-off white gowns were
deemed sufficient.
The first child in a family is its poem it is a sort of
nativity play, and we -bend, before the young stranger,
with gifts, ^'gold, frankincense, and myrrh.'' But the
tenth child in a poor family is prose^ and gets simply what
is due to comfort There are no superfluities, no fripper-
ies, no idealities about the tenth cradle.
As I grew up I foimd myself rather a solitary little fel-
low in a great house, full of the bustle and noise and con-
flicting claims of older brothers and sisters, who had got
the floor in the stage of life before me, and who were too
busy with their own wants, schemes, and plans, to regard
me. I was all very well so long as I kept within the lim-
its of babyhood. They said I was the handsomest baby
ever pertaining to the family establishment, and as long as
that quality and condition lasted I was made a pet of.
My sisters curled my golden locks and made me wonderful
little frocks, and took me about to show me. But when I
* grew bigger, and the golden locks were sheared off and
replaced by straight light hair, and I was inducted into
jacket and pantaloons, cut down by Miss Abia Ferkin from
my next brother's last year's suit, outgrown then I was
turned upon the world to shift for myself. Babyhood was
over, and manhood not begun I was to run the gauntlet
of boyhood.
My brothers and sisters were affectionate enough in their
waiy, but had not the least sentiment^ and, as I said bdf oorei
4 MY WIFE AND I
they had each one their own concerns to look after. My
eldest brother was in college, my next brother was fitting
for college in a neighboring academy, and used to walk ten
miles daily to his lessons and take his dinner with him.
One of my older sisters was married, the two next were
handsome lively girls, with a retinue of beaux, who of
course took up a deal of their time and thoughts. The
sister next before me was five years above me on the lists
of life, and of course looked down on me as a little boy
unworthy of her society. When her two or three chatter-
ing girl friends came to see her and they had their dolls
and their baby-houses to manage, I was always in the way.
They laughed at my awkwardness, criticised my nose, my
hair, and my ears to my face, with that feminine freedom
by which the gentler sex joy to put down the stronger one
when they have it at advantage. I used often to retire
from their society swelling with impotent wrath, at their
free comments. "I won't play with you," I would ex-
claim. "Nobody wants you," would be the rejoinder.
"We 've been wanting to be rid of you this good while."
But as I was a stout little fellow, my elders thought it
advisable to devolve on me any such tasks and errands as
interfered with their comfort. I was sent to the store
when the wind howled and the frost bit, and my brothers
and sisters preferred a warm corner. " He 's only a boy,
he can go, or he can do, or he can wait," was always the
award of my sisters.
My individual pursuits, and my own little stock of in-
terests, were of course of no account. I was required to
be in a perfectly free, disengaged state of mind, and ready
to drop everything at a moment's warning from any of
my half-dozen seniors. " Here, Hal, run down cellar and
get me a dozen apples," my brother would say, just as I
had half built a block house. "Harry, run upstairs and
get the book I left on the bed Harry, run out to the
MY CHILD-WIFE 5
barn and get the rake I left there Here, Harry, carry
this up garret Harry, run out to the tool shop and get
that" were sounds constantly occurring breaking up
my private cherished little enterprises of building cob
houses, making milldams and bridges, or loading carriages,
or driving horses. Where is the mature Christian who
could bear with patience the interruptions and crosses in
his daily schemes that beset a boy?
Then there were for me dire mortifications and bitter
disappointments. If any company came and the family
board was filled and the cake and preserves brought out,
and gay conversation made my heart bound with special
longings to be in at the fun, I heard them say, "No need
to set a plate for Harry he can just as well wait till
after." I can recollect many a serious deprivation of ma-
ture life that did not bring such bitterness of soul as that
sentence of exclusion. Then when my sister's admirer,
Sam Richards, was expected, and the best parlor fire
lighted, and the hearth swept, how I longed to sit up and
hear his funny stories, how I hid in dark corners, and lay
off in shadowy places, hoping to escape notice and so avoid
the activity of the domestic police. But no, "Mamma,
must n't Harry go to bed ? " was the busy outcry of my
sisters, desirous to have the deck cleared for action, and
superfluous members finally disposed of.
Take it for all in all I felt myself, though not want-
ing in the supply of any physical necessity, to be somehow,
as I said, a very lonesome little fellow in the world. In
all that busy, lively, gay, bustling household I had no
mate.
"I think we must send Harry to school," said my mo-
ther, gently, to my father, when I had vented this com-
plaint in her maternal bosom. "Poor little fellow, he is
an odd one! there isn't exactly any one in the house
for him to mate with ! "
6 MY WIFE AND I
So to school I was sent, with a clean checked apron,
drawn up tight in my neck, and a dinner basket, and a
brown towel on which I was to be instructed in the whole-
some practice of sewing. I went, trembling and blushing,
with many an apprehension of the big boys who had prom-
ised to thrash me when I came; but the very first day I
was made blessed in the vision of my little child-wife,
Susie Morril.
Such a pretty, neat little figure as she was! I saw her
first standing in the school-room door. Her cheeks and
neck were like wax; her eyes clear blue; and when she
smiled, two little dimples flitted in and out on her cheeks,
like those in a sunny brook. She was dressed in a pink
gingham frock, with a clean white apron fitted trimly about
her little round neck. She was her mother's only child,
and always daintily dressed.
"0 Susie dear," said my mother, who had me by the
hand, "I 've brought a little boy here to school, who will
be a mate for you."
How affably and graciously she received me the little
Eve all smiles and obligingness and encouragement for
the lumpish, awkward Adam. How she made me sit down
on a seat by her, and put her little white arm cosily over
my neck, as she laid the spelling-book on her knee, saying
" / read in Baker. Where do you read ? "
Friend, it was Webster's Spelling-Book that was their
text-book, and many of you will remember where " Baker "
is in that literary career. The column of words thus
headed was a milestone on the path of infant progress.
But my mother had been a diligent instructress at home,
and I an apt scholar, and my breast swelled as I told little
Susie that I had gone beyond Baker. I saw "respect
mingling with surprise " in her great violet eyes ; my soul
was enlarged my little frame dilated, as turning over to
the picture of the "old man who found a rude boy on one
MY CHILD-WIFE 7
of his trees stealing apples," I answered her that I had
read there !
"Why-ee/" said the little maiden; "only think, girls
he reads in readings ! "
I was set up and glorified in my own esteem; two or
three girls looked at me with evident consideration.
" Don't you want to sit on our side 1 " said Susie en-
gagingly. "I '11 ask Miss Bessie to let you, 'cause she said
the big boys always plague the little ones." And so, as
she was a smooth-tongued little favorite, she not only in-
troduced me to the teacher, but got me comfortably niched
beside her dainty self on the hard, backless seat, where I
sat swinging my heels, and looking for all the world like
a rough little short- tailed robin, just pushed out of the
nest, and surveying the world with round, anxious eyes.
The big boys quizzed me, made hideous faces at me from
behind their spelling-books, and great hulking Tom Halli-
day threw a spitball that lodged on the wall just over my
head, by way of showing his contempt for me; but I
looked at Susie, and took courage. I thought I never saw
anything so pretty as she was. I was never tired with
following the mazes of her golden curls. I thought how
dainty and nice and white her pink dress and white apron
were ; and she wore a pair of wonderful little red shoes.
Her tiny hands were so skillful and so busy ! She turned
the hem of my brown towel, and basted it for me so nicely,
and then she took out some delicate ruffling that was her
school work, and I admired her bright, fine needle and fine
thread, and the waxen little finger crowned with a little
brass thimble, as she sewed away with an industrious
steadiness. To me the brass was gold, and her hands were
pearl, and she was a little fairy princess ! yet every few
moments she turned her great blue eyes on me, and smiled
and nodded her little head knowingly, as much as to bid
me be of good cheer, and I felt a thrill go right to my
heart, that beat delightedly under the checked apron.
8 MY WIFE AND I
"Please, ma'am," said Susan glibly, "mayn't Harry
go out to play with the girls ? The big boys are so rough. "
And Miss Bessie smiled, and said I might; and I was
a blessed little boy from that moment. In the first recess
Susie instructed me in playing "Tag," and "Oats, peas,
beans, and barley, 0," and in "Threading the needle," and
playing "Open the gates as high as the sky, to let King
George and his court pass by " in all which she was a
proficient, and where I needed a great deal of teaching and
encouraging.
But when it c^me to more athletic feats, I could distin-
guish myself. I dared jump oif from a higher fence than
she could, and covered myself with glory by climbing to
the top of a five-railed gate, and jumping boldly down; and
moreover, when a cow appeared on the green before the
school-house door, I marched up to her with a stick and
ordered her off, with a manly stride and a determined
voice, and chased her with the utmost vigor quite out of
eight. These proceedings seemed to inspire Susie with a
certain respect and confidence. I could read in "readings,"
jump off from high fences, and wasn't afraid of cows!
These were manly accomplishments!
The school-house was a long distance from my father's,
and I used to bring my dinner. Susie brought hers also,
and many a delightful picnic have we had together. We
made ourselves a house under a great button-ball tree, at
whose foot the grass was short and green. Our house was
neither more nor less than a square, marked out on the
green turf by stones taken from the wall. I glorified my-
self in my own eyes and in Susie's, by being able to lift
stones twice as heavy as she could, and a big flat one,
which nearly broke my back, was deposited in the centre
of the square, as our table. We used a clean pocket-hand-
kerchief for a table-cloth ; and Susie was wont to set out
our meals with great order, making plates and dishes out
MY CHILD-WIFE 9
of the button-ball leaves. Under her direction also, I
fitted up our house with a pantry, and a small room where
we used to play wash dishes, and set away what was left
of our meals. The pantry was a stone cupboard, where
we kept chestnuts and apples, and what remained of our
cookies and gingerbread. Susie was fond of ornamenta-
tion, and stuck bouquets of golden-rod and aster around in
our best room, and there we received company, and had
select society come to see us. Susie brought her doll to
dwell in this establishment, and I made her a bedroom and
a little bed of milkweed-silk to lie on. We put her to bed
and tucked her up when we went into school not with-
out apprehension that those savages, the big boys, might
visit our Eden with devastation. But the girls' recess
came first, and we could venture to leave her there taking
a nap till our play-time came; and when the girls went in
Susie rolled her nursling in a napkin and took her safely
into school, and laid her away in a corner of her desk,
while the dreadful big boys were having their yelling war-
whoop and carnival outside.
"How nice it is to have Harry gone all day to school,"
I heard one of my sisters saying to the other. " He used
to be so in the way, meddling and getting into everything. "
"And listening to everything one says," said the other.
"Children have such horridly quick ears. Harry always
listens to what we talk about."
" I think he is happier now, poor little fellow, " said my
mother. "He has somebody now to play with." This
was the truth of the matter.
On Saturday afternoons, I used to beg of my mother to
let me go and see Susie ; and my sisters, nothing loath, used
to brush my hair and put on me a stiff, clean, checked
apron, and send me trotting off, the happiest of young lov-
ers. How bright and fair life seemed to me those Satur-
day afternoons, when the sun, through the picket fences,
10 MY WIFE AND I
made golden-green lines on the turf and the trees waved
and whispered, and I gathered handfuls of golden-rod and
asters to ornament our house, under the button-wood tree!
Then we used to play in the barn together. We hunted
for hens' eggs, and I dived under the barn to dark places
where she dared not go ; and climbed up to high places over
the hay-mow, where she trembled to behold me bringing
stores of eggs, which she received in her clean white apron.
This daintiness of outfit excited my constant admiration.
I wore stiff, heavy jackets and checked aprons, and was
constantly, so my sisters said, wearing holes through my
knees and elbows for them to patch ; but little Susie always
appeared to me fresh and fine and untumbled; she never
dirtied her hands or soiled her dress. Like a true little
woman, she seemed to have nerves through all her clothes
that kept them in order. This nicety of person inspired
me with a secret, wondering reverence. How could she
always be so clean, so trim, and every way so pretty, I
wondered? Her golden curls always seemed fresh from
the brush, and even when she climbed and ran, and went
with me into the barn-yard, or through the swamp and into
all sorts of compromising places, she somehow picked her
way out bright and unsoiled.
But though I admired her ceaselessly for this, she was
no less in admiration of my daring strength and prowess.
I felt myself a perfect Paladin in her defense. I remem-
ber that the chip-yard which we used to cross, on our way
to the barn, was tyrannized over by a most loud-mouthed
and arrogant old turkey-cock, that used to strut and swell
and gobble and chitter greatly to her terror. She told me
of different times when she had tried to cross the yard
alone, how he had jumped upon her and flapped his wings,
and thrown her down, to her great distress and horror.
The first time he tried the game on me, I marched up to
him, and, by a dexterous pass, seized his red neck in my
MY CHILD-WIFE 11
hand, and, confining his wings down with my arm, walked
him ingloriously out of the yard.
How triumphant Susie was, and how I swelled and ex-
ulted to her, telling her what I would do to protect her
under every supposable variety of circumstances! Susie
had confessed to me of being dreadfully afraid of "bears,"
and I took this occasion to tell her what I would do if a
bear should actually attack her. I assured her that I
would get father's gun and shoot him without mercy
and she listened and believed. I also dilated on what I
would do if robbers should get into the house; I would, I
informed her, immediately get up and pour shovelfuls of
hot coal down their backs and wouldn't they have to
run? What comfort and security this view of matters
gave us both ! What bears and robbers were, we had no
very precise idea, but it was a comfort to think how strong
and adequate to meet them in any event I was.
Sometimes, of a Saturday afternoon, Susie was permitted
to come and play with me. I always went after her, and
solicited the favor humbly at the hands of her mother, who,
after many washings and dressings and cautions as to her
clothes, delivered her up to me, with the condition that
she was to start for home when the sun was half an hour
high. Susie was very conscientious in watching, but for
my part I never agreed with her. I was always sure that
the sun was an hour high, when she set her little face
dutifully homeward. My sisters used to pet her greatly
during these visits. They delighted to twine her curls
over their fingers, and try the eifects of different articles of
costume on her fair complexion. They would ask her,
laughing, would she be my little wife, to which she always
fioiswered with a grave affirmative.
Yes, she was to be my wife; it was all settled between
us. But when ? I did n't see why we must wait till we
grew up. She was lonesome when I was gone, and I was
12 MY WIFE AND I
lonesome when she was gone. Why not marry her now,
and take her home to live with me ? I asked her and she
said she was willing, but mamma never would spare her.
I said I would get my mamma to ask her, and I knew she
could n^t refuse, because my papa was the minister.
I turned the matter over and over in my mind, and
thought some time when I could find my mother alone, I
would introduce the subject. So one evening, as I sat on
my little stool at my mother's knees, I thought I would
open the subject, and began:
"Mamma, why do people object to early marriages?^'
" Early marriages ? " said my mother, stopping her knit-
ting, looking at me, while a smile flashed over her thin
cheeks: "what 's the child thinking of ? ''
"I mean, why can't Susie and I be married now? I
want her here. I 'm lonesome without her. Nobody
wants to play with me in this house, and if she were here
we should be together all the time."
My father woke up from his meditation on his next
Sunday's sermon, and looked at my mother, smiling. A
gentle laugh rippled her bosom.
"Why, dear," she said, "don't you know your father is
a poor man, and has hard work to support his children
now? He could n't afford to keep another little girl."
I thought the matter over, sorrowfully. Here was the
pecuniary difficulty, that puts off so many desiring lovers,
meeting me on the very threshold of life.
"Mother," I said, after a period of mournful considera-
tion, "I wouldn't eat but just half as much as I do now,
and I'd try not to wear out my clothes, and make 'em last
longer. "
My mother had very bright eyes, and there was a min-
gled flash of tears and laughter in them, as when the sun
winks through raindrops. She lifted me gently into her
lap and drew my head down on her bosom.
MY CHILD-WIFE 18
"Some day, when my little son grows to be a man, I
hope God will give him a wife he loves dearly. * Houses
and lands are from the fathers; but a good wife is of the
Lord,* the Bible says."
''That 's true, dear," said my father, looking at her ten-
derly; "nobody knows that better than I do."
My mother rocked gently back and forward with me in
the evening shadows, and talked with me and soothed me,
and told me stories how one day I should grow to be a
good man a minister, like my father, she hoped and
have a dear little house of my own.
"And wiU Susie be in it?"
"Let *s hope so," said my mother. "Who knows? "
"But, mother, aren't you sure? I want you to say it
will be certainly."
"My little one, only our dear Father could tell us that,"
said my mother. "But now you must try and learn fast,
and become a good strong man, so that you can take care
of a little wife."
CHAPTER II
OUR CHILD-EDEN
Mt mother's talk aroused all the enthusiasm of mj
nature. Here was a motive, to be sure. I went to bed
and dreamed of it. I thought over all possible ways of
growing big and strong rapidly I had heard the stories of
Samson from the Bible. How did he grow so strong?
He was probably once a little boy like me. '' Did he go
for the cows, I wonder," thought I, "and let down yery
big bars when his hands were little, and learn to ride the
old horse bare-back, when his legs were very short t " All
these things I was emulous to do; and I resolved to lift
very heavy pails full of water, and very many of them,
and to climb into the mow, and throw down great armfuls
of hay, and in every possible way to grow big and strong.
I remember the next day after my talk with my mother
was Saturday, and I had leave to go up and spend it with
Susie.
There was a meadow just back of her mother's house,
which we used to call the mowing lot. It was white with
daisies, yellow with buttercups, with some moderate share
of timothy and herds-grass intermixed. But what was
specially interesting to us was, that, down low at the roots
of the grass, and here and there in moist, rich spots, grew
wild strawberries, large and juicy, rising on nice high
stalks, with three or four on a cluster. What joy there
was in the possession of a whole sunny Saturday afternoon
to be spent with Susie in this meadow. To me the amount
of happiness in the survey was greatly in advance of what
OUR CHILD-EDEN 15
I now have in the view of a three weeks' summer excur-
sion.
When, after multiplied cautions and directions, and care-
ful adjustment of Susie's clothing, on the part of her
mother, Susie was fairly delivered up to me; when we had
turned our backs on the house and got beyond call, then
our bliss was complete. How carefully and patronizingly
I helped her up the loose, mossy, stone wall, all hedged
with a wilderness of golden-rod, ferns, raspberry bushes,
and asters ! Down we went through this tangled thicket,
into such a secure world of joy, where the daisied meadow
received us to her motherly bosom, and we were sure no-
body could see us.
We could sit down and look upward, and see daisies and
grasses nodding and bobbing over our heads, hiding us as
completely as two young grass birds ; and it was such fun
to think that nobody could find out where we were ! Two
bobolinks, who had a nest somewhere in that lot, used to
mount guard in an old apple-tree, and sit on tall, bending
twigs, and say, ** Chack I chack ! chack ! " and flutter their
Uack and white wings up and down, and burst out into
most elaborate and complicated babbles of melody. These
were our only associates and witnesses. We thought that
they knew us, and were glad to see us there, and would n't
tell anybody where we were for the world. There was an
exquisite pleasure to us in this sense of utter isolation of
being hid with each other where nobody could find us.
We had worlds of nice secrets peculiar to ourselves.
Nobody but ourselves knew where the " thick spots '' were,
where the ripe, scarlet strawberries grew; the big boys
never suspected them, we said to one another, nor the big
girls; it was our own secret, which we kept between our
own little selves. How we searched, and picked, and
chatted, and oh'd and ah'd to each other, as we found
wonderful places, where the strawberries passed all belief!
16 MY WIFE AND I
But profoundest of all our wonderful secrets were our
discoveries in the region of animal life. We found, in a
tuft of grass overshadowed by wild roses, a grass bird's
nest. In vain did the cunning mother creep yards from
the cherished spot, and then suddenly fly up in the wrong
place; we were not to be deceived. Our busy hands
parted the lace curtains of fern, and, with whispers of
astonishment, we counted the little speckled, blue-green
eggs. How round and fine and exquisite, past all gems
polished by art, they seemed; and what a mystery was the
little curious smooth-lined nest in which we found them !
We talked to the birds encouragingly. "Dear little birds, '*
we said, "don't be afraid; nobody but we shall know it;"
and then we said to each other, " Tom Halliday never shall
find this out, nor Jim Fellows." They would carry off
the eggs and tear up the nest; and our hearts swelled with
such a responsibility for the tender secret, that it was all
we could do that week to avoid telling it to everybody we
met. We informed all the children at school that we knew
something that they did n't something that we n&uer
should tell! something so wonderful! something that
it would be wicked to tell of for mother said so; for be
it observed that, like good children, we had taken our
respective mothers into confidence, and received the strict-
est and most conscientious charges as to our duty to keep
the birds' secret.
In that enchanted meadow of ours grew tall, yellow lilies,
glowing as the sunset, hanging down their bells, six or
seven in number, from high, graceful stalks, like bell
towers of fairy land. They were over our heads some-
times, as they rose from the grass and daisies, and we
looked up into their golden hearts spotted with black, with
a secret, wondering joy.
"Oh, don't pick them, they look too pretty," said Susie
to me once when I stretched up my hand to gather one of
OUR CHILD-EDEN 17
these. " Let 's leave them to be here when we come again I
I like to see them wave.''
And so we left the tallest of them; but I was not for-
bidden to gather handfuls of the less wonderful specimens
that grew only one or two on a stalk. Our bouquets of
flowers increased with our strawberries.
Through the middle of this meadow chattered a little
brook, gurgling and tinkling over many-colored pebbles,
and here and there collecting itself into a miniature water-
fall, as it pitched over a broken bit of rock. For our
height and size, the waterfalls of this little brook were
equal to those of Trenton, or any of the medium cascades
that draw the fashionable crowd of grown-up people; and
what was the best of it was, it was our brook, and our
waterfall. We found them, and we verily believed nobody
else but ourselves knew of them.
By this waterfall, as I called it, which was certainly a
foot and a half high, we sat and arranged our strawberries
when our baskets were full, and I talked with Susie about
what my mother had told me.
I can see her now, the little crumb of womanhood, as
she sat, gayly laughing at me. ^^ She didn't care a bit,"
she said. -She had just as lief wait till I grew to be a
man. Why, we could go to school together, and have
Saturday afternoons together. " Don't you mind it, Hazzy
Dazzy," she said, coming close up to me, and putting her
little arms coaxingly round my neck; "we love each other,
and it 's ever so nice now."
I wonder what the reason is that it is one of the first
movements of affectionate feeling to change the name of
the loved one. Give a baby a name, ever so short and
ever so musical, where is the mother that does not twist it
into some other pet name between herself and her child ?
So Susie, when she was very loving, called me Hazzy, and
sometimes would play on my name, cuid call me Hazzy
18 MY WIFE AND I
Dazzy, and sometimes Dazzy, and we laughed at this be-
cause it was between us; and we amused ourselves with
thinking how surprised people would be to hear her say
Dazzy, and how they would wonder who she meant. In
like manner, I used to call her Daisy when we were by
ourselves, because she seemed to me so neat and trim and
pure, and wore a little flat hat on Sundays just like a daisy.
"T '11 tell you, Daisy," said I, "just what I 'm going to
do I 'm going to grow strong as Samson did."
" Oh, but how can you 1 " she suggested doubtfully.
"Oh, I'm going to run and jump and climb, and carry
ever so much water for mother, and I 'm to ride on horse-
back and go to mill, and go all round on errands, and so I
shall get to be a man fast, and when I get to be a man I '11
build a house all on purpose for you and me I'll build
it all myself; it shall have a parlor and a dining-room and
kitchen, and bed- room, and well-room, and chambers "
"And nice closets to put things in," suggested the little
woman.
"Certainly, ever so many just where you want them,
there I'll put them," said I, with surpassing liberality.
"And then, when we live together, I'll take care of you
I'll keep off all the lions and bears and panthers. If
a bear should come at yo?/-, Daisy, I should tear him right
in two, just as Samson did."
At this vivid picture, Daisy nestled close to my shoulder,
and her eyes grew large and reflective. "We shouldn't
leave poor mother alone," said she.
" Oh, no ; she shall come and live with us, " said I, witli
an exalted generosity. " I will make her a nice chamber
on purpose, and my mother shall come, too."
"But she can't leave your father, you know."
"Oh, father shall come, too when he gets old and
can't preach any more. I shall take care of them all."
And my little Daisy looked at me with eyes of approving
OUR CHILD-EDEN 19
eredulity, and said I was a brave boy ; and the bobolinks chit-
tered and chattered applause as they sang and skirmished
and whirled up over the meadow grasses; and by and by,
when the sun fell low, smd looked like a great golden ball,
with our hands full of lilies, and our baskets full of straw-
berries, we climbed over the old wall, and toddled home.
After that, I remember many gay and joyous passages in
that happiest summer of my life. How, when autumn
came, we roved through the woods together, and gathered
such stores of glossy brown chestnuts. What joy it was
to us to scuff through the painted fallen leaves and send
them flying like showers of jewels before us I How I
reconnoitred and marked available chestnut-trees, and how
I gloried in being able to climb like a cat, and get astride
high limbs and shake and beat them, and hear the glossy
brown nuts fall with a rich, heavy thud below, while Susie
was busily picking up at the foot of the tree. How she
did flatter me with my success and prowess I Tom Halli-
day might be a bigger boy, but he could never go up a tree
as I could; and as for that great clumsy Jim Fellows, she
laughed to think what a figure he would make, going out
on the end of the small limbs, which would be sure to
break and send him bundling down. The picture which
Susie drew of the awkwardness of the big boys often made
us laugh till the tears rolled down our cheeks. To this
day I observe it as a weakness of my sex that we all take
it in extremely good part when the pretty girl of our heart
laughs at other fellows in a snug, quiet way, just between
one's dear self and herself alone. We encourage our own
dear little cat to scratch and claw the sacred memories of
Jim or Tom, and think that she does it in an extremely
cunning and diverting way it being understood between
us that there is no malice in it that *^ Jim and Tom are
nice fellows enough, you know only that somebody else
is so superior to them," etc.
20 MY WIFE AND I
Susie and I considered ourselves as an extremely fore-
handed, well-to-do partnership, in the matter of gathering
in our autumn stores. No pair of chipmunks in the neigh-
borhood conducted business with more ability. We had
a famous cellar that I dug and stoned, where we stored
away our spoils. We had chestnuts and walnuts and but-
ternuts, as we said, to last us all winter, and many an ear-
nest consultation and many a busy hour did the gathering
and arranging of these spoils cost us.
Then, oh, the golden times we had when father's barrels
of new cider came home from the press ! How I cut and
gathered and selected bunches of choice straws, which I
took to school and showed to Susie, surreptitiously, at in-
tervals, during school exercises, that she might see what a
provision of bliss I was making for Saturday afternoons.
How Susie was sent to visit us on these occasions, in leather
shoes and checked apron, so that we might go in the cellar ;
and how, mounted up on logs on either side of a barrel of
cider, we plunged our straws through the foamy mass at
the bung-hole, and drew out long draughts of sweet cider!
I was sure to get myself dirty in my zeal, which she never
did; and then she would laugh at me and patronize me,
and wipe me up in a motherly sort of way. "How do
you always get so dirty, Harry 1 " she would say, in a truly
maternal tone of reproof. "How c?o you keep so clean?"
I would say, in wonder; and she would laugh, and call me
her dear, dirty boy. She would often laugh at me, the
little elf, and make herself distractingly merry at my ex-
pense, but the moment she saw that the blood was getting
too high in my cheeks she would stroke me down with
praises, as became a wise young daughter of Eve.
Besides all this, she had her little airs of moral superior-
ity, and used occasionally to lecture me in the nicest man-
ner. Being an only darling, she herself was brought up
in the strictest ways in which little feet could go; and the
OUR CHILD-EDEN 21
nicety of her conscience was as unsullied as that of her
dress. I was hot-tempered and heady, and under stress of
great provocation would come as near swearing as a minis-
ter's son could possibly do. When the big boys ravaged
our house under the tree, or threw sticks at us, I used to
stretch every permitted limit, and scream, " Darn you I "
and " Confound you ! " with a vigor and emphasis that
made it almost equal to something a good deal stronger.
On such occasions Susie would listen pale and frightened,
and, when reason came back to me, gravely lecture me,
and bring me into the paths of virtue. She used to re-
hearse to me the teachings of her mother about all manner
of good things. I have her image now in my mind, look-
ing so crisp and composed and neat in her sobriety, repeat-
ing, for my edification, the hymn which contained the good
child's ideal in those days :
" Oh, that it were my chief delight
To do the things I ought,
Then let me try with all my might
To mind what I am taught.
"Whene'er I *m told, I *11 freely bring
Whatever I have got,
And never touch a pretty thing,
When mother tells me not.
** If she permits me, I may tell
About my little toys.
But if she 's busy or unwell,
I must not make a noise.*'
I can hear now the delicious lisp of my little saint, and
see the gracious gravity of her manner. To my mind, she
was unaccountably well established in the ways of virtue,
and I listened to her little lectures with a secret reverence.
Susie was especially careful in the observation of Sun-
day, and as that is a point where children are apt to be
particularly weak, she would exhort me to rigorous exacti-
tude.
22 MY WIFE AND I
I kept it, first, by thinking that I should see her at
church, and by growing very precise about my Sunday
clothes, whereat my sisters winked at each other and
laughed slyly. Then at church we sat in great square
pews adjoining to each other. It was my pleasure to peep
through the slats at Susie. She was wonderful to behold
then, all in white, with a profusion of blue ribbons and her
little flat hat over her curls and a pair of dainty blue
shoes peeping out from her dress. She informed me that
little girls never must think about their clothes in meeting,
and so I supposed she was trying to be entirely absorbed
from earthly vanities, unconscious of the fixed and earnest
stare with which I followed every movement.
Human nature is but partially sanctified, however, in
little saints as well as grown-up ones, and I noticed that
occasionally, probably by accident, the great blue eyes met
mine, and a smile, almost amounting to a sinful giggle,
was with difiiculty choked down. She was, however, a
most conscientious little puss and recovered herself in a
moment, and looked gravely upward at the minister, not
one word of whose sermon could she by any possibility un-
derstand, severely devoting herself to her religious duties,
till exhausted nature gave way. The little lids would close
over the eyes like blue pimpernel before a shower, the
head would drop and nod, till finally the mother would
dispense the little Christian from further labors, by laying
her head on her lap and drawing her feet up comfortably
upon the seat, to sleep out to the end of the sermon.
When winter came on I beset my older brother to make
me a sled. Sleds, such as every boy in Boston or New
York now rejoices in, were blessings in our parts unknown;
our sled was of rough, domestic manufacture.
My brother, laughing, asked if my sled was intended to
draw Susie on, smd on my earnest response in the affirma-
tive he amused himself with painting it in colors, red and
OUR CHILD-EDEN 23
blue, most glorious to behold. My soul was magnified
within me when I first started with this stylish establish-
ment to wait on Susie. What young fellow does not exult
in a smart team when he has a girl whom he wants to daz-
zle ? Great was my joy and pride when I first stopped at
Susie's and told her to hurry on her things, for I had come
to draw her to school !
What a pretty picture she made in her little blue knit
hood and mittens, her bright curls flying and cheeks glow-
ing with the keen winter air ! There was a long hill on
the way to school, and seated on the sled behind her, I
careered gloriously down with exultation in my breast,
while a stream of laughter floated on the breeze behind us.
That was a winter of much coasting down hill, of red
cheeks and red noses, of cold toes, which we never minded,
and of abundant jollity. Susie, under her mother's careful
showing, knit me a pair of red mittens, warming to the
heart and delightful to the eyes; and I piled up wood and
carried water for mother, and by vigorous economy earned
money enough to buy Susie a great candy heart as big as
my two hands, that had the picture of two doves tied to-
gether by a blue ribbon on one side, and on the other two
very red hearts skewered together by an arrow.
No work of art ever gave greater and more unmingled
delight. Susie gave it a prominent place in her baby-
house, and though it was undeniably sweet, as certain
little nibbling trials on its edges had proved, yet the artis-
tic sense was stronger than the palate, and the candy heart
was kept to be looked at and rejoiced in.
Susie's mother was an intimate and confidential friend
of my mother, and a most docile and confiding sheep of
my father's flock. She regarded her minister's family, and
all that belonged to it, as something set apart and sacred.
My mother had imparted to her the little joke of my matri-
monial wishes, and the two matrons had laughed over it
24 MY WIFE AND I
together, and then sighed, and said, "Ah! well, stranger
things have happened." Susie's mother told how she used
to know her husband when he was a little boy, and what
if it should be ! and then they strayed on to the general
truth that this was a world of uncertainty, and we never
can tell what a day may bring forth.
Our little idyl, too, was rather encouraged by my bro-
thers and sisters, who made a pet and plaything of Susie,
and diverted themselves by the gravity and honesty with
which we devoted ourselves to each other. Oh ! dear igno-
rant days sweet little child-Eden why could it not
last ? But it could not. It was fleeting as the bobolink's
song, as the spotted yellow lilies, as the grass and daisies.
My little Daisy was too dear to the angels to be spared to
grow up in our coarse world.
The winter passed and spring came, and Susie and I
rejoiced in the first bluebird, and found blue and white
violets together, and went to school together, till the heats
of summer came on. Then a sad epidemic began to linger
around in our mountains, and to be heard of in neighbor-
ing villages, and my poor Daisy was scorched by its breath.
I remember well our last afternoon together in the meadow,
where, the year before, we had gathered strawberries. We
.went down into it in high spirits ; the strawberries werp
abundant, and we chatted and picked together gayly, till
Daisy began to complain that her head ached and her throat
was sore. I set her down by the brook, and wet her curls
with the water, and told her to rest there, and let me pick
for her. But pretty soon she called me. She was crying
with pain. "0 Hazzy, dear, I must go home," she said.
"Take me to mother." I hurried to help her, for she
cried and moaned so that I was frightened. I began to
cry, too, and we came up the steps of her mother's house
sobbing together.
When her mother came out the little one suppressed hei
OUR CHILD-EDEN 25
tears and distress for a moment, smd turning, threw her
arms around my neck and kissed me. "Don't cry any
more, Hazzy,'' she said; "we '11 see each other again."
Her mother took her up in her arms and carried her in,
and I never saw my little baby- wife again on this earth!
Not where the daisies and buttercups grew ; nor where the
golden lilies shook their bells, and the bobolinks trilled;
not in the school-room, with its many child- voices ; not in
the old square pew in church -^ never, never more that
trim little maiden form, those violet-blue eyes, those golden
curls of hair, were to be seen on earth!
My Daisy's last kisses, with the fever throbbing in her
veins, very nearly took me with her. From that time I
have only indistinct remembrances of going home crying,
of turning with a strange loathing from my supper, of
creeping up and getting into bed, shivering and burning,
with a thumping and beating pain in my head. The next
morning the family doctor pronounced me a case of the
epidemic (scarlet fever) which he said was all about among
children in the neighborhood.
I have dim, hot, hazy recollections of burning, thirsty,
headachy days, when I longed for cold water, and could
not get a drop, according to the good old rules of medical
practice in those times. I dimly observed different people
sitting up with me every night, and putting different medi-
cines in my unresisting mouth; and day crept slowly after
day, and I lay idly watching the rays of sunlight and flut-
ter of leaves on the opposite wall.
One afternoon, I remember, as I lay thus listless, I
heard the village bell strike slowly six times. The
sound wavered and trembled with long and solemn inter-
vals of shivering vibration between. It was the numbering
of my Daisy's little years on earth, the announcement
that she had gone to the land where time is no more mea-
sured by day and night, for there shall be no night there.
26 MY WIFE AND I
When I was well again I remember my mother told me
that my little Daisy was in heaven, and I heard it with a
dull, cold chill about my heart, and wondered that I could
not cry. I look back now into my little heart as it was
then, and remember the paroxysms of silent pain I used
to have at times, deep within, while yet I seemed to be
like any other boy.
I heard my sisters one day discussing whether I cared
much for Daisy's death.
"He donH seem to, much," said one.
" Oh, children are little animals, they forget what 's out
of sight," said another.
But I did not forget, I could not bear to go to the
meadow where we gathered strawberries, to the chestnut-
trees where we had gathered nuts, and oftentimes, sud-
denly, in work or play, that smothering sense of a past,
forever gone, came over me like a physical sickness.
When children grow up among older people and are
pushed and jostled, and set aside in the more engrossing
interests of their elders, there is an almost incredible
amount of timidity and dumbness of nature, with regard to
the expression of inward feeling, and yet, often at this
time the instinctive sense of pleasure and pain is fearfully
acute. But the child has imperfectly learned language.
His stock of words, as yet, consists only in names and
attributes of outward and physical objects, and he has no
phraseology with which to embody a mere emotional expe-
rience.
What I felt when I thought of my little playfellow was
a dizzying, choking rush of bitter pain and anguish. Chil-
dren can feel as acutely as men and women, but even in
mature life experience has no gift of expression.
My mother alone, with the divining power of mothers,
kept an eye on me. "Who knows," she said to my father,
" but this death may be a heavenly call to him. "
OUR CHILD-EDEN 27
She sat down gently by my bed one night and talked
with me of heaven, smd the brightness and beauty there,
and told me that little Susie was now a fair white angel.
I remember shaking with a tempest of sobs.
"But I want her Aere," I said. "I want to see her."
My mother went over all the explanations in the pre-
mises, all that can ever be said in such cases, but I only
sobbed the more.
" / can't see her ! mother, mother ! "
That night I sobbed myself to sleep and dreamed a
blessed dream.
It seemed to me that I was again in our meadow, and
that it was fairer than ever before; the sun shone gayly,
the sky was blue, and our great, golden lily ^ocks seemed
mysteriously bright and fair, but I was wandering lonesome
and solitary. Then suddenly my little Daisy came running
to meet me in her pink dress and white apron, with her
golden curls hanging down her neck. " Daisy, Daisy ! "
said I, running up to her. "Are you alive? they told
me that you were dead."
"No, Hazzy, dear, I am not dead, never you believe
that," she said, and I felt the clasp of her little arms round
my neck. " Did n't I tell you we 'd see each other again ? "
"But they told me you were dead," I said in wonder
and I thought I held her off and looked at her, she
laughed gently at me as she often used to, but her lovely
eyes had a mysterious power that seemed to thrill all
through me.
"I am not dead, dear Hazzy," she said. "We never
die where I am I shall love you always, " and with that
my dream wavered and grew misty as when clear water
breaks an image into a thousand glassy rings and fragments.
I thought I heard lovely music, and felt soft, clasping
arms, and I awoke with a sense of being loved and pitied,
and comforted.
28 MY WIFE AND I
I cannot describe the vivid, penetrating sense of reality
which this dream left behind it. It seemed to warm my
whole life, and to give back to my poor little heart some-
thing that had been rudely torn away from it. Perhaps
there is no reader that has not had experiences of the won-
derful power which a dream often exercises over the wak-
ing hours for weeks after and it will not appear incredi-
ble that after that, instead of shunning the meadow where
we used to play, it was my delight to wander there alone,
to gather the strawberries tend the birds' nests, and lie
down on my back in the grass and look up into the blue
sky through an overarching roof of daisies, with a strange
sort of feeling of society, as if my little Daisy were with
me.
And is it not perhaps so? Eight alongside of this
troublous life, that is seen and temporal, may lie the green
pastures and the still waters of the unseen and eternal, and
they who know us better than we know them can at any
time step across that little rill that we call Death, to min-
ister to our comfort.
For what are these child-angels made, that are sent
down to this world to bring so much love and rapture, and
go from us in such bitterness and mourning 1 If we be-
lieve in Almighty Love we must believe that they have a
merciful and tender mission to our wayward souls. The
love wherewith we love them is something the most ut-
terly pure and unworldly of which human experience is
capable, and we must hope that every one who goes from
us to the world of light goes holding an invisible chain of
love by which to draw us there.
Sometimes I think I would never have had my little
Daisy grow older on our earth. The little child dies in
growing into womanhood, and often the woman is far less
lovely than the little child. It seems to me that lovely
and loving childhood, with its truthfulness, its frank sin*
OUR CHILD-EDEN 29
cerity, its pure, simple love, is so sweet and holy an estate
that it would be a beautiful thing in heaven to have a
band of heavenly children, guileless, gay and forever joy-
ous tender spring blossoms of the Kingdom of Light.
Was it of such whom he had left in his heavenly home
our Saviour was thinking, when he took little children up
in his arms and blessed them, and said, *^ Of such is the
Kingdom of Heaven ? "
CHAPTER in
MY SHADOW-WIFE
My Shadow- Wife I Is there then substance in shadow?
Yea, there may be. A shadow a spiritual presence
may go with us where mortal footsteps cannot go: walk by
our side amid the roar of the city; talk with us amid the
sharp clatter of voices; come to us through closed door, as
we sit alone over our evening fire; counsel, bless, inspire
us ; and though the figure cannot be clasped in mortal arms
though the face be veiled yet this wife of the future
may have a power to bless, to guide, to sustain and con-
sole. Such was the dream-wife of my youth. Whence
did she come ? She rose like a white, pure mist from that
little grave. She formed herself like a cloud-maiden from
the rain and dew of those first tears.
When we look at the apparent recklessness with which
great sorrows seem to be distributed among the children of
the earth, there is no way to keep our faith in a Fatherly
love, except to recognize how invariably the sorrows that
spring from love are a means of enlarging and dignifying
a human being. Nothing great or good comes without
birth-pangs, and in just the proportion that natures grow
more noble, their capacities of suffering increase.
The bitter, silent, irrepressible anguish of that childish
bereavement was to me the awakening of a spiritual nature.
The little creature who, had she lived, might have grown
up perhaps into a commonplace woman, became a fixed
star in the heaven land of the ideal, always drawing me to
look upward. My memories of her were a spring of re-
MY SHADOW-WIFE 31
fined and tender feeling, through all my early life. I
could not then write; but I remember that the overflow of
my heart towards her memory required expression, and I
taught myself a strange kind of manuscript, by copying the
letters of the alphabet. I bought six cents' worth of
paper and a tallow candle at the store, which I used to
light surreptitiously when I had been put tos bed nights,
and, sitting up in my little night-gown, I busied myself
with writing my remembrances of her. I could not, for
the world, have asked my mother to let me have a candle
in my bed-room after eight o'clock. I would have died
sooner than to explain why I wanted it. My purchase of
paper and candle was my first act of independent manliness.
The money, I reflected, was mine, because I earned it
myself, and the paper was mine, and the candle was mine,
so that I was not using my father's property in an unwar-
rantable manner, and thus I gave myself up to my inspira-
tions. I wrote my remembrances of her, as she stood
among the daisies and the golden lilies. I wrote down her
little words of wisdom and grave advice, in the queerest
manuscript that ever puzzled a wise man of the East. If
one imagines that all this was spelled phonetically, and not
at all in the unspeakable and astonishing way in which the
English Ismguage is conventionally spelled, one may truly
imagine that it was something rather peculiar in the way
of literature. But the heart- comfort, the utter abandon-
ment of soul that went into it, is something that only
those can imagine who have tried the like and found the
relief of it. My little heart was like the Caspian Sea, or
some other sea which I read about, which had found a
secret channel by which its waters could pass off under
ground. When I had finished, every evening, I used to
extinguish my candle, and put it and my manuscripts in-
side of the straw bed on which I slept, which had a long
pocket hole in the centre, secured by buttons, for the pur-
32 MY WIFE AND I
pose of stirring the straw. Over this I slept in conscious
security, every night; sometimes with blissful dreams of
going to brighter meadows, when I saw my Daisy playing
with whole troops of beautiful children, fair as water lilies
on the shore of a blue lake. Thus, while I seemed to be
like any other boy, thinking of nothing but my sled, and
my bat and ball, and my mittens, I began to have a little
withdrawing room of my own; another land in which I
could walk and take a kind of delight that nothing visible
gave me. But one day my oldest sister, in making the
bed, with domestic thoroughness, disemboweled my whole
store of manuscripts and the half- consumed fragment of
my candle.
There is no poetry in housewifery, and my sister at once
took a housewifely view of the proceeding. " Well, now !
is there any end to the conjurations of boys ? " she said.
'*He might have set the house on fire and burned us all
alive, in our beds ! "
Beader, this is quite possible, as I used to perform my
literary labors sitting up in bed, with the candle standing
on a narrow ledge on the side of the bedstead.
Forthwith the whole of my performance was lodged in
my mother's hands I was luckily at school.
"Now, girls," said my mother, "keep quiet about this;
above all, don't say a word to the boy. I will speak to
him."
Accordingly, that night after I had gone up to bed, my
mother came into my room, and when she had seen me in
bed she sat down by me and told me the whole discovery.
I hid my head imder the bedclothes, and felt a sort of
burning shame and mortification that was inexpressible;
but she had a good store of that mother's wit and wisdom
by which I was to be comforted. At last she succeeded in
drawing both the bedclothes from my face and the veil
from my heart, and I told her all my little story.
MY SHADOW-WIFE 83
"Dear boy," she said, "you must learn to write, and
you need not buy candles, you shall sit by me evenings
and I will teach you ; it was very nice of you to practice
all alone ; but it will be a great deal easier to let me teach
you the writing letters."
Now I had begun the usual course of writing copies in
school. In those days it was deemed necessary to com-
mence by teaching what was called coarse hand; and I
had filled many dreary pages with m's and n's of a gigantic
size; but it never had yet occurred to me that the writing
of these copies was to bear any sort of relation to the ex-
pression of thought and emotions within me that were
clamoring for a vent, while my rude copies of printed let-
ters did bear to my mind this adaptation. But now my
mother made me sit by her evenings, with a slate and pen-
cil, and, under her care, I made a cross-cut into the fields
of practical handwriting, and was also saved the dangers of
going off into a morbid habit of feeling, which might ecuiily
have arisen from my solitary reveries.
"Dear," she said to my father, "I told you this one was
to be our brightest. He will make a writer yet," and she
showed him my manuscript.
"You must look after him, mother," said my father, as
he always said, when there arose any exigency about the
children that required delicate handling.
My mother was one of that class of women whose power
on arth seems to be only the greater for being a spiritual
and invisible one. The control of such women over men
is like -that of the soul over the body. The body is visi-
ble, forceful, obtrusive, self-asserting. The soul invisible,
sensitive, yet with a subtle and vital power which con-
stantly gains control and holds every inch that it gains.
My father was naturally impetuous, though magnani-
mous, hasty- tempered and imperious, though conscientious;
my mother united the most exquisite sensibility with the
f
34 MY WIFE AND I
deepest calm calm resulting from habitual communion
with the highest and purest source of all rest the peace
that passeth all understanding. Gradually, by this spirit-
ual force, this quietude of soul, she became his leader and
guide. He held her hand and looked up to her with an
implicit trustfulness that increased with every year.
"Where *8 your mother? '' was always the fond inquiry
when he entered the house, after having been off on one
of his long preaching tours or clerical councils. At all
hours he would burst from his study with fragments of the
sermon or letter he was writing, to read to her and receive
her suggestions and criticisms. With her he discussed the
plans of his discourses, and at her dictation changed, im-
proved, altered, and added; and under the brooding influ-
ence of her mind, new and finer traits of tenderness and
spirituality pervaded his character and his teachings. In
fact, my father once said to me, "She made me by her
influence. "
In these days, we sometimes hear women, who have
reared large families on small means, spoken of as victims
who had suffered unheard - of oppressions. There is a
growing materialism that refuses to believe that there can
be happiness without the ease and facilities and luxuries of
wealth. But my father and mother, though living on a
narrow income, were never really poor. The chief evil of
poverty is the crushing of ideality out of life the taking
away its poetry and substituting hard prose and this
with them was impossible. My father loved the work he
did, as the artist loves his painting and the sculptor his
chisel. A man needs less money when he is doing only
what he loves to do what, in fact, he must do, pay or
no pay. St. Paul said, "A necessity is laid upon me, yea,
woe is me, if I preach not the gospel." Preaching the
gospel was his irrepressible instinct, a necessity of his
being. My mother, from her deep spiritual nature, was
MY SHADOW-WIFE 35
one soul with my father in his life-work. With the moral
organization of a prophetess, she stood nearer to heaven
than he, and looking in, told him what she saw, and he,
holding her hand, felt the thrill of celestial electricity.
"With such women, life has no prose; their eyes see all
things in the light of heaven, and flowers of paradise spring
up in paths that, to unanointed eyes, seem only paths of
toil. I never felt, from anything I saw at home, from any
word or action of my mother's, that we were poor, in the
sense that poverty was an evil. I was reminded, to be
sure, that we were poor in a sense that required constant
carefulness, watchfulness over little things, energetic hab-
its, and vigorous industry and self-helpfulness. But we
were never poor in any sense that restricted hospitality or
made it a burden. In those days, a minister's house was
always the home for all the ministers and their families,
whenever an exigency required of them to travel, and the
spare room of our house never wanted guests of longer or
shorter continuance. But the atmosphere of the house was
such as always made guests welcome. Three or four times
a year, the annual clerical gatherings of the church filled
our house to overflowing, and necessitated an abundant pro-
vision and great activity of preparation on the part of the
women of our family. Yet I never heard an expression of
impatience or a suggestion that made me suppose they felt
themselves unduly burdened. My mother's cheerful face
was a welcome and a benediction at all times, and guests
found it good to be with her.
In the midst of our large family, of diff'erent ages, of
vigorous growth, of great individuality and forcefulness of
expression, my mother's was the administrative power.
My father habitually referred everything to her, and leaned
on her advice with a childlike dependence. She read the
character of each, she mediated between opposing natures ;
she translated the dialect of different sorts of spirits, to
36 ICT WIFE AND I
each other. In a family of young children, there is a
chance for every sort and variety of natures; and for na-
tures whose modes of feeling are as foreign to each other
as those of the French and the English. It needs a com*
mon interpreter, who understands every dialect of the soul,
thus to translate differences of individuality into a common
language of love.
It has often seemed to me a fair question, on a review
of the way my mother ruled in our family, whether the
politics of the ideal state in a millennial community should
not be one equally pervaded by mother-influences. The
woman question of our day, as I understand it, is this:
Shall MOTHEBHOOD evcr be felt in the public administra-
tion of the affairs of state ? The state is nothing more nor
less than a collection of families, and what would be good
or bad for the individual family would be good or bad for
the state.
Such as our family would have been, ruled only by my
father, without my mother, such the political state is, and
has been; there have been in it ** conscript fathers," but
no ''conscript mothers;" yet is not a mother's influence
needed in acts that relate to the interests of collected fami-
lies as much as in individual ones ?
The state, at this very day, needs an influence like what
I remember our mother's to have been, in our great, vigor-
ous, growing family, an influence quiet, calm, warming,
purifying, uniting it needs a Womanly economy and
thrift in husbanding and applying its material resources
it needs a divining power, by which different sections and
different races can be interpreted to each other, and Hended
together in love -^^ it needs an educating power, by which
its immature children may be trained in virtue it needs
a loving and redeeming power, by which its erring and
criminal children may be borne with, purified, and led back
to virtue.
MY SHADOW-WIFE S7
Yet, while I thus muse, I rememher that such women
as my mother are those to whom in an especial manner all
noise and publicity and unrestful conflict are peculiarly
distasteful. My mother had that delicacy of fibre that
made any kind of public exercise of her powers an impos-
sibility. It is not peculiarly a feminine characteristic, but
belongs equally to many men of the finest natures. It is
characteristic of the poets and philosophers of life. It is
ascribed by the sacred writers to Jesus of Nazareth, in
whom an aversion for publicity and a longing for stillness
and retirement are specially indicated by many touching
incidents. Jesus Referred to form around him a family
of disciples and to act on the world through them, and it
is remarkable that he left no writings directly addressed to
the world by himself, but only by those whom he inspired.
Women of this brooding, quiet, deeply spiritual nature,
while they cannot attend caucuses, or pull political wires,
or mingle in the strife of political life, are yet the most
needed force to be for the good of the State. I am per-
suaded that it is not till this class of VHmen feel as vital
and personal responsibility for the good of the State as
they have hitherto felt for that of the family ^ that we
shall gain the final elements of a perfect society. The
laws of Rome, so said the graceful myth, were dictated to
Numa Pompilius by the nymph Egeria. No mortal eye
saw her. She was not in the forum, or the senate. She
did not strive, nor cry, nor lift up her voice in the street,
but she made the laws by which Rome ruled the world.
Let us hope in a coming day that not Egeria, but Mary,
the mother of Jesus, the great archetype of the Christian
motherhood, shall be felt through all the laws and institu-
tions of society. That Mary, who kept all things and pon-
dered them in her heart the silent poet, the prophetess,
the one confidential friend of Jesus, sweet and retired as
evening dew, yet strong to go forth with Christ against the
88 MY WIFE AND I
cruel and vulgar mob, and to stand unfainting by the cross
where He suffered!
From the time that my mother discovered my store of
manuscripts she came into new and more intimate relation
with me. She took me from the district school, and kept
me constantly with herself, teaching me in the intervals
of domestic avocations. I was what is called a mother's-
boy, as she taught me to render her all sorts of household
services, such as are usually performed by girls. My two
older sisters, about this time, left us, to establish a semi-
nary in the neighborhood, and the sister nearest my age
went to study under their care, so that my mother said,
playfully, she had no resource but to make a girl of me.
This association with a womanly nature, and this discipline
in womanly ways, I hold to have been an invaluable part
of my early training. There is no earthly reason which
requires a man, in order to be manly, to be unhandy and
clumsy in regard to the minutiae of domestic life; and
there are quantities of occasions occurring in the life of
every man, in which he will have occasion to be grateful
to his mother, if, like mine, she trains him in woman's
arts and the secrets of making domestic life agreeable.
But it is not merely in this respect that I felt the value
of my early companionship with my mother. The power
of such women over our sex is essentially the service ren-
dered us in forming our ideal, and it was by my mother's
influence that the ideal guardian, the "shadow- wife," was
formed, that guided me through my youth. She wisely
laid hold of the little idyl of my childhood, as something
which gave her the key to my nature, and opened before
me the hope in my manhood of such a friend as my little
Daisy had been to my childhood. This wife of the future
she often spoke of as a motive. I was to make myself
worthy of her. For her sake I was to be strong, to be
efficient, to be manly and true, and above all pure in
thought and imagination and in word.
MY SHADOW-WIFE 39
The cold mountain air and simple habits of New Eng-
land country life are largely a preventive of open immoral-
ity; but there is another temptation which besets the boy,
against which the womanly ideal is the best shield the
temptation to vulgarity and obscenity.
It was to my mother's care and teaching I owe it, that
there always seemed to be a lady at my elbow, when stories
were told such as a pure woman would blush to hear. It
was owing to her that a great deal of what I supposed to
be classical literature both in Greek and Latin and in Eng-
lish was to me and is to me to this day simply repulsive
and disgusting. I remember that one time when I was in
my twelfth or thirteenth year, one of Satan's agents put
into my hand one of those stories that are written with an
express purpose of demoralizing the young stories that
are sent creeping like vipers and rattlesnakes stealthily and
secretly among inexperienced and unguarded boys, hiding
in secret comers, gliding under their pillows, and filling
their veins with the fever poison of impurity. How many
boys in the most critical period of life are forever ruined,
in body and soul, by the silent secret gliding among them
of these nests of impure serpents, unless they have a mo-
ther, wise, watchful, and never sleeping, with whom they
are in habits of unreserved intimacy and communion !
I remember that when my mother took from me this
book, it was with an expression of fear and horror which
made a deep impression on me. Then she sat by me that
night, when the shadows were deepening, and told me how
the reading of such books, or the letting of such ideas into
my mind, would make me unworthy of the wife she hoped
some day I would win. With a voice of solemn awe she
spoke of the holy mystery of marriage as something so
sacred, that all my life's happiness depended on keeping it
pure, and surrounding it only with the holiest thoughts.
It was more the thrill of her sympathies, the noble
40 MY WIFE AND I
poetry of her nature inspiring mine, than anything she
said, that acted upon me and stimulated me to keep my
mind and memory pure. In the closeness of my commun-
' ion with her I seemed to see through her eyes and feel
through her nerves, so that at last a passage in a book or
a sentiment uttered always suggested the idea of what she
would think of it.
In our days we have heard much said of the importance
of training women to be wives. Is there not something
to be said on the importance of training men to be hus-
bands 1 Is the wide latitude of thought and reading and
expression which has been accorded as a matter of course
to the boy and the young man, the conventionally allowed
familiarity with coarseness and indelicacy, a fair prepara-
tion to enable him to be the intimate companion of a pure
woman 1 For how many ages has it been the doctrine that
man and woman were to meet in marriage, the one crystal-
pure, the other foul with the permitted garbage of all sorts
of uncleansed literature and license 1 If the man is to be
the head of the woman, even as Christ is the head of the
Church, should he not be her equal, at least, in purity 1
My shadow-wife grew up by my side under my mother's
creative touch. It was for her I studied, for her I should
toil. The thought of providing for her took the sordid
element out of economy and made it unselfish. She was
to be to me adviser, friend, inspirer, charmer. She was
to be my companion, not alone in one faculty, but through
all the range of my being there should be nothing
wherein she and I could not by appreciative sympathy
commune together. As I thought of her, she seemed
higher than I. I must love up and not down, I said.
She must stand on a height and I must climb to her she
must be a princess worthy of many toils and many labors.
Gradually she became to me a controlling power.
The thought of what she would think closed for me
MY SHADOW-WIFE 41
many a book that I felt she and I could not read together
her fair image barred the way to many a door and
avenue, which if a young man enters, he must leave his
good angel behind, for her sake I abjured intimacies that
I felt she could not improve, and it was my ambition to
keep the inner temple of my heart and thoughts so pure
that it might be a worthy resting-place for her at last.
CHAPTER IV
I START FOR COLLEGE AND MY UNCLE JACOB
ADVISES ME
The time came at last when the sacred habit of intimacy
with my mother was broken, and I was to leave her for
college. It was the more painful to her, as only a year
before, my father had died, leaving her more than ever
dependent on the society of her children.
My father died as he had lived, rejoicing in his work
and feeling that if he had a hundred lives to live, he would
devote them to the same object for which he had spent
that one the preaching of the gospel. He left to my
mother the homestead and a small farm, which was under
the care of one of my brothers, so that the event of his
death made no change in our family home centre, and I
was to go to college and fulfill the hope of his heart and
the desire of my mother's life, in consecrating myself to
the work of the Christian ministry.
My father and mother had always kept sacredly a little
fund laid by for the education of their children ; it was the
result of many small savings and self-denials but self-
denials so cheerfully and hopefully encountered that they
had almost changed their nature and become preferences.
The family fund for this purpose had been used in turn by
two of my older brothers, who, as soon as they gained an
independent foothold in life, appropriated each his first
earnings to replacing this sum for, the use of the next. It
was not, however, a fund large enough to dispense with
the need of a strict economy, and a supplemental self-help-
fulness on our part.
I START FOR COLLEGE 43
The terms in some of our New England colleges are
thoughtfully arranged so that the students can teach for
three of the winter months, and the resources thus gained
help out their college expenses. Thus at the same time
they educate themselves and help to educate others, and
they study with the maturity of mind and the appreciation
of the value of what they are gaining, resulting from a
hahit of measuring themselves with the actual needs of
life.
The time when the hoy goes to college is the time when
he feels manhood to hegin. He is no longer a hoy, hut an
unfledged, undeveloped man a creature, half of the past
and half of the future. Yet every one gives him a good
word or a congratulatory shake of the hand on his entrance
to this new plateau of life. It is a time when advice is
plenty as blackberries in August, and often held quite as
cheap but nevertheless a young fellow may as well look
at what his elders tell him at this time, and see what he
can make of it.
As I was "our minister's son," all the village thought
it had something to do with my going. "Hallo, Harry,
so you ' ve got into college ! Think you '11 be as smart a man
as your dad? " said one. " Wa-al, so I hear you 're going
to college. Stick to it now. I could 'a' made suthin' ef
I 'd 'a' had lamin' at your age,'' said old Jerry Smith, who
rung the meeting-house bell, sawed wood, and took ca^e of
miscellaneous gardens for sundry widows in the vicinity.
But the sayings that struck me as most to the purpose
came from my Uncle Jacob.
Uncle Jacob was my mother's brother, and the doctor
not only of our village, but of all the neighborhood for ten
miles round. He was a man celebrated for medical know-
ledge through the State, and known by his articles in medi-
cal journals far beyond. He might have easily commanded
a wider and more lucrative sphere of practice by going to
44 MY WIFE AND I
any of the large towns and cities, but Uncle Jacob was a
philosopher and preferred to live in a small quiet way in
a place whose scenery suited him, and where he could act
precisely as he felt disposed, and carry out all his little
humors and pet ideas without rubbing against convention-
alities.
He had a secret adoration for my mother, whom he re-
garded as the top and crown of all womanhood, and he also
enjoyed the society of my father, using him as a sort of
whetstone to sharpen his wita on. Uncle Jacob was a
church member in good standing, but in the matter of belief
he was somewhat like a high-mettled horse in a pasture,
he enjoyed once in a while having a free argumentative
race with my father all round the theological lot. Away
he would go in full career, dodging definitions, doubling
and turning with elastic dexterity, and sometimes ended by
leaping over all the fences, with most astounding assertions,
after which he would calm down, and gradually suffer the
theological saddle and bridle to be put on him and go on
with edifying paces, apparently much refreshed by his
metaphysical capers.
Uncle Jacob was reported to have a wonderful skill in
the healing craft. He compounded certain pills which
were stated to have most wonderful effects. He was accus-
tomed to exact that, in order fully to develop their medical
properties, they should be taken after a daily bath, and be
followed immediately by a brisk walk of a specific duration
in the open air. The steady use of these pills had been
known to make wonderful changes in the cases of confirmed
invalids, a fact which Uncle Jacob used to notice with a
peculiar twinkle in the corner of his eye. It was some-
times whispered that the composition of them was neither
more nor less than simple white sugar with a flavor of
some harmless essence, but upon this subject my Uncle
Jacob wa9 impenetrable. He used to say, with the afore-
I 8TAST FOR COLLEGE 45
mentioned waggish twinkle, that their plreporation was his
secret.
Uncle Jacoh had always had a special favor for me,
shown after his own odd and original manner. He would
take me in his chaise with him when driving about his
business, and keep my mind on a perpetual stretch with
his odd questions and droll, suggestive remarks or stories.
There was a shrewd keen quality to all that he said, that
stimulated like a mental tonic, and none the less so for a
stinging flavor of sarcasm and cynicism, that stirred up and
provoked one's self-esteem. Yet as Uncle Jacob was com-
panionable and loved a listener, I think he was none the
less agreeable to me for this slight touch of his claws.
One likes to find power of any kind and he who shows
that he can both scratch and bite effectively, if he holds
his talons in sheath, comes in time to be regarded as a sort
of benefactor for his forbearance: and so, though I got
many a shrewd mental nip and gripe from my Uncle Jacob,
I gave on tiie whole more heed to his opinion than that of
anybody else that I knew.
From the time that I had been detected with my self-
ifivented manuscript, up to the period of my going to col-
lege, the expression of my thoughts by writing had always
been a passion with me, and from year to year my mind
had been busy with its own creations, which it was a solace
Imd amusement for me to record. Of course there was
ever so much crabbed manuscript, and no less confused,
immature thought. I wrote poems, essays, stories, trage-
dies, and comedies. I demonstrated the immortality of
the BOuL I sustained the future immortality of the souls
of animals. I Wrote sonnets and odes, in whole Cet in part,
on almost everything that could be mentioned in creation.
My mother advised me to make Uncle Jacob my literary
mentor, and the best of my productions were laid unde)r
his eye.
46 MY WIFE AND I
" Poor trash ! '' he was wont to say, with his usual
kindly twinkle. "But there must be poor trash in the
beginning. We must all eat our peck of dirt, and learn
to write sense by writing nonsense. '^ Then he would pick
out here and there a line or expression which he assured
me was ^^not bad.^' Now and then he condescended to
tell me that for a boy of my age, so and so was actually
hopeful, and that I should make something one of these
days, which was to me more encouragement than much
more decided praise from any other quarter.
We all notice that he who is reluctant to praise, whose
commendation is scarce and hard-earned, is he for whose
good word everybody is fighting; he comes at last to be
the judge in the race. After all, the fact which Uncle
Jacob could not disguise, that he had a certain good opin-
ion of me, in spite of his sharp criticisms and scant praises,
made him the one whose dicta on every subject were the
most important to me.
I went to him in all the glow of satisfaction and the
tremble of self-importance that a boy feels who is taking
the first step into the land of manhood.
I have the image of him now, as he stood with his back
to the fire, and the newspaper in his hand, giving me his
last counsels. A little wiry, keen-looking man, with a
blue, hawk-like eye, a hooked nose, a high forehead, sha-
dowed with grizzled hair, and a crisscross of deeply lined
wrmkles in his face,
"So you are going to college, boy! Well, away with
you; there's no use advising you; you'll do as all the
rest do. In one year you '11 know more than your father,
your mother, or I, or all your college officers in fact,
than the Lord himself. You '11 have doubts about the
Bible, and think you could have made a better one.
You '11 think that if the Lord had consulted you he could
have laid the foundations of the earth better, and arranged
I START FOR COLLEGE 47
the course of nature to more purpose. In short, you *11 be
a god, knowing good and evil, and running all over crea-
tion measuring everybody and everything in your pint cup.
There * 11 be no living with you. But you '11 get over it,
it 's only the febrile stage of knowledge. But if you
have a good constitution, you '11 come through with it. "
I humbly suggested to him that I should try to keep
clear of the febrile stage ; that forewarned was forearmed.
"Oh, tut! tut! you must go through your fooleries.
These are the regular diseases, the chicken-pox, measles,
and mumps of young manhood; you '11 have them all. We
only pray that you may have them light, and not break
your constitution for all your life through, by them. For
instance, you '11 fall in love with some baby-faced young
thing, with pink cheeks and long eyelashes, and goodness
only knows what abominations of sonnets you '11 be guilty
of. That isn't fatal, however. Only don't get engaged.
Take it as the chicken-pox keep your pores open, and
don't get cold, and it '11 pass off and leave you none the
worse."
"And she!" said I indignantly. "You talk as if it
was no matter what became of her "
"What, the baby? Oh, she'll outgrow it, too. The
fact is, soberly and seriously, Harry, marriage is the thing
that makes or mars a man; it 's the gate through which he
goes up or down, and you should n't pledge yourself to it
till you come to your full senses. Look at your mother,
boy; see what a woman may be; see what she was to your
father, what she is to me, to you, to every one that knows
her. Such a woman, to speak reverently, is a pearl of
great price; a man might well sell all he had to buy her.
But it is n't that kind of woman that flirts with college
boys. You don't pick up such pearls every day."
Of course I declared that nothing was further from my
thoughts than anything of that nature.
48 MY WIFE AND I
''The fact is, Harry, you oan't afford fooleries," said my
uncle. "You have your own way to make, and nothing
to make it with but your own head and hands, and you
must begin now to count the cost of everything. You
have a healthy, sound body; see that you take care of it.
God gives you a body but once. He don't take care of it
for you, and whatever of it you lose, you lose for good.
Many a chap goes into college fresh as you are, and comes
out with weak eyes and crooked back, yellow complexion
and dyspeptic stomach. He has only himself to thank for
it. When you get to college they '11 want you to smoke,
and you '11 want to, just for idleness and good fellowship.
Now, before you begin, just calculate what it '11 cost you.
You can't get a good cigar under ten cents, and your
smoker wants three a day, at the least. There go thirty
cents a day, two dollars and ten cents a week, or a hundred
and nine dollars and twenty cents a year. Take the next
ten years at that rate, and you can invest over a thousand
dollars in tobacco smoke. That thousand dollars, invested
in a savings bank, would give a permanent income of sixty
dollars a year, a handy thing, as you '11 find, just as you
are beginning life. !Now, I know you think all this is
ptosy ; you are amaeingly given to figures of rhetoric, but,
after all, you 've got to get on in a world where things go
by the rules of arithmetic."
"Well, uncle," I said, a little nettled, "I pledge you
my word that I won't smoke or drink. I never have done
either, and I don't know why I should."
"Good for you! your hand on that, my boy. You
don't need either tobacco or spirits any more than you
need water in your shoes. There 's no danger in doing
without them, and great danger in doing with them; so
let 's look on that as settled.
"Now, as to the rest. You have a faculty for stringing
words together, and a hankering after it^ that may make oz
I START FOR COLLEGE 49
spoil you. Many a fellow comes to naught because he can
stiing pretty phrases and turn a good line of poetry. He
gets the notion that he 's to be a poet^ or orator, or genius
of some sort^ and neglects study. Now, Harry, remember
that an empty bag can't stand upright; and that if you are
erer to be a writer you must have something to say, and
that you 've got to dig for knowledge as for hidden trea-
sure. A genius for hard work is the best kind of genius.
Look at great writers, and see how many had it. What
a student Milton was, and Goethe 1 Great fellows, those!
like trees that grow out in a pasture lot, with branches
mil round. Composition is the flowering out of a man's
mind. When he has made growth, all studies and all
learning, all that makes woody fibre, go into it. Now,
study books; observe nature; practice. If you make a
good firm mental growth, I hope to see some blossoms and
fruits from it one of these days. So go your ways, and
(jod bless you ! "
The last words were said as Uncle Jacob slipped into
my hand an envelope, containing a sum of money.
"You'll need it," he said, "to furnish your room; and
harkee 1 if you get into any troubles that you don't want
to burden your mother with, come to me."
There was warmth in the grip with which these last
words were said, and a sort of misty moisture came over
his keen blue eye, little signs which meant as much
from his shrewd and reticent nature as a caress or an ex-
pression of tenderness might from another.
My mother's last words, after hours of talk over the
evening fire, were these : " I want you to be a good man.
A great many have tried to be great men, and failed ; but
nobody ever sincerely tried to be a good man, and failed.'^
I suppose it is about the happiest era in a young fellow's
life when he goes to college for the first time. The future
li all a land of Uue distant mists and shadows, radiant as
50 MY WIFE AND I
an Italian landscape. The boundaries between the possible
and the not possible are so charmingly vague! There is
a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow forever waiting for
each newcomer. Generations have not exhausted it!
Balzac said, of writing his novels, that the dreaming out
of them was altogether the best of it. "To imagine," he
said, "is to smoke enchanted cigarettes; to bring out one's
imaginations into words, that is work I " The same
may be said of the romance of one's life. The dream-life
is beautiful, but the rendering into reality quite another
thing.
I believe every boy who has a good father and mother
goes to college meaning, in a general way, to be a good
fellow. He will not disappoint them. Ko! a thousand
times, no ! In the main, he will be a good boy, not
that he is going quite to walk according to the counsels of
his elders. He is not going to fall over any precipices
not he but he is going to walk warily and advisedly
along the edge of them, and take a dispassionate survey of
the prospect, and gather a few botanical specimens here
and there. It might be dangerous for a less steady head
than his; but he understands himself, and with regard to
all things he says, "We shall see." The world is full of
possibilities and open questions. Up sail, and away; let
us test them !
As I scaled the mountains and descended the valleys on
my way to college, I thought over all that my mother and
Uncle Jacob had said to me, and had my own opinion of
it. Of course I was not the person to err in the ways he
had suggested. I was not to be the dupe of a boy and girl
flirtation. My standard of manhood was too exalted, I
reflected, and I thought with complacency how little Uncle
Jacob knew of me.
To be sure, it is a curious kind of a thought to a young
man, that somewhere in this world, unknown to him, and
I START FOR COLLEGE 51
as yet iinknowing him, lives the woman that is to be his
earthly fate, to aflfect, for good or evil, his destiny. We
have all read the pretty story about the Princess of China
and the young Prince of Tartary, whom a fairy and genius
in a freak of caprice showed to each other in an enchanted
sleep, and then whisked away again, leaving them to years
of vain pursuit and wanderings. Such is the ideal image
of somebody^ who must exist somewhere^ and is to be
found some time^ and when found is to be ours.
"Uncle Jacob is all right in the main,'' I said; "but if
I should meet the true woman even in my college days,
why that, indeed, would be quite another thing.''
CHAPTER V
MY DBEAM-WIFE
All things prospered with ifie in my college life, t
had a sunny room commanding e fine prospect, and Uncle
Jacob's parting liberality enabled me to furnish it commo-
diously. I bought the furmtutfe of a departing senior at
a reduced price, and felt quite the spirit of a householder
in my possessions. I was well prepared in my studies and
did not find my tasks difficult.
My stock of interior garnishment included several French
lithographs, for the most part of female heads, looking up,
with very dark bright eyes, or looking down, with very
long dark eyelashes. These heads of dream-women are,
after all, not to be laughed at; they show the yearning for
womanly influences and womanly society which follows the
young man in his enforced monastic seclusion from all
family life and family atmosphere. These little fanciful
French lithographs, generally, are chosen for quite other
than artistic reasons. If we search into it we shall find
that one is selected because it is like sister *'Nell," and
another puts one in mind of "Bessie,'' and then again,
there is another "like a girl I used to know.'' Now and
then one of them has such a piquant, provoking air of
individuality, that one is sure it must have been sketched
from nature. Some teasing, coaxing, " don't-care- what-
you-think" sort of a sprite must have wreathed poppies
and blue corn-flowers just so in her hair, and looked gay
defiance at the artist who drew it. There was such a
saucy, spirited gypsy over my mantel-piece, who seemed
MY DREAM-WIFE 53
to defy me to find her if I searched the world over with
whom I held sometimes airy colloquies not in the least
was she like my dream-wife, hut I liked her for all that,
and thought I would "give something" to know what she
would have to say to me, just for the curiosity of the
thing.
The college was in a little village, and there was no par-
ticular amity hetween the townspeople and the students.
I helieve it is the understanding in such cases, that college
students are to he regarded and treated as a trihe of Bedouin
Arabs, whose hand is against every man, and they in their
turn are not backward to make good the character. Public
opinion shuts them up together they are a state within
a state with a public sentiment, laws, manners, and
modes of thinking of their own. It is a state, too, with-
out women. When we think of this, and remember that
all this experience is gone through in the most gaseous and
yeasty period of human existence, we no longer wonder
that there are college rows and scrapes, that all sorts pf
grotesque capers become hereditary and traditional, that ail
apple-cart occasionally appears on top of one of the steeples,
that cannon-balls are rolled surreptitiously down the college
stairs, and that tutors' doors are mysteriously found locked
at recitation hours. One simply wonders that the roof is
not blown off, and the windows out, by the combined ex-
citability of so many fermenting natures.
There is a tendency now in society to open the coUege
course equally to women to continue through college life
that interaction of the comparative influence of the sexes
which is begun in the family. To a certain extent this
experiment has been always favorably tried in the New
England rural Academies, where young men are fitted for
;College in the same classes and studies with women.
In these time-honored institutions, young women have
kept step with young men in the daily pursuit of science,
54 MY WIFE AND I
not only without disorder or unseemly scandal, but with
manifestly more quietness and refinement of manner than
obtains in institutions where female association ceases alto-
gether. The presence of a couple of dozen of well-bred
ladies in the lecture and recitation rooms of a college would
probably be a preventive of many of the unseemly and
clumsy jokes wherewith it has been customary to diversify
the paths of science, to the affliction of the souls of profes-
sors.
But for us boys there was no gospel of womanhood
except what was to be got from the letters of mothers and
sisters, and such imperfect and flitting acquaintance as we
could pick up in the streets with the girls of the village.
Now, though there might be profit could young men and
women see each other daily under the responsibility of seri-
ous business, keeping step with one another in higher
studies, yet it by no means follows that this kind of
flitting glimpse -like acquaintance, formed merely in the
exchange of a few outside superficialities, can have any par-
ticularly good eff'ect. No element of true, worthy friend-
ship, of sober appreciation, or manly or womanly good
sense, generally enters into these girl and boy flirtations,
which are the only substitute for family association during
the barren years of student life. The students were not
often invited into families, and those who gained a charac-
ter as ladies' men were not favorably looked upon by our
elders. Now and then by rare and exceptional good luck
a college student is made at home in some good family,
where there is a nice, kind mother and the wholesome
atmosphere of human life; or, he forms the acquaintance
of some woman, older and wiser than himself, who can talk
with him on all the multitude of topics his college studies
suggest. But such cases are only exceptions. In general
there is no choice between flirtation and monastic isolation.
For my part, I posed myself on the exemplary platform,
MY DREAM-WIFE 55
and remettibering my Uncle Jacob's advice, contemplated
life with the grim rigidity of a philosopher. I was going
to have no trifling, and surveyed the girls at church, on
Sunday, with a distant and severe air as gay creatures
of an hour, who could hold no place in my serious medi-
tations. Plato or Aristotle, ih person, could not have con-
templated life and society from a more serene height of
composure. I was favorably known by my teachers, and
held rank at the head of my class, and was stigmatized as
ft " dig " by frisky young gentlemen who enjoyed rolling
cannon-balls downstairs taking the tongue out of the
chapel bell greasing the seats, and other threadbare
college jokes, which they had not genius enough to vary,
so as to give them a spice of originality.
But one bright Jime Sunday just one of those days
that seem made to put all one's philosophy into confusion,
when apple-blossoms were bursting their pink shells, and
robins singing, and leaves twittering and talking to each
other in undertones, there came to me a great revelation.
How innocently I brushed my hair and tied my neck-
tie on that fateful morning, contemplating my growing
mustache and whiskers hopefully in the small square of
looking-glass which served for me these useful purposes of
self-knowledge. I looked at my lineaments as those of a
free young junior, without fear and without anxiety, with-
out even an incipient inquiry what anybody else would
think of them least of all any woman and marched
forth obediently and took my wonted seat in that gallery
of the village church which was assigned to the college
students of Congregational descent; where, like so many
sheep in a pen, we joined in the services of the common
sheepfold.
I suppose there is moral profit even in the decent self-
denial of such weekly recurring religious exercises. To be
lotoed to a certain period of silence, order, quiet, and to
56 MY WIFE AND I
have therein a possibility and a suggestion of communion
with a Higher Power, and an outlook into immortality, is
something not to be undervalued in education, and justifies
the stringency with which our New England colleges pre-
serve and guard this part of their re'gime.
But it was to be confessed in our case, that the number
who really seemed to have any spiritual participation or
sympathy in the great purposes of the exercises was not a
majority. A general, dull decency of demeanor was the
most frequent attainment, and such small recreations were
in vogue as could be pursued without drawing the attention
of the monitors. There was some telegraphy of eyes be-
tween the girls of the village and some of the more society-
loving fellows, who had cultivated intimacies in that quar-
ter; there were some novels, stealthily introduced and
artfully concealed and read by the owner, while his head,
resting on the seat before him, seemed bowed in devotion;
and some artistic exercises in sketching caricatures on the
part of others. For my own part, having been trained
religiously, I gave strict outward and decorous attention;
but the fact was that my mind generally sailed off on some
cloud of fancy, and wandered through dreamland, so that
not a word of anything present reached my ear. This
habit of reverie and castle-building, repressed all the week
by the severe necessity of definite tasks, came upon me
Sundays as Bunyan describes the hot, sleepy atmosphere
of the enchanted ground.
Our pastor was a good man, who wrote a kind of smooth,
elegant, unexceptionable English ; whose measured cadences
and easy flow were, to use the Scripture language, as a
"very lovely song of one that hath a pleasant voice, and
can play sweetly upon an instrument.'' I heard him as
one hears murmurs and voices through one's sleep, while
my spirit went everywhere under the sun. I traveled in
foreign lands, I saw pictures, cathedrals; I had thrilling
MY DREAM-WIFE 57
adventures and hairbreadth escapes; formed strange and
exciting acquaintances; in short, was the hero of a ro-
mance, whose scenes changed as airily and easily as the
sunset clouds of evening. So really and so vividly did
this supposititious life excite me that I have actually found
myself with tears in my eyes through the pathos of these
unsubstantial visions.
It was in . one of the lulling pauses of such a romance,
while I yet heard the voice of our good pastor proving that
"selfishness was the essence of moral evil," that I lifted
up my eyes, and became for the first time conscious of a
new face, in the third pew of the broad aisle below me.
It was a new one one that certainly had never been there
before, and was altogether just the face to enter into the
most ethereal perceptions of my visionary life. I started
with a sort of awakening thrill, such, perhaps, as Adam
had when he woke from his sleep and saw his Eve. There,
to be sure, was the face of my dream- wife, incarnate and
visible! That face, so refined, so spiritual, so pure! a
baptized. Christianized Greek face ! A cross between Venus
and the Virgin Mary ! The outlines were purely, severely
classical, such as I have since seen in the Psyche of the
Naples Gallery; but the large, tremulous, pathetic eyes
redeemed them from statuesque coldness. They were eyes
that thought^ that looked deep into life, death, and eternity
so I said to myself as I gazed down on her, and held
my breath with a kind of religious awe. The vision was
all in white, as such visions must be, and the gauzy crape
bonnet with its flowers upon her head dissolved under my
eyes into a sort of sacred aureole, such as surrounds the
heads of saints. I saw her, and only her, through the
remaining hour of church. I studied every movement.
The radiant eyes were fixed upon the minister, and with
an expression so sadly earnest that I blushed for my own
wandering thoughts, and began to endeavor to turn my
58 MY WIFE AND I
mind to the truths I was hearing told; but, after all, I
thought more about her than the discourse. I saw her
search the hymn-book for the hymn, and wished that I
were down there to find it for her. I saw her standing
up, and looking down at her hymns with the wonderful
eyes veiled by long lashes, and singing,
" Call me awaj from earth and sense,
One sovereign word can draw me thence,
I would obej the voice divine,
And all inferior joys resign."
How miserably gross, and worldly, and unworthy I felt
at that moment ! How I longed for an ideal, superhuman
spirituality, something that should make me worthy to
touch the hem of her garment!
When the blessing was pronounced, I hastened down
and stood where I might see her as she passed out of
church. I had not, been alone in my discoveries: there
had been dozens of others that saw the same star, and there
were whisperings, and elbo wings, and consultings, as a
knot of juniors and seniors stationed themselves, as I had
done, to see her pass out.
As she passed by she raised her eyes slowly, and as it
were by accident, and they fell like a ray of sunlight on
one of our number, Jim Fellows who immediately
bowed. A slight pink flush rose in her cheeks as she
gracefully returned the salutation, and passed on. Jim
was instantly the great man of the hour; he knew her, it
seems.
"It 's Miss EUery, of Portland. Have n't you heard of
her?" he said, with an air of importance. "She's the
great beauty of Portland. They call her the * little divin-
ity.' Met her last summer, at Mount Desert," he added,
with the comfortable air of a man in possession of the
leading fact of the hour the fact about which everybody
else is inquiring.
MY DREAM-WIFE 59
I walked home behind her in a kind of trance, disdain-
ing to join in what I thought the very flippant and un-
worthy comments of the boys. I saw the last wave of her
white garments as she passed between the two evergreens
in front of Deacon Brown's square white house, which at
that moment became to me a mysterious and glorified
shrine; there the angel held her tabernacle.
At this moment I met Miss Dotha Brown, the deacon's
eldest daughter, a rosy-cheeked, pleasant-faced girl, to
whom I had been introduced the week before. Instantly
she was clothed upon with a new interest in my eyes, and
I saluted her with empressement ; if not the rose, she at
least was the clay that was imbibing the perfume of the
rose; and I don't doubt that my delight at seeing her
assumed the appearance of personal admiration. "What
a charming Sunday," I said, with emphasis. "Perfectly
charming,'' said Miss Brown sympathetically.
"You have an interesting young friend staying with
you, I observe," said I.
" Who, Miss EUery ? oh yes. O Mr. Henderson, she is
the sweetest girl ! " said Dotha, with effusion.
I did n't doubt it, and listened eagerly to her praises,
and was grateful to Miss Brown for the warm invitation to
"call" which followed. Miss Ellery was to make them a
long visit, and she would be so happy to introduce me.
That evening Miss Ellery was a topic of excited discus-
sion in our entry, and Jim Fellows plumed himself largely
on his Mount Desert experiences, which he related in a
way to produce the impression that he had been regarded
with a favorable eye by the divinity. I was in a state of
silent indignation, at him, at all the rest of the boys, at
everybody in general, being fully persuaded that they were
utterly incapable of understanding or appreciating this won-
derful creature.
"Hal, why don't you talk?" said one of them to me,
60 MY WIFE AND I
when I had sat silent, pretending to read for a long time.
" What do you think of her V
"Oh, I'm no ladies' man, as you all know," I said
evasively, and actually pretended not to have remarked
Miss Ellery except in a cursory manner.
Then followed a period of weeks and months, when that
one image was never for a moment out of my thoughts.
By a strange law of our being, a certain idea can accom-
pany us everywhere, not stopping or interrupting the
course of the thought, but going on in a sort of shadowy
way with it, as an invisible presence.
The man or woman who cherishes an ideal is always
liable to this accident, that the spiritual image often de-
scends like a mantle, and invests some very ordinary per-
son, who is, for the time being, transfigured, "a woman
clothed with the sun, and with the moon under her feet."
It is not what there is in the person, but what there is in
uSf that gives this passage in life its critical power. It
would seem as if there were in some men, and some
women, preparation for a grand interior illumination and
passion, like that hoard of mystical gums and spices which
the phoenix was fabled to prepare for its funeral pile ; all
the aspiration and poetry and romance, the upheaval toward
an infinite and eternal good, a divine purity and rest, may
be enkindled by the touch of a very ordinary and earthly
hand, and, burning itself out, leave only cold ashes of
experience.
Miss Ellery was a well-bred young lady, of decorous and
proper demeanor, of careful religious education, of no par-
ticular strength either of mind or emotion, good-tempered,
and with an instinctive approbativeness that made her
desirous to please everybody, which created for her the
reputation that Miss Brown expressed in calling her "a
sweet girl." She was always most agreeable to those with
whom she was thrown, and for the time being appeared to
MY DREAM-WIFE 61
be ahd was sincerely interested in them; but het mind
Was like a well-polished looking-glass, retaining not a trace
of toything absent or distant.
She was gifted by nature with wonderful beauty, and
beiauty of that peculiar style that stirs the senses of the
p6elical and the ideal ; her gentle approbativeness and the
graceful facility of her manner were such as not at least
to destroy the visions which her beauty created. In a
|tiiet way she enjoyed being adored made love to, but
she never overstepped the bounds of strict propriety. She
deceived me with graciousness, and I really think found
Something in my society which was agreeably stimulating
t6 htlt, I was somewhat out of the common track of her
ttdMhen; my ardor and enthusiasm gave her a new emotion.
I Wrote poems to her, which she read with a graceful pen*
Sivens and laid away among her trophies in her private
writing-desk. I called her my star, my inspiration, my
light, and she beamed down on me with a pensive purity.
"Yes, Ahe Was delighted to have me read Tennyson to
fcfer," tod many an hour when I should have been study-
ing, I was lotinging in the little front parlor of the Brown
house, fancying myself Sir Galahad, and reading with emo-
tion, how his '''blade was strong, because his heart was
pijte;" and Miss Ellery murmured **How lovely!" and
I was in paradise.
And then there came wonderful moonlight evenings---
evekiings when every leaf stirring had a penciled reproduo-
tio'n flickering in light and shade on the turf; and we
Walked together under arches of elm-trees, and I talked
and quoted poetry; and she listened and assented in the
sweetest manner possible. All my hopes, toy plans, my
dteams, my speculations, my philosophies, came out to sun
themselves under the magic of those lustrous eyes. Her
replies aind utterances were greatly in disproportion to
; but I rieceive^ them, and made much of them, te Hst
62 MY WIFE AND I
old the priests of Delphi did with those of the inspired
maiden. There must he deep meaning in it all, hecause
she was a priestess; and I was not hackward to supply it.
I have often endeavored to analyze the sources of the
illusion cast over men hy such characters as that of Miss
Ellery. In their case the instinctive action of approbative-
ness assumes the semblance of human sympathy, and brings
them for the time being into the life-sphere, and under
the influence, of any person whom they wish to please, so
that they with a temporary sincerity reflect back the ideas
and feelings of others. There is just the same illusive
sort of charm in this reflection of our own thoughts and
emotions from another mind, as there is in the reflection
of objects in a placid lake. There is no warmth and no
reality to it; and yet, for the time being, it is often the
most entrancing thing in the world, and gives back to you
the glow of your own heart, the fervor of your imagination,
and even every little flower of fancy, and twig of feeling,
with a wonderful faithfulness of reproduction. It is not
real sympathy, because, like the image in the lake, it is
only there when you are present; and when you are away,
reflects with equal facility the next comer.
But men always have been, and to the end of time al-
ways will be, fascinated by such women, and will suppose
this mere reflecting power of a highly polished surface to
be the sympathetic response for which the heart longs. So
I had no doubt that Miss Ellery was a woman of all sorts
of high literary tastes and moral heroisms, for there was
nothing so high or so deep in the aspirations of poets or
sages in my readings to her that could not be reflected and
glorified in those wonderful eyes.
Neither are such women hypocrites, as they are often
called. What they give back to you is for the time being
a sincere reflection, and if there is no depth to it, if it
passes away with the passing hour, it is simply because
MY DREAM-WIFE 63
their natures smooth, shallow, and cold have no deeper
power of retention. The fault lies in expecting more of a
thing than there is in its nature a fault we shall more or
less all go on committing till the great curtain falls.
I wrote all about her to my mother, and received the
usual cautionary maternal epistle: reminding me that I was
yet far from that goal in life when I was warranted in
asking any woman to be my wife, and suggesting that my
taste might alter with maturity; warning me against pre-
mature commitments in short, saying all that good, anx-
ious mothers usually say to young juniors in college in
similar circumstances.
In reply, I told my mother that I had foimd a woman
worthy the devotion of a life a woman who would be
inspiration and motive and reward. I extolled her purity
and saintliness. I told my mother that she was forming
and leading me to all that was holy and noble. In shorty
I meant to win her though the seven labors of Hercules
were to be performed seven times over to reach her.
Now the fact is, my mother might have saved herself
her anxiety. Miss Ellery was perfectly willing to be my
guiding star, my inspiration, my light, within reasonable
limits, while making a visit in an otherwise rather dull
town. She liked to be read to; she liked the conscious-
ness of being incessantly admired, and would have made a
very good image for some Church of the Perpetual Adora^
tion ; but after all. Miss Ellery was as incapable of forming
an ineligible engagement of marriage with a poor college
student as the most sensible and collected of Walter Scott's
heroines.
Looking back upon this part of my life, I can pity my-
self with as quiet and dispassionate a perception as if I
were a third person. The illusion, for the time being,
was so real, the feelings called up by it so honest and ear-
nest and sacred; and supposing there had been a tangible
64 MY WIFE AND I
reality to it -^ what might not such a woman have made of
me, or of any man ?
And suppose it pleased (jod to send forth an army of
such women, as I thought her to he, among the lost chil-
dren of men, women armed not only with the outward and
visiWe sign of beauty, but with that inward and spiritual
grace which beauty typifies, one might believe that the
golden age would soon be back upon us.
Miss Ellery adroitly avoided all occasions of any critical
commitment on my part or on hers. Women soon learn
a vast amount of tact and diplomacy on that subject; but
she gave me to imderstand that I was peculiarly congenial
to her, and encouraged the outflow of all my romance
with the gentlest atmosphere of indulgence. To be sure, I
was not the only one whom she thus held with bonds of
golden gossamer. She reigned a queen, and had a court
at her feet, and the deacon's square, white, prosaic house
bristled with the activity and vivacity of Miss Emery's
adorers.
Among them Will Marshall was especially distinguished.
Will was a senior, immensely rich, good-natured as the
longest summer day is long, but so idle and utterly incapa-
ble of culture that only the liberality of the extra sum paid
to a professor who held him in guardianship secured his
stay in college classes. It has been my observation that
money will secure a great variety of things in this lower
world, and, among others, will carry a very stupid fellow
through college.
Will was a sort of favorite with us all. His good-
nature was without lin^it, and he scattered his money with
a free hand, and so we generally spoke of him as "Poor
Will ; " a nice fellow, if he could n*t write a decent note,
and blundered through all his recitations. Will laid him-
self, so to speak, at Miss Ellery *s feet. He was ^lush of
bouquets and oonfectiimery. He caused the village livery
MY DREAM-WIffi 65
stable to import f^hwith a tomout worthy to be a ear of
Yenus benelf .
I MW all this, but it never entered my head that Mies
Ellery would cast a moment's thought other than those of
the gentlest womanly compassion on poor Will Marshall.
The time of the summer vacation drew nigh, and with
the doee of the term closed the vision of my idyllic expe-
riences with Miss Ellery. To the last she was so gentle
and easy to be entreated. Her lovely eyes cast on me such
bright encouraging glances; and she accorded me a farewell
moonlight ramble, wherein I walked not on earth, but
in the seventh heaven of felicity. Of course there was
nothing definite. I told her that I was a poor soldier of
fortune, but might I only wear her name in my bosom, it
would be a sacred talisman, and give strength to my arm,
and she sighed, and looked lovely, and she did not say me
nay.
I went home to my mother, and wearied that much-
enduring woman, all through the vacation, with the hot
and cold fits of my fever. Blessed souls! these mothers,
who bear and watch and rear the restless creatures, who by
and by come to them with the very heart gone out of them
for love of another woman some idle girl, perhaps, that
never knew what it was either to love or care, and that
plays with hearts as kittens do with pinballs I
I wrote to Miss Ellery letters long, overflowing, and got
back little neatly worded notes on scented paper, speaking
in a general way of the charms of friendship. But the first
news that met me on my return to college broke my soap-
bubble at one touch.
" Hurrah I Hal who dp you guess is engaged 1 "
"I don't know."
"Guess."
"I couldn't guess."
"Why, Miss Ellery engaged to Bill Marshall"
66 MY WIFE AND I
Alnaschar, in the Arabian tale, could not have been
more astonished when his basket of glassware fell in glit-
tering nothingness. I stood stupid with astonishment.
*^ She engaged to Will Marshall! why, boys, he 's a
fool ! "
"But you see he's rich. Oh, it's all arranged; they
are to be married next month, and go to Europe for their
wedding tour," said Jim Fellows.
And so my idol fell from its pedestal and my first
dream dissolved.
CHAPTER VI
THE VALLEY OF HUMILIATION
Miss Ellery was sufficiently mistress of herself, and
of circumstances, to close our little pastoral in the most
graceful and amiable manner possible. I received a beau-
tiful rose-scented note from her, saying that the very kind
interest in her happiness which I always had expressed,
and the extremely pleasant friendship which had arisen
between us, made her desirous of informing me, etc., etc.
Thereupon followed the announcement of her engagement,
terminating with the assurance that whatever new ties she
might form, or scenes she might visit, she should ever
cherish a pleasant remembrance of the delightful hours
spent beneath the elms of X, and indulge the kindest
wishes for my future success and happiness.
' I, of course, crushed the rose-scented missive in my
hand, in the most approved tragical style, and felt that I
had been deceived, betrayed, and undone. I passed forth-
with into that cynical state of young manhood, in which
one learns for the first time what a mere unimportant drop
his own most terribly earnest and excited feelings may be
in the tumbling ocean of the existing world. This is a
Valley of Humiliation, which lies, in very many cases, just
a day's walk beyond the Palace Beautiful with all its fasci-
nations.
The moral geographer, John Bunyan, to whom we are
indebted for much wholesome information, tells us that
while it is extremely difficult to descend gracefully into
this valley, and pilgrims generally accomplish it at the
68 MY WIFE AND I
expense of many a sore trip and stumble, yet when once
they are fairly down, it presents many advantages of climate
and soil not otherwhere found.
The. shivering to pieces of the first ideal, while it breaks
ruthlessly and scatters much that is really and honestly
good and worthy, breaks up no less a certain stock of un-
conscious self-conceit, which young people are none the
worse for having lessened. The very assumption, so com-
mon in the early days of life, that we have feelings of a
peculiar sacredness above the comprehension of the com-
mon herd, and for which only the selectest sympathy is
possible, is one savoring a little too much of the unrege%-
erate natural man, to be safely let alone to grow and thrive.
Natures, in particular, whose ideality is largely in the
ascendant, are apt to begin life with the scheme of building
a high and thick stone wall of reticence around themselves,
and enthroning therein an idol, whose rites and service are
to be performed with a contemptuous indifference to all
the rest of mankind.
When this idol is suddenly disenchanted by some stroke
of inevitable reality, and we discern that the image which
we had supposed to be the shrine of a divinity is only a
Very earthly doll, stuffed with sawdust, one's pinnacles
and battlements the whole temple in shorty that we have
prided ourselves on, comes tumbling down about us like
the walls of Jericho, not without a certain sense of the
ridiculous. Though, like other afflictions, this is not for
the present joyous, still the space thus cleared in our mind
may be so cultivated as afterwards to bring forth peaceable
fruits of righteousness.
In my case, my idol was utterly defaced and destroyed
in my eyes, because I could not conceal from myself that
ehe was making a marriage wholly without the one element
that aBove all others marriage requires. Miss Ellery was
perfectly well aware of the mental inferiority of poor Bill
THE VALLEY OF HUMILIATION 69
Marshall, and had listened unreprovingly to the half-eon-
temptuous pity with which it was customary among us to
speak of him. I remembered how patronizingly I had
often talked of him to her, "Eeally not a bad fellow
only a little weak, you see ; " and the pretty, graceful droll-
ery in her eyes. I remembered things that these same
eyes had looked at me when he blundered and miscalled
words in conversation, and a thousand sayings and intima-
tions, each by itself indefinite as the boundary between two
tints of the rainbow, by which she showed a superior sense
of pleasure in my conversation and society.
And was all this acting and insincerity ? I thought not.
I was and am fully convinced that had I only been pos-
sessed of the wealth of Bill Marshall, Miss Ellery would
infinitely have preferred me as a life companion; and it
was no very serious amount of youthful vanity to imagine
that I should have proved a more entertaining one. I can
easily imagine that she made the decision with some gentle
regret at first, regret dried up like morning dew in the
full sunlight of wedding diamonds, and capable of being
put completely to sleep upon a couch of cashmere shawls.
With what indignant bitterness did I listen to all the
details of the impending wedding from fluent Jim Fellows,
who, being from Portland and well posted in all the gossip
of the circle in which she moved, enlightened our entry
with daily and weekly bulletins of the grandeur and splen-
dors that were being, and to be.
" Boys, only think ! Her wedding present from him is
a set of diamonds valued at twenty-five thousand dollars.
Bob Rivers saw them on exhibition at Tiffany's. Then
she has three of the most splendid cashmere shawls that
ever were imported into Maine. Captain Sautelle got them
from an Indian Prince, and there 's no saying what they
would have cost at usual rates. I tell you, Bill is going it
in style, and they are going to be married with drums and
70 MY WIFE AND I
trumpets, cymbals and dances; such a wedding as will
make old Portland stare; and then off they are going to
travel no end of time in Europe, and see all the kingdoms
of the world, and the glory of them."
Now, I suppose none of us doubted that could Miss
Ellery have attained the diamonds and the cashmeres and
the fortune, with all its possibilities of luxury and self-
indulgence, without the addition of the husband, nothing
would have been wanting to complete her good fortune;
but it is a condition in the way of a woman's making a
fortune by marriage, as it was with Faust's compact with
an unmentionable party, that it can only be ratified by the
sacrifice of herself herself, and for life! A sacrifice
most awful and holy when made in pure love, and most
fearful when made for any other consideration. The fact
that Miss Ellery could make it was immediate and com-
plete disenchantment to me.
Mine is not, I suppose, the only case where the ideal
which has been formed under the brooding influence of a
noble mother is shattered by the hand of woman. Some
woman, armed with the sacramental power of beauty, en-
kindles the highest manliness of the youth, and is, in his
eyes, the incarnate form of purity and unworldly virtue, the
high prize and incitement to valor, patience, constancy, and
courage in the great life- battle.
But she sells herself before his eyes, for diamonds and
laces, and trinkets and perfumes ; for the liberty of walk-
ing on soft carpets and singing in gilded cages ; and all the
world laughs at his simplicity in supposing that, a fair
chance given, any woman would ever do otherwise. Is
not beauty woman's capital in trade, the price put into her
hand to get whatever she needs ; and are not the most beau-
tiful, as a matter of course, destined prizes of the richest ?
Miss Ellery 's marriage was to me a great awakening, a
coming out of a life of pure ideas and sentiment into one of
THE VALLEY OF HUMILIATION 71
external realities. Hitherto, I had lived only with people
all whose measures and valuations had heen those relating
to the character the intellect and the heart. Never
in my father's house had I heard the gaining of money
spoken of as success in life, except as far as money was
needed to advance education, and education was a means
for doing good. My father had his zeal, his earnestness,
his ' exaltations, but they all related to things to he done
in his life-work: the saving of souls, the conversion of
sinners, the gathering of churches, the repression of intem-
perance and immorality, the advancement of education.
My elder brothers had successfully entered the ministry
under his influence, and in counsels with them where to
settle I had never heard the question of salary or worldly
support even discussed. The first, the only question I
ever heard considered, was What work was needed to he
done, and what fitness for the doing of it; taking for
granted the record, that where the Kingdom of God and
its righteousness were first sought, all things would be
added. Thus all my visions of future life had in them
something of the innocent verdancy of the golden age,
when noble men strove for the favor of fair women, by
pureness, by knowledge, by heroism, and the bravest
won the crown from the hand of the most beautiful.
And suddenly to my awakened eyes the whole rushing
cavalcade of fashionable life swept by, bearing my princess,
amid waving feathers and flashing jewels and dazzling robes
and merry laughs and jests, leaving me by the wayside
dazed and covered with dust, to plod on alone. Kow first
I felt the shame which comes over a young man, that he
has not known the world as old worldlings know it.
In the discussions among the boys, relating to this mar-
riage, I first learned the power of that temptation which
comes upon every young man to look on wealth as the first
object in a life-race.
72 MY WIFE AND I
Woman is by order of nature the conservator of the
ideal. Formed of finer clay, with nicer perceptions, and
refined fibre, she is the appointed priestess to guard the
poetry of life from sacrilege; but if she be bribed to betray
the shrine, what hope for us ? "If the salt have lost its
savor, wherewith shall it be salted ? "
My acquaintance with Miss Ellery had brought me out
of my scholastic retirement, and made me an acquaintance
of the whole bevy of the girls of X. Miss Ellery had been
invited and f^ted in all the families, and her special train
of adorers had followed her, and thus I was au eourant
of all the existing girl- world of our little town. It was
-curious to remark what a silken flutter of wings, what an
endless volubility of tongues there was, about this engage-
ment and marriage, and how, on the whole, it was treated
as the height of splendor and good fortune. My rosy-faced
friend. Miss Dotha, was invited to the festival as brides-
maid, and returned thereafter "trailing clouds of glory''
into the primitive circles of X; and my cynical bitterness
of soul took a sort of perverse pleasure in the amplifications
and discussions that I constantly heard in the tea-drinking
circles of the town.
"Oh, girls, you've no idea about those diamonds," said
Miss Dotha; "great big diamonds as large as peas, and just
as clear as water! Bill Marshall made them send orders
to Europe specially for the purpose ; then she had a pearl
set that his mother gave, and his sister gave an amethyst
set for a breakfast suit ! and you ought to have seen the
presents! It was a perfect bazaar! The Marshalls are an
enormously rich family, and they all came down splendidly ;
old Uncle Tom Marshall gave a solid silver dining set em-
bossed with gold, and old Aunt Tabitha Marshall gave a
real Sevres china tea-set, that was taken out of one of the
royal palaces in France at the time of the French Revolu-
tion. Captain Atkins was in France about the time they
THE VALLEY OF HUMILIATION 78
were tacking palaces, and doing all such things, and he
brought away quite a number of things that found their
way into some of these rich old Portland families. Her
wedding veil was given by old Grandmamma Marshall,
and was said to have been one that belonged to Queen
Marie Antoinette, taken by some of those horrid women
when they sacked the Tuileries, and sold to Captain At-
kins; at any rate, it was the most wonderful point lace,
just like an old picture.'^
Fancy the drawing of breaths, the exclamations, the
groans of delight, from a knot of pretty, well-dressed, nice
country girls, at these wonderful glimpses into paradise.
"After all," I said, " I think this custom of loading down
a woman with finery just at her marriage hour is giving it
when she is least able to appreciate it. Why distract her
with gewgaws at the very moment when her h^art must
be so full of a new affection that she cares for nothing else ?
Miss Ellery is probably so lost in her love for Mr. Mar-
shall that she scarcely gives a thought to these things, ^ and
really forgets that she has them. It would be much more
in point to give them to some girl that hasn't a lover. '^
I spoke with a simple, serious air, as if I had most per-
fect faith in my words, and a general gentle smile of amuse-
ment went round the circle, rippling into a laugh outright
on the faces of some of the gayer girls. Miss Dotha said:
**0h, come, now, Mr. Henderson, you are too severe.''
" Severe ! " said I ; "I can't understand what you meiin.
Miss Dotha. You don't mean, of course, to intimate that
Miss Ellery is not in love with the man she has married ? "
"Oh, now!" said Miss Dotha, laughing, "you know
perfectly, Mr. Henderson we all know it 's pretty
well understood, that this was n't exactly what you call a
love-match; in fact, I know," she added, with the assurance
of a confidante, "that she had great difficulty in making up
her mind; but her family were very anxious for the
74 MY WIFE AND I
match, and his family thought it would be such a good
thing for him to marry and settle down, you know, so one
way and another she concluded to take him.''
"And, after all. Will Marshall is a good-natured crea-
ture," said Miss Smith.
"And going to Europe is such a temptation," said Miss
Brown.
"And she must marry some time," said Miss Jones,
"and one can't have everything, you know. Will is cer-
tain to be kind to her, and let her have her own way."
"For my part," said pretty Miss Green, "I'm free to
say that I don't blame any girl that has a chance to get
such a fortime, for doing it, as Miss Ellery has. I 've al-
ways been poor, and pinched, and plagued; never can go
anywhere, or see anything, or dress as I want to ; and if
I had a chance, such as Miss Ellery had, I think I should
be a fool not to take it."
"Well," said Miss Black reflectively, "the only ques-
tion is, couldn't Miss Ellery have waited and found a man
who had more intellect, and more culture, whom she could
respect and love, and who had money, too? She had such
extraordinary beauty and such popular manners, I should
have thought she might."
"Oh, well," said Miss Dotha, "she was getting on
she was three-and- twenty already and nobody of just the
right sort had turned up * a bird in the hand ' you
know. After all, I dare say she can love Will Marshall
well enough."
Well enough ! The cool philosophic tone of this phrase
smote on my ear curiously.
"And pray, fair ladies, how much is * well enough ' 1 "
said I.
"Well enough to keep the peace," said Miss Green,
"and each let the other alone, to go their own ways and
have no fighting."
THE VALLEY OF HUMILIATION 75
Miss Green was a pretty, spicy little body, with a pair
of provoking hazel eyes; who talked like an unprincipled
little pirate, though she generally acted like a nice woman.
In less than a year after, by the bye, she married a home
missionary, in Maine, and has been a devoted wife and
mother in a little parish somewhere in the region of Skow-
hegan ever since.
But I returned to my room gloriously misanthropic, and
for some time my thoughts, like bees, were busy gathering
bitter honey. I gave up visiting in the tea-drinking circles
of X. I got myself a dark sombrero hat, which I slouched
down over my eyes in bandit style when I walked the
street and met with any of my former gentle acquaintances.
I wrote my mother most sublime and awful letters on the
inconceivable vanity and nothingness of human life. I
read Plato and .^chylus, and Emerson's Essays, and began
to think myself an old Philosopher risen from the dead.
There was a melancholy gravity about all my college exer-
cises, and I began to look down on young freshmen and
sophomores with a serene compassion, as a sage who has
passed through the vale of years and learned that all is
vanity.
The Valley of Humiliation may have its charms it is
said that there are many flowers that grow there, and no-
where else, but for all that, a young fellow, so far as I
know, generally walks through the first part of it in rather
a surly and unamiable state. To be sure, had I been wise,
I should have been ready to return thanks on my knees
for my disappointment. True, the doll was stufifed with
sawdust, but it was not my doll. I had not learned the
cheat when it was forever too late to help myself, and was
not condemned to spend life in vain attempts to make a
warm, living friend of a cold marble statue. Many a man
has succeeded in getting his first ideal, and been a miser-
able man always thereafter and therefor.
76 MY WIFE AND I
I have lived to hear very tranquilly of Mrs. Will Mar-
shall's sou^^es and parties, as she reigns in the aristocratic
circles of New Yorkj and to see her, still like a polished
looking-glass, gracefully reflecting every one's whims and
tastes and opinions with charming suavity, and forgetting
them when their backs are turned; and to think that she
is the right thing in the right place a crowned Queen of
Vanity Fair. I have become, too, very tolerant and indul-
gent to the women who do as she did, use their own
charms as the coin wherewith to buy the riches and honors
of the world.
The world has been busy for some centuries in shutting
and locking every door through which a woman could step
into wealth, except the door of marriage. All vigor and
energy, such as men put forth to get this golden key of
life, is condemned and scouted as unfeminine; and a
woman belonging to the upper classes, who undertakes to
get wealth by honest exertion and independent industry,
loses caste, and is condemned by a thousand voices as an
oddity and a deranged perBon. A woman gifted with
beauty, who sells it to buy wealth, is far more leniently
handled. That way of getting money is not called un-
womanly ; and so long as the whole force of the world goes
that way, such marriages as Miss Ellery's and Bill Mar-
shall's will be considered en rlgle.
CHAPTER VII
THE BLUE MISTS
My college course was at last finished satisfactorily to
my mother and friends. What joy there is to be got in
college honors was mine. I studied faithfully and gradu-
ated with the valedictory. Nevertheless I came back home
again a sadder if not a wiser man than I went. In fact, a
tendency to fits of despondency and dejection had been
growing upon me in these last two years of my college life.
With all the self-confidence and conceit that is usually
attributed to yoimg men, and of which they have their
share undoubtedly, they still have their times of walking
through troubled waters, and sinking in deep mire where
there is no standing.
During my last year, the question "What are you good
for?" had often borne down like a nightmare upon me.
When I entered college all was distant, golden, indefinite,
and I was sure that I was good for almost anything that
could be named. Nothing that ever had been attained by
man looked to me impossible. Eiches, honor, fame, any-
thing that any other man unassisted had wrought out for
himself with his own right arm, I could work out also.
But as I measured myself with real tasks, and as I
rubbed and grated against other minds and whirled round
and round in the various experiences of college life, I grew
smaller and smaller in my own esteem, and oftener and
oftener in my lonely hours it seemed as if some evil genius
delighted to lord it over me, and sitting at my bedside or
fireside to say, "What are you good for, to what purpose
78 MY WIFE AND I
all the pains and money that have been thrown away on
you ? You '11 never be anything ; you '11 only mortify your
poor mother that has set her heart on you, and make your
Uncle Jacob ashamed of you." Can any anguish equal
the depths of those, blues in which a man's whole self
hangs in suspense before his own eyes, and he doubts
whether he himself,, with his entire outfit and apparatus,
body, soul, and spirit, isn't to be, after all, a complete
failure 1 Better, he thinks, never to have been bom, than
to be born to no purpose. Then first he wrestles with the
question. What is life for, and what am I to do or seek in
it ? It seems to be not without purpose, that the active
life-work of the great representative Man of Men was ush-
ered in by a forty days' dreary wandering in the wilderness
hungry, faint, and tempted of the Devil; for certainly,
after education has pretty thoroughly waked up all there
.is in a man, and the time is at hand that he is to make
the decision what to do with it, there often comes a wan-
dering, darkened, unsettled, tempted passage in his life.
In Christ's temptations we may see all that besets the
young man.
The daily-bread question, or how to get a living, the
ambitious heavings, or the kingdoms of the world and the
glory of them, all to be got by some yielding to Satan,
the ostentatious impulse to come down on the world with
^ rush and a sensation, these are mirrored in a young
man's smaller life just as they were in that great life.
The whole heavens can be reflected in the little pool as in
the broad ocean!
All these elements of unrest had been boiling in my
inind during the last year. Who wants to be nothing in
the great world ? No young man at this time of his course.
The wisdom of becoming nothing that he may possess all
things is too high for this stage of immaturity.
^ I came into college as simple, and contented, and satis-
THE BLUE MISTS 79
fied as a huckleberry bush in a sweet-fern pasture. I felt
rich enough for all I wanted to do, and my path of life lay
before me defined with great simplicity. But my intimacy
with Miss Ellery, her marriage and all that pertained to it,
had brought before my eyes the world of wealth and fash-
ion, a world which a young collegian may try to despise,
and about which he may write the most disparaging moral
reflections, but which has, after all, its power to trouble
his soul. The consciousness of being gloveless, and thread-
bare in toilette, comes over one in certain atmospheres, as
the consciousness of nakedness to Adam and Eve. It is
true that in the institution where I attended, as in many
other rural colleges in New England, I was backed up by
a majority of healthy-minded, hardy men, of real mark
and worth, children of honest toil and self-respecting pov-
erty, who were bravely working their way up through
education to the prizes and attainments of life. Simple
economies were therefore well understood and respected in
the college.
Nevertheless there is something not altogether vulgar in
the attractions which wealth enables one to throw aroimd
himself. I was a social favorite in college, and took a
stand among my fellows as a writer and speaker, and so
had a considerable share of that sincere sort of flattery
which college boys lavish on each other. I was invited
and made much of by some whose means were ample,
whose apartments were luxuriously and tastefully furnished,
but who were none the less good scholars and high-minded,
gentlemanly fellows.
In their vacations I had been invited to their houses,
and had seen all the refinement, the repose, the ease, and
the quietude that come from the possession of wealth in
the hands of those who know how to use it. Wealth in
such hands gives opportimities of the broadest culture,
ability to live in the wisest manner, freedom to choose the
BO MT WIFE AND I
healthiest surroimdings both for mind and body, not re-
stricted by considerations of expense; and how could I
think it anything else than an object ardently to be
sought T
It is true, my rich friends seemed equally to enjoy the
vacations in my little, plain, mountain home. People gen-
erally are insensible to advantages they have always enjoyed,
and have an appetite for something new; so the homely
rusticity of our house, the perfect freedom from convention-
alities, the wild, mountain scenery, the wholesome detail of
farm life, the barn with its sweet stores of hay, and its
nooks and comers and hiding-places, the gathering in of
our apples, and the making of cider, the com-huskings and
Thanksgiving frolics, seemed to have their interest and
delights to them, and they often told me I was a lucky
fellow to .be bom to such pleasant surroundings. But I
thought within myself. It is easy to say this when you feel
the control of thousands in your pocket, when if you are
tired you can go to any land or country of the earth for
change of scene.
In fact, we see in history that the ctusade of St. Francis
in favor of Poverty was not begun by a poor man, but by
a young nobleman who had known nothing hitherto but
wealth and luxury. It is from the rich, if from any, that
our grasping age must leam renunciation and simplicity.
It is easier to renounce a good which one has tried and of
which one knows all the attendant thorns and stings than
to renounce one that has been only painted by the imagi-
nation, and whose want has been keenly felt. When I
came to the college I came from the controlling power of
home influences. At an early age I had felt the strength
of that sphere of spirituality that encircled the lives of my
parents, and, being very receptive and sympathetic, had
reflected in my childish nature all their feelings.
I had tenoonced the world before I knew what the world
THE BLUE MISTS 81
was. I had joined my father's church and was looked
upon as one destined in time to take up my father's work
of the ministry. Four years had passed, and I came back
to my mother, weakened and doubting, indisposed to take
up the holy work to which in my early days I looked for-
ward with enthusiasm, yet with all the sadness which
comes from indecision as to one's life-object. To be a
minister is to embrace a life of poverty, of toil, of self-
denial. To do this, not only with cheerfulness but with
an enthusiasm which shall bear down all before it, which
shall elevate it into the region of moral poetry and ideality,
requires a fervid, unshaken faith. The man must feel the
power of an endless life, be lifted above things material
and temporal to things sublime and eternal.
Now it is one peculiarity of the professors of the Chris-
tian religion that they have not, at least of late years,
arranged their system of education with any wise adaptation
to having their young men come out of it Christians. In
this they differ from many other religionists. The Brah-
mins educate their sons so that they shall infallibly become
Brahmins ; the Jews so that they shall infallibly be Jews ]
the Mohammedans so that they shall be Mohammedans; but
the Christians educate their sons so that nearly half of them
turn out unbelievers -^ professors of no religion at all.
There is a book which the Christian world unite in de-
claring to be an infallible revelation from Heaven. It has
been the judgment of critics that the various writings in
this volume excel other writings in point of mere literary
merit as much as they do in purity and elevation of the
pioral sentiment. Yet it is remarkable that the critical
study of these sacred writings in their original tongues is
not in most of our Christian colleges considered as an esseui-
tial part of the education of a Christian gentleman, while
the heathen literature of Greece and Rome is treated as
something indispensable, and to be gftix^d ^t aU h^ard^.
82 MY WIFE AND I
It is a fact that from the time that the boy begins to fit
for college, his mind is so driven and pressed with the
effort to acquire the classical literature, that there is no
time to acquire the literature of the Bible, neither is it
associated in his mind with the dignity and respect of a
classical attainment. He must be familiar with Horace
and Ovid, with Cicero and Plato, ^Eschylus and Homer in
their original tongues, but the majestic poetry of the Old
Testament, and its sages and seers and prophets, become
with every advancing year more unintelligible to him. A
thoroughly educated graduate of most of our colleges is
unprepared to read intelligently many parts of Isaiah or
Ezekiel or Paul's Epistles. The Scripture lessons of the
church service often strike on his ear as a strange quaint
babble of peculiar sounds, without rhyme or reason. Un-
cultured and uneducated in all that should enable him to
understand them, he is only preserved by a sort of educa-
tional awe from regarding them as the jargon of barbarians.
Meanwhile, this literature of the Bible, strange, weird,
sibylline, and full of unfulfilled needs and requirements of
study, is being assailed in detail through all the courses of
a boy's college life. The objections to it as a divine reve-
lation relate to critical questions in languages of which he
is ignorant, and yet they are everywhere ; they are in the
air he breathes, they permeate all literature, they enter
into modern science, they disintegrate and wear away, bit
by bit, his reverence and his confidence.
This work had been going on insensibly in my head
during my college life, notwithstanding the loyalty of my
heart. ' During those years I had learned to associate the
Bible with the most sacred memories of home, with the
dearest loves 6i home life. It was woven with remem-
brances of daily gatherings around the family altar, with
scenes of deepest emotion when I had seen my father and
mother fly to its shelter and rest upon its promises. There
THE BLUE inSTS 83
were passages that never recurred to me except with the
sound of my father's vihrating voice, penetrating their
words with a never dying power. The Bihle was to me
like a father and a mother, and the douhts, and queries,
the respectful suggestions of incredulity, the mildly sugges-
tive ahatements of its authority, which met me, now here
and now there, in all the course of my readings and studies,
were as painful to me as reflections cast on my father's
probity or my mother's honor.
I would not listen to them, I would not give them voice,
I smothered them in the deepest recesses of my heart, while
meantime the daily pressure that came on me in the studies
and requirements of college life left me neither leisure nor in-
clination to pursue the researches that should clear them up.
To be sure, nothing is so important as the soul no-
thing is of so much moment as religion, and the question
"Is this God's book or is it not] " is the question of ques-
tions. It underlies all things, and he who is wise would
drop all other things and undergo any toil and make any
studies that should fit him to judge understandingly on
this point. But I speak from experience when I say that
the course of study in Christian America is so arranged
that a boy, from the grammar school upward till he gradu-
ates, is so fully pressed and overladen with all other studies
that there is no probability that he will find the time or
the inclination for such investigation. In most cases he
will do just what I did, throw himself upon the studies
proposed to him, work enough to meet the demands of the
hour, and put off the acquisition of that more important
knowledge to an indefinite future, and sigh, and go back-
ward in his faith.
But without faith or with a faith trembling and uncer-
tain, how is a man to turn his back on the world that is
before him the world that he can see, hear, touch, and
taste to work for the world that is unseen and eternal 1
84 MY WIFE AND I
I will not repeat the flattering words that often fell on
my ear and said to me, ''You can make your way any-
where; you can be anything you please." And then there
were voices that said in my heart, ''I may have wealth,
and with it means of power^ of culture, of taste, of luxury.
If I only set out for that, I may get it." And then, in
contrast, came that life I had seen my father live, in its
grand simplicity, in its enthusiastic sincerity, in its exult-
ing sense of joy in what he was doing, down to the last
mortal moment, and I wished, oh, how fervently! that I
eould believe as he did. But to be a minister merely from
a sense of duty to bear the burden of poverty with no
perception of the unspeakable riches which Christ hath
placed therein who would not shrink from a life so grat-
ing and so cold ? To choose the ministry as a pedestal for
oratory and self -display and poetic religious sentiment, and
thus to attain distinction and easy position, and the com-
mand of fashionable luxury, seemed to me a temptation to
desecration still more terrible, and I dreaded the hour
which should close my college life and make a decision
inevitable.
It was with a sober and sad heart that I closed my col-
lege course and parted from classmates jolly fellows
with whom had rolled away the four best years of my life
years that as one goes on afterwards in age look brighter
and brighter in the distance. It was a lonesome and pok-
erish operation to dismantle the room that had long been
my home, to bargain away my furniture, pack my books,
and bid a final farewell to all the old quiddities and oddi-
ties that I bad grown attached to in the quaint little vil-
lage. The parting from Alma Mater is a second leaving of
home and this time for the great world. There is no
staving off the battle of life now the tents are struck,
the camp-fires put out, and one must be on the march.
CHAPTER Vm
AN OUTLOOK INTO LIFE
My coming back to my native town was an event of
public notoriety. I had won laurels, and as I was the
village property, my laurels were duly commented on and
properly appreciated. Highland was one of those thrifty
Yankee settlements where every house seems to speak the
people so well-to-do, and so careful, and progressive in all
the means of material comfort. There was not a house in
it that was not in a sort of healthy, growing state, receiv-
ing, from time to time, some accession that showed that
the Yankee aspiration was busy, stretching and enlarging.
This had a new bay-window, and that had a new veranda;
the other, new, tight, white picket fences all round the
yard. Others rejoiced in a fresh coat of paint. But all
were alive, and apparently self-repairing. There was to
every house the thrifty wood-pile, seasoning for winter;
the clean garden, with its wealth of fruit and its gay bor-
ders of flowers; and every new kind of flower, and every
choice new fruit, found somewhere a patron who was try-
ing a hand at it.
Highland was a place worth living in just for its scenery.
It was at that precise point of the country where the hills
are inspiriting, vivacious, reminding one of the Psalm,
"The little hills rejoice on every side!" Mountains are
grand, but they also are dreary. For a near prospect they
overpower too much, they shut out the sun, they have sav-
age propensities, untamable by man, shown once in a
while in landslides and freshets; but these half-grown
86 MY WIFE AND I
hills uplift one like waves of the sea. In summer they are
wonderful in all possible shades of greenness; in autumn
they are like a mystical rainbow an ocean of waves, flam-
boyant with every wonderful device of color; and even
when the leaves are gone, in November, and nothing left
but the bristling steel-blue outlines of trees, there is a won-
derful purple haze, a veil of dreamy softness, around them,
that makes you think you never saw them so beautiful.
So I said to myself, as I came rambling over hill and
dale back to the old homestead, and met my mother's
bright face of welcome at the door. I was the hero of the
hour at home, and everything had been prepared to make
me welcome. My brother, who kept the homestead, had
relinquished the prospect of a college life, and devoted him-
self to farming, but looked on me as the most favored of
mortals in the attainments I had made. His young wife and
growing family of children clustered around my mother and
leaned on her experience; and as every one in the little
village knew and loved her, there was a general felicitation
and congratulation on the event of my return and my honors.
"See him in his father's pulpit afore long," said Deacon
Manning, who called the first evening to pay his respects;
"better try his hand at the weekly prayer meeting, and
stir us up a bit."
"I think. Deacon," said I, "I shall have to be one of
those that learn in silence, awhile longer. I may come to
be taught, but I certainly cannot teach."
"Well, now, that's modest for a young fellow that's
just been through college! They commonly are as fea-
thery and highflying as a this year's rooster, and ready to
crow whether their voice breaks or not," said the deacon.
" * Learn in silence ! ' Well, that 'ere beats all for a young
man ! "
I thought to myself that the good deacon little knew the
lack of faith that was covered by my humility.
AN OUTLOOK INTO LIFE 87
Since my father's death my mother had made her home
with my Uncle Jacob. Her health was delicate, and she
preferred to enjoy the honors of a grandmother at a little
distance. My Uncle Jacob had no children. Aunt Polly,
his wife, was just the softest, sleekest, most domestic dove
of a woman whose wings were ever covered with silver. I
always think of her in some soft, pearly silk, with a filmy
cap, and a half-handkerchief crossed over a gentle, motherly
bosom, soft moving, soft speaking, but with a pair of
bright, hazel eyes, keen as arrows to send their glances into
every place in her dominions. Let anybody try sending
in a false account to Aunt Polly, and they will see that
the brightness of her eyes was not merely for ornament.
Yet everything she put her hand to went so exactly, so
easily, you would have said those eyes were made for
nothing but reading, for which Aunt Polly had a great
taste, and for which she found abundance of leisure.
My mother and she were enjoying together a long and
quiet Saturday afternoon of life, reading to each other, and
quietly and leisurely discussing all that they read, not
merely the last novel, as the fashion of women in towns
and cities is apt to be, but all the solid works of philoso-
phy and literature that marked the times. My uncle's
house was like a bookseller's stall, it was overrunning
with books. The cases covered the walls; they crowded
the corners and angles; and still every noteworthy book
was ordered, to swell the stock.
My mother and aunt had read together Lecky, and
Buckle, and Herbert Spencer, with the keen critical inter-
est of fresh minds. Had it troubled their faith 1 Not in
the least; no more than it would that of Mary on the
morning after the resurrection! There is a certain moral
altitude where faith becomes knowledge, and the bat- wings
of doubt cannot fly so high. My mother was dwelling in
that land of Beulah, where the sun always shineth, and the
88 BtY WIFE AND I
belln of the heavenly city are heard, and the shining ones
walk. All vras clear to her, all bright, all real, in "the
beyond ; " but that kind of evidence is above the realm of
heavy-footed reason. The "joy unspeakable," the "peace
that passeth understanding," are things that cannot be
passed from hand to hand. Else I am quite sure my
mother would have taken the crown of joy from her head
and the peace from her bosom, and given them to me.
But the " white stone with the new name " is Christ's gift
to each for himself, and "no man knoweth it save he that
receiveth it."
But these witnesses who stand gazing into heaven are
not without their power dn us who stand lower. It stead-
ied my moral nerves, so to speak, that my mother had read
and weighed the words that were making so much doubt
and shaking; that she fully comprehended them, and that
she smiled without fear. She listened without distress,
without anxiety, to all my doubts and falterings. "You
must pass through this; you will be led; it will all come
right," she said; "and then perhaps you will be the guide
of others."
I had feared to tell her that I had abandoned the pur-
pose of the ministry, but I found it easy.
"I would not have you embrace the ministry for any-
thing but a true love," she said, "any more than I would
that you should marry a wife for any other reason. If
ever the time comes that you feel you must be that, it
will be your call; but you can be God's minister otherwise
than through the pulpit."
"Talk over your plans with your uncle," she said; "he
is in your father's place now."
In fact, my uncle, having no children of his own, had
set his heart on me, and was disposed to make me heir,
not only to his very modest personal estate, but also to
hi& harvest of ideas and opinions, -^ all that backwater of
AN OUTLOOK INTO LIFE 89
thoughts and ideas that accumulate on the mind of a man
who thinks and reads a great deal in a lonely neighbor*
hood. So he took me up as a companion in his daily rides
over the country.
"Well, Harry, where nextl" he said to me the day
after my return, as we were driving together. " What are
you about f Going to try the ministry ? "
"I dare not; I am not fit. I know father wanted it,
and prayed for it, and nothing would be such a joy to
mother, but"
My uncle gave a shrewd, sidelong glance on me.
" I suppose you are like a good many fellows ; an educa-
tion gives them a general shaking up, and all their beliefs
break from their lashings and go rolling and tumbling
about like spars and oil-casks in a storm on shipboard."
"I can't say that is true of all my beliefs; but yet a
great many things that I tried to regard as certain are
untied. I have too many doubts for a teacher."
"Who has n't 1 I don't know anything in heaven or
earth that forty unanswerable questions can't be asked
about."
"You know," answered I, "Tennyson says,
* There lives more faith in honest doubt,
Believe me, than in half the creeds.' **
"H'm! that depends. Doubt is very well as a sort of
constitutional crisis in the beginning of one's life; but if
it runs on and gets to be chronic, it breaks a fellow up,
and makes him morally spindling and sickly. Men that
do anything in the world must be men of strong convic-
tions; it won't do to go through life like a hen, craw-
crawing and lifting up one foot, and not knowing where to
set it down next."
" But, " said I, " while I am passing through the consti*-
tutional crisis, as you call it, is the very time I must make
up my mind to teach others on the most awful of all sub-
90 MY WIFE AND I
jects. I cannot and dare not. I must be a learner for
some years to come, and I must be a learner without any
pledges, expressed or implied, to find the truth this way
or that."
"Well," said my uncle, "I'm not so greatly concerned
about that the Lord needs other ministers besides those
in the pulpit. Why, man, the sermons on the evidences
of Christianity that have come home to me most have been
preached by lay preachers in poor houses and lonely
churches, by ignorant men and women, and little children.
There 's old Aunt Sarah there," he said, pointing with his
whip to a brown house in the distance: "that woman is
dying of a cancer, that slowly eats away her life in linger-
ing agony, and all her dependence is the work of a sickly,
consumptive daughter, and yet she is more than resigned
to her lot; she is so cheerful, so thankful, so hopeful, there
is such a blessed calm, peace and rest and sweetness in
that house, that I love to go there. The influence of that
woman is felt all through the village she preaches to
some purpose."
"Because she knows what she believes," I said.
"It was the same with your father, Harry. Now, my
boy," he added, turning to me with the old controversial
twinkle in his eye, and speaking in a confidential tone,
"the fact is, I never agreed with your father doctrinally;
there were weak spots in his system all along, and I always
told him so. I could trip him and floor him in an argu-
ment, and have done it a hundred times," he said, giving
a touch to his horse.
I thought to myself that it was well enough that my
father wasn't there to hear that statement, otherwise there
would have been an immediate tilting match, and the whole
ground to be gone over.
"Yes," he said; "it wasn't mainly in your father's
theology that his strength lay it was the Christ in him
AN OUTLOOK INTO LIFE 91
the great warm heart his crystal purity and simplicity
his unworldly earnestness and honesty. He was a godly
man and a manly man both, and he sowed seed all over
this State that came up good men and good women. Yes,
there are hundreds and hundreds in this State to-day that
are good men and good women mainly because he lived.
That *s what I call success in life, Harry, when a man car-
ries himself so that he turns into seed-corn and makes a
harvest of good people. You may upset a man's reason-
ings, and his theology may go to the dogs, but a brave
Christian life you can't upset, it will tell. Now, Harry,
are you going to try for that 1 "
" God helping me, I will, " I said.
"You see, as to the theologies,'' he added, "I think it
has been well 6aid that the Christian world just now is like
a ship that 's tacking; it has lost the wind on one side and
not quite got it on the other. The growth of society, the
development of new physical laws, and this modern scientific
rush of the human mind are going to modify the man-made
theologies and creeds ; some of them* will drop away just as the
blossom does when the fruit forms, but Christ's religion will
be just the same as ever his words will not pass away."
"But then," I said, "there is a whole labyrinth of per-
plexing questions about this Bible. What is inspiration?
What ground does it cover? How much of all these books
is inspired? What is their history? How came we by
them ? What evidence have we that the record gives us
Christ's words uncorrupted ? "
" If you had been brought up in Justin Martyr's time
or the days of the primitive Christians you would have
been put to study all these things first and foremost in
your education, but we modern Christians teach young
men everything else except what we profess to think the
most important; and so you come out of college ignorant^
just where knowledge is most vital."
92 MY WIFE AND I
"Well, that is past praying for now," said I.
"Yes; but even now there is a way out just as going
through a bog you plant your foot hard on what land there
is, and then take your bearings so you must do here.
The way to get rid of doubts in religion is to go to work
with all our might and practice what we lon't doubt, and
that you can do whatever your calling or profession."
"I shall certainly try," said I.
"For example," said my uncle, "there 's the Sermon on
the Mount. Nobody has any doubt about that, there it
lies plain enough, and enough of it not a bit of what 's
called theology in it. Not a word of information to settle
the mooted questions men wrangle over, but with a direct
answer to just the questions any thoughtful man must
want to have answered when he looks at life. Is there a
Father in the heavens 1 Will he help us if we ask 1 May
the troubles of life be our discipline? Is there a better
life beyond? And how are we to get that? There is
Christ*s philosophy of life in that sermon, and Christ's
mode of dealing with atstual existing society ; and he who
undertakes in good faith to square his heart and life by it
will have his hands full. The world has been traveling
eighteen hundred years and not come fully into the light of
its meaning. There has never been a Christian state or a
Christian nation, according to that. That document is in
modern society just like a lump of soda in a tumbler of vine-
gar, it keeps up a constant commotion, and will do so till
every particle of life is adjusted on its principles. The man
who works out Christ's teachings into a palpable life-form
preaches Christianity, no matter what his trade or calling.
He may be a coal-heaver, or he may be a merchant, or a
lawyer, or an editor he preaches all the same. Men always
know it when they meet a bit of Christ's sermons walking
out bodily in good deeds; they 're not like worldly wisdom,
and have a smack of something a good deal higher than
AN OUTLOOK INTO LIFE 98
common sense, but when people see it they say, * Yes *^
that's the true thing.' Now one of our Presidents, Gen-
eral Harrison, found out on a certain day that through a
flaw in the title-deeds he was owner to half the city of
Cincinnati. What does he do ? Why, simply he says to
himself, ' These people have paid their money in good faith,
and I '11 do by them as I 'd be done by, ' and he goes to a
lawyer and has fresh deeds drawn out for the whole of
'em, and lived and died a poor, honest man. That action
was a preaching of Christ's doctrine 83 I take it, and if
you '11 do as much whenever you get a chance, it 's no
matter what calling you take for a pulpit. So now tell
me, what are you thinking of setting yourself about 1 "
"I intend to devote myself to literature," said I. "I
always had a facility for writing, while I never felt the call
or impulse toward public speaking; and I think the field
of current literature opens a wide scope. I have bad
already some success in having articles accepted and well
spoken of, and have now some promising offers. I have
an opportunity to travel in Europe as correspondent of two
papers, and I shall study to improve myself. In time I
may become an editor, and then perhaps at last proprietor
of a paper. So runs my scheme of life, and I hope I shall
be true to myself and my religion in it. I shall certainly
try to. Current literature, the literature of newspapers
and magazines, is certainly a power."
"A very great power, Harry," said my uncle; "and get-
ting to be in our day a tremendous power, a power far out-
going that of the pulpit, and that of books. This constant
daily self-asserting literature of newspapers and periodicals
is acting on us tremendously for good or for ill. It has access
to us at all hours and gets itself heard as a preacher cannot,
and gets itself read as scarcely any book does. It ought
to be entered into as solemnly as the pulpit, for it is using
a great power. Yet just now it is power without reapon^
94 MY WIFE AND I
sibility. It is in the hands of men who come under no
pledge, pass no examination, give no vouchers, though they
hold a power more than that of all other professions or
books united. One cannot be a doctor, or a lawyer, or a
minister, imless some body of his fellows looks into his
fitness to serve society in these ways; but one may be
turned loose to talk in every family twice a day, on every
subject, sacred and profane, and say anything he chooses
without even the safeguard of a personal responsibility.
He shall speak from behind a screen and not be known.
Now you know old Dante says that the souls in the other
world were divided into three classes, those who were for
God and those who were for the Devil, and those who were
for neither, but for themselves. It seems to me that
there 's a vast many of these latter at work in our press
smart literary adventurers, who don't care a copper
what they write up or what they write down, wholly in-
different which side of a question they sustain, so they do
it smartly, and ready to sell their wit, their genius, and
their rhetoric to the highest bidder. Now, Harry, I 'd
rather see you a poor, threadbare, hard-worked, country
minister than the smartest and brightest fellow that ever
kept his talents on sale in Vanity Fair."
"Well," said I, "isn't it just here that your principle
of living out a gospel should come ? Must there not be
writers for the press who believe in the Sermon on the
Moimt, and who are pledged to get its principles into life-
forms as fast as they can 1 "
"Yea, verily," said my uncle; "but do you mean to
keep faithful to that? You have, say, a good knack at
English; you can write stories, and poems, and essays;
you have a turn for humor; and now comes the Devil to
you and says, * Show me up the weak points of those re-
formers ; raise a laugh at those temperance men, those
religionists, who, like all us poor human trash, are running
AN OUTLOOK INTO LIFE 95
religion, and morals, and progress into the ground.' You
can succeed; you can carry your world with you. You
see, if Virtue came straight down from heaven with her
white wings and glistening rohes, and always conducted
herself just like an angel, our trial in life would n't he so
great as it is. But she doesn't. Human virtue is more
apt to appear like a bewildered, unprotected female, encum-
bered with all sorts of irregular bandboxes, dusty, dishev-
eled, out of fashion, and elbowing her way with ungainly
haste and ungraceful postures. You know there are stories
of powerful fairies who have appeared in this way among
men, to try their hearts ; and those who protect them when
they are feeble and dishonored, they reward when they are
glorious. Now, your smart, flippant, second-rate wits
never have the grace to honor Truth when she loses her
way, and gets bewildered and dusty, and they drive a flour-
ishing business in laughing down the world's poor efforts
to grow better."
"I think," said I, "that we Americans have one bril-
liant example of a man who had keen humor, and used it
on the Christian side. The animus of the * Biglow Pa-
pers ' is the spirit of the Sermon on the Mount translated
into the language of Yankee life, and defended with wit
and drollery."
" You say truth, Harry, and it was no small thing to do
it ; for the Anti-Slavery cause then was just in that chaotic
state in which every strange bird and beast, every shaggy,
irregular, unkempt reformer, mafe and female, was flocking
to it, and there was capital scope for caricature and ridi-
cule; and all the fastidious, and conservative, and soft-
handed, and even-stepping people were measureless in their
contempt* for this shocking rabble. Lowell stood between
them and the world, and fought the battle with weapons that
the world could understand. There was a gospel truth in
* John p. Robinson, he,*"""
96 MY WIFE AND I
and it did what no sermon could; this is the more remaik-
ahle because he used for the purpose a harlequin faculty,
that has so often been read out of meeting and excommuni-
cated that the world had come to lookat it as ex officio of
the Devil. Whittier and Longfellow made valiant musie
of the solemn sort, but Lowell evangelized wit."
"The fortunate man," said I, "to have used a greal;
opportunity ! "
"Harry, the only way to be a real man is to have a
cause you care for more than yourself. That made your
father that made your New England Fathers that
raises literature above some child's play, and makes it
manly but if you would do it you must count on one
thing that the Devil will tempt you in the outset with
the bread question as he did the Lord. ' Command that
these stones be made bread ' is the first onset you '11 want
money, and money will be offered for what you ought not
to write. There 's the sensational novel, the blood and
murder and adultery story, of which modern literature is
full you can produce it do it perhaps as well as any-
body it will sell. Will you be barkeeper to the public,
and when the public call for hot brandy sling give it to
them, and help them make brutes of themselves? Will
you help to vulgarize and demoralize literature if it will
pay?"
"No," said I, "not if I know myself."
"Then you 've got to begin life with some motive higher
than to make money, or get a living, and you '11 have
sometimes to choose between poisonous nonsense that brings
pay and honest truth that nobody wants."
" And I must tell the Devil that there is a higher life
than the bread-life ? " said L
"Yes; get above that, to begin with. Eemember the
story of General Marion, who invited some British officers
to dine with him and gave them nothing but roasted pota-
AN OUTLOOK INTO LIFE 97
toes. They went away and said it was in vain to try to
conquer a people when their officers would live on such
fare rather than give up the cause. Do you know, Harry,
what is my greatest hope for this State? It's this: Two
or three years ago there was urgent need to carry this State
in an election, and there was no end of hard money sent
up to buy votes among our poor farmers; but they couldn't
be bought. They had learned, ' Man shall not live by
bread alone, ' to some purpose. The State went all straight
for liberty. What I ask of any man who wants to do a
life-work is ability to be happy on a little."
"Well," said I, "I have been brought up to that. I
have no expensive habits. I neither drink nor smoke. I
am used to thinking definitely as to figures, and I am will-
ing to work hard, and begin at the bottom of the ladder,
but I mean to keep my conscience and my religion, and
lend a helping hand to the good cause wherever I can."
" Well, now, my boy, there are only two aids that you need
for this one is God, and the other is a true, good woman.
God you will have, but the woman she must be found. "
I felt the touch on a sore spot, and so answered, pur-
posely misunderstanding his meaning. "Yes, I have not
to go far for her my mother. "
"Oh yes, my boy thank God for her; but, Harry,
you can't take her away from this place ; her roots have
spread here; they are matted and twined with the very
soil; they run under every homestead and embrace every
* grave. She is so interwoven with this village that she
could not take root elsewhere; beside that, Harry, look at
the clock of life count the years, sixty-five, sixty-six,
sixty-seven, and the clock never stops! Her hair is all
white now, and that snow will melt by and by, and she
will be gone upward. God grant I may go first, Harry."
"And I, too," said I fervently. "I could not live
without her."
98 MY WIFE AND I
"You must find one like her, Harry. It is not good
for man to be alone; we all need the motherly, and we
must find it in a wife. Do you know what I think the
prettiest story of courtship I ever read 1 It 's the account
of Isaac's marriage with Kebecca, away back in the simple
old times. You remember the ending of it, * And Isaac
brought her into his mother Sarah's tent, and took Bebekah,
and she became his wife, and Isaac was comforted after his
mother's death.' There 's the philosophy of it," he added;
"it's the mother living again in the wife. The motherly
instinct is in the hearts of all true women, and sooner or
later the true wife becomes a mother to her husband; she
guides him, cares for him, teaches him, and catechises him
all in the nicest way possible. Why, I 'm sure I never
should know how to get along a day without Polly to teach
me the requirings and forbiddens of the commandments;
to lecture me for going out without my muffler, and see
that I put on my flannels in the right time; to insist that
I shall take something for my cough, and raise a rebellion
to my going out when there 's a northeaster. So much
for the body, and as for the soul-life, I believe it is woman
who holds faith in the world it is woman behind the
wall, casting oil on the fire that bums brighter and brighter,
while the Devil pours on water ; and you '11 never get
Christianity out of the earth while there 's a woman in it.
I 'd rather have my wife's and your mother's opinion on
the meaning of a text of Scripture than all the doctors of
divinity, and their faith is an anchor that always holds.
Some jackanapes or other, I read once, said every woman
wanted a master, and was as forlorn without a husband as
a masterless dog. It 's a great deal truer that every man
wants a mother; men are more forlorn than masterless
dogs, a great deal, when no woman cares for them. Look
at the homes single women make for themselves ; how neat,
how cosy, how bright with the oil of gladness, and then
AN OUTLOOK INTO LIFE 99
look at old bachelor dens! The fact is, women are bom
comfort-makers, and can get along by themselves a great
deal better than we can."
"Well," said I, "I don^t think I shall ever marry. Of
course, if I could find a woman like my mother, it would
be another thing. But times are altered the women of
this day are all for flash and ambition and money. There
are no more such as you used to find in the old days."
"Oh, nonsense, Harry; don't come to me with that sort
of talk. Bad sort for a young man very. What I want
to see in a young fellow is a resolution to have a good wife
and a home of his own as quick as he can find it. The
Koman Catholics were n't so far out of the way when they
said marriage was a sacrament. It is the greatest sacra-
ment of life, and that old Church does yeoman service to
humanity in the stand she takes for Christian marriage. I
should call that the most prosperous state when all the
young men and women were well mated and helping one
another according to God's ordinances. You may be sure,
Harry, that you can never be a whole man without a wife."
"Well," I said, "there's time enough for that by and
by; if I 'm predestinated I suppose it '11 come along when
I have my fortune made."
"Don't wait to be rich, Harry. Find a faithful, heroic
friend that will strike hands with you, poor, and begin to
build up your nest together, that 's the way your father
and mother did, and who enjoyed more? That 's the way
your Aunt Polly and I did, and a good time we have had
of it. There has always been the handful of meal in the
barrel and the little oil in the cruse, and if the way we
have always lived is poverty, all I have to say is, poverty
is a pretty nice thing."
"But," said I bitterly, "you talk of golden ages.
There are no such women now as you found, the women
now are mere effeminate dolls of fashion all they want is
^^Ivi^"^^
100 MY WIFE AND I
ease and show and luxury, and they care nothing who
gives it one man is as good as another if he is only
rich."
"Tut, tut, boy! Don't you read your Bible 1 Away
back in Solomon's time it 's written, * Who can find a
virtuous woman ? Her price is above rubies. ' Are rubies
foimd without looking for them, and do diamonds lie about
the street? Now, just attend to my words brave men
make noble women, and noble women make brave men.
Be a true man first, and some day a true woman will be
given you. Yes, a woman whose opinion of you will hold
you up if all the world were against you, and whose * Well
done ! ' will be a better thing to come home to than the
senseless shouting of the world who scream for this thing
to-day and that to-morrow. "
By this time the horse had turned up the lane, and my
mother stood smiling in the door. I marked the soft
white hair that shone like a moonlight glory round her
head, and prayed inwardly that the heavens would spare
her yet a little longer.
C5HAPTEE IX
COUSIN CABOLnnS
"You must go and see your Cousin Caroline,^ said my
mother, the first evening after I got home; ^'you've no
kiea how pretty she 's grown."
*^ She is what I call a pattern girl," said my Uncle Jacob,
"a girl that can make the most of life."
"She is a model housekeeper and manager," said Aunt
Polly.
Kow if Aunt Polly called a girl a model housekeeper, it
was the same for her that it would be for a man to receive
a doctorate from a college ; in fact, it would be a good deal
more, as Aunt Polly was one who always measured her
words, and never said anything pro format or without
having narrowly examined the premises.
Elderly people who live in happy matrimpny are in a
gentle way disposed to be match-makers. If they have
sense, as my elders did, they do not show this disposition
in any very pronounced way. They never advise a young
man directly to try his fortune with "So and so," knowing
that that would, in nine cases out of ten, be the direct way
to defeat their purpose. So my mother's gentle suggestion,
and my Uncle Jacob's praise, and Aunt Polly's indorse-
ment were simply in the line of the most natural remarks.
Cousin Caroline was the daughter of Uncle Jacob's
brother, the only daughter in the family. Her father was
one of those men most useful and necessary in society,
composed of virtues and properties wholly, masculine. He
stoong, energetic, shrewd, acridly conscientious, and
102 MY WIFE AND I
with an intensity of self-will and love of domination.
This rugged rock, all granite, had won a tender woman to
nestle and flower in some crevice of his heart, and she had
clothed him with a garland of sons and one flower of a
daughter. Within a year or two her death had left this
daughter the mistress of her father's family. I remem-
bered Caroline of old, as my school companion; the leading
scholar in every study, always good-natured, steady, and
clear-headed, ready to help me when I faltered in a transla-
tion or the solution of an algebraic problem. In those
days I never thought of ier as pretty. There were the
outlines and rudiments which might bloom into beauty,
but thin, pale, colorless, and deficient in roimdness and
grace.
I had seen very little of Caroline through my college
life; we had exchanged occasionally a cousinly letter, but
in my last vacation she was away upon a visit. I was not,
therefore, prepared for the vision which bloomed out upon
me from the singers' seat, when I looked up on Sunday
and saw her, standing in a shaft of simlight that lit up her
whole form with a kind of glory. I rubbed my eyes with
astonishment,, as I saw there a very beautiful woman, and
beautiful in quite an imcommon style, one which promised
a more lasting continuance of personal attraction than is
usual with our New England girls. I own, that a head
and bust of the Venus di Milo type ; a figure at once grace-
ful, yet ample in its proportions; a rich, glowing bloom,
speaking of health and vigor, gave a new radiance to
eyes that I had always admired in days when I never had
thought of even raising the question of Caroline's beauty.
These charms were set off, too, by a native talent for dress,
that sort of instinctive gift that some women have of
arranging their toilette so as exactly to suit their own pecu-
liar style. There was nothing fussy, or furbelowed, or
gaudy, as one often sees in the dress of a country beauty.
COUSIN CAROLINE 108
but a grand and severe simplicity, which in her case was
the very perfection of art.
My Uncle Ebenezer Simmons lived at a distance of
nearly two miles from our house, but that evening, after
tea, I announced to my mother that I was going to take a
walk over to see Cousin Caroline. I perceived that the
movement was extremely popular and satisfactory in the
eyes of all the domestic circle.
Whose thoughts do not travel in this direction, I won-
der, in a small country neighborhood ? Here comes Harry
Henderson home from college, with his laurels on his brow,
and here is the handsomest girl in the neighborhood, a
pattern of all the virtues. What is there to be done,
except that they should straightway fall in love with each
other, and taking hold of hands walk up the Hill Difficulty
together) I presume that no good gossip in our native
village saw any other arrangement of our destiny as possi-
ble or probable.
I may just as well tell my readers first as last that we
did not fall in love with each other, though we were the
very best friends possible, and I spent nearly half my time
at my uncle's house, besetting her at all hours, and having
the best possible time in her society; but our relations
were as frankly and clearly those of brother and sister as
if we had been children of one mother.
For a beautiful woman, Caroline had the least of what
one may call legitimate coquetry of any person I ever saw.
There are some women, and women of a high class too,
who seem to take a natural and innocent pleasure in the
power which their sex enables them to exercise over men,
and who instinctively do a thousand things to captivate
and charm one of the opposite sex, even when they would
greatly regret winning his whole heart. If well principled
and instructed, they try to keep themselves under control,
but they still do a thousand ensnaring things, for no other
104 MY WIFE AND I
reason, that I can see, than that it is their nature, and
they cannot help it. If they have less principle this fac-
ulty becomes their available power, by which they can take
possession of all that a man has, and use it to carry their
own plans and purposes.
Of this power, whatever it may be, Caroline had no-
thing; nay, more, she despised it, and received the admira-
tion and attentions which her beauty drew from the oppo-
site sex with a coldness, in some instances amounting to
incivility.
With me she had been from the first so frankly, cheer-
fully, and undisguisedly affectionate and kind, and with
such a straightforward air of comradeship and a literal
ignoring of everything sentimental, that the very ground
of anything like love-making did not seem to exist between
us. The last evening before I was to leave for my voyage
to Europe I spent with her, and she gave me a curiously
wrought traveling-case, in which there was a pocket for any
imaginable thing that a bachelor might be supposed to
want on his travels.
" I wish I could go with you, " she said to me, with an
energy quite out of her usual line.
"I am sure I wish you could, ^' said I; and what with
the natural softness of heart that a young man feels when
he is plunging off from the safe ground of home into the
world, and partly from the unwonted glow of feeling that
came over Caroline's face as she spoke, I felt quite a rush
of emotion, and said, as I kissed her hand, ''Why didn't
we think of this before, Caroline ? "
"Oh, nonsense, Harry; don't you be sentimental, of all
things," she replied briskly, withdrawing her hand. "Of
course, I did n't mean anything more than that I wished I
was a young fellow like you, free to take my staff and bun-
dle, and make my way in the great world. Why couldn't
Iber^
COUSIN CAROLINE 105
" Ybtt," said I, "Caroline, you, with your beanty and
your talents, I think you might be satisfied with a
woman's lot in life."
"A woman's lot! and what is that, pray? to sit with
folded hands and see life drifting by to be a mere nul-
lity, and endure to have my good friends pat me on the
back, and think I am a bright and shining light of content-
ment in woman's sphere ? "
"But," said I, "you know, Caroline, that there is al-
ways a possibility in woman's destiny, especially a woman
so beautiful as you are."
" You mean marriage. Well, perhaps if I could do as
you can, go all over the world, examine and search for the
one I want, and find him, the case would be somewhat
equal; but my chances are only among those who propose
to me. Now, I have read in the * Arabian Nights ' of prin-
cesses so beautiful that men came in regiments, to seek the
honor of their hand; but such things don't occur in our
times in New England villages. My list for selection
must be confined to such of the eligible men in this neigh-
borhood as are in want of wives; men who want wives as
they do cooking-stoves, and make up their minds that I
may suit them. By the bye, I have been informed already
of one who has had me under consideration, and concluded
not to take me. Silas Boardman, I understand, has made
up his mind, and informed his sisters of the fact, that I
am altogether too dressy in my taste for his limited means,
and besides that I am too free and independent; so that
door is closed to me, you '11 observe. Silas won't have
me!"
"The conceited puppy!" said I.
"Well, isn't that the common understanding among
men that all the marriageable girls in their neighborhood
are on exhibition for their convenience ? If the very first
idea of marriage with any one of them were not so intensely
106 MY WIFE AND I
disagreeable to me, I would almost be willing to let some
of them ask me, just to hear what I could tell them. Now
you know, Harry, I put you out of the case, because you
are my cousin, and I no more think of you in that way
than if you were my brother, but, frankly, I never yet saw
the man that I could by any stretch of imagination conceive
of my wanting, or being willing to marry; I know no man
that it would n't be an untold horror to me to be doomed
to marry. I would rather scrub floors on my knees for a
living. "
"But you do see happy marriages."
"Oh yes, dear souls, of course I do, and am glad of it,
and wonder and admire ; yes, I see some happy marriages.
There 's Uncle Jacob and his wife, kind old souls, two
dear old pigeons of the sanctuary ! how charmingly they
get along ! and your father and mother they seemed one
soul; it really was encouraging to see that people could
live so."
"But you mustn't be too ideal, Caroline; you mustn't
demand too much of a man."
"Demand? I don't demand anything of any man, I
only want to be let alone. I don't want to wait for a hus-
band to make me a position, I want to make one for myself ;
I don't want to take a husband's money, I want my own.
You have individual ideas of life, you want to work them
out ; so have I ; you are expected and encouraged to work
them out independently, while I am forbidden. Now,
what would you say if somebody told you to sit down
quietly in the domestic circle and read to your mother,
and keep the wood split and piled, and the hearth swept,
and diffuse a sweet perfume of domestic goodness, like the
violet amid its leaves, till by and by some woman should
come and give you a fortune and position, and develop
your affections, how would you like that ? Now, the
case with me is just here. I am, if you choose to say it,
COUSIN CAROLINE 107
SO ideal and peculiar in my views that there is no reason-
able prospect that I shall ever marry, but I want a posi-
tion, a house and home of my own, and a sphere of inde-
pendent action, and everybody thinks this absurd and
nobody helps me. As long as mother was alive there was
some consolation in feeling that I was everything to her.
Poor soul ! she had a hard life, and I was her greatest pride
and comfort, but now she is gone there is nothing I do for
my father that a good, smart housekeeper could not be
hired to do; but you see that would cost money, and the
money that I thus save is invested without consulting me;
it goes to buy more rocky land, when we have already
more than we know what to do with. I sacrifice all my
tastes, I stunt my growth mentally and intellectually to
this daily treadmill of house and dairy, and yet I have not
a cent that I can call my own ; I am a servant working for
board and clothes, and because I am a daughter I am ex-
pected to do it cheerfully ; my only escape from this posi-
tion is to take a similar one in the family of some man to
whom, in addition to the superintendence of his household,
I shall owe the personal duties of a wife, and that way out
you may know I shall never take. So you are sure to find
me ten or twenty years hence a fixture in this neighbor-
hood, spoken of familiarly as ' old Miss Caroline Simmons, '
a cross-pious old maid, held up as a warning to contuma-
cious young beauties how they neglect their first gracious
offer. * Caroline was a handsome gal in her time, ' they '11
say, * but she was too perticklar, and now her day is over
and she 's left an old maid. She held her head too high
and said "No" a little too often; ye see, gals better take
their fust chances. ' "
"After all, cousin," I said, "though we men are all un-
worthy sinners, yet sometimes you women do yield to
much persuasion, and take some one out of pity."
"I can't do that; in fact, I have tried to do it, and
108 MY WIFE AND I
can't. This desperate dullness, and restrainti and utter
paralysis of progress that lies like a nightmare on one, is
a dreadful temptation; when a man offers you a fortune,
which will give you ease, leisure, and power to follow all
your tastes and a certain independent stand, such as unmar-
ried women cannot take, it is a great temptation. '^
" But you resisted it ! "
"Well, I was sorely tried; there were things I wanted
desperately a splendid house in Boston, pictures, car-
riages, servants, oh, I did want them; I wanted the
Sclatf too, of a rich marriage, but I couldn't; the man was
too good a man to be trifled with; if he would only have
been a good unde or grandpa I would have loved him
dearly, and been ever so devoted, kept his house beauti-
fully, waited on him like a dutiful daughter, read to him,
sung to him, nursed him, been the best friend iu the world
to him, but his wife I could not be; the very idea of it
made the worthy creature perfectly repulsive and hateful
to me."
" Did you ever try to tell your father how you feel ? ''
" Of what earthly use ? There are people in this world
who don't understand each other's vernacular. Papa and
I could no more discuss any question of the inner life to-
gether than if he spoke Chickasaw and I spoke Prench.
Papa has a respect for my practical efficiency and business
talent, and in a certain range of ideas we get on well to-
gether. He thinks I have made a great mistake, and that
there is a crack in my head somewhere, but he says no-
thing; his idea is that I have let slip the only chance of
my life, but still, as I am a great convenience at home,
he is reconciled. I suppose all my friends mourn in secret
places over me, and I should have been applauded and
commended on all hands if I had done it; but, after all,
wouldn't it be a great deal more honest, more womanly,
more like a reasonable creature, for me to do just what you
COUSIN CAKOLINE lOft
are doing, fit myself to make my own way, and make an
independence for myself? Keally, it isn't honest to take
a position where you know you can't give the main thing
asked for, and keep out somebody perhaps who can. My
friend has made himself happy with a woman who perfectly
adores him, and ought to be much obliged to me that I
didn't take him at his word; good, silly soul that he was."
" But, after all, the Prince may come the fated knight
Caroline. "
'* And deliver the distressed damsel ? " she said, laugh-
ing, "Well, when he comes I'll show him my * swan's
nest among the reeds.' Soberly, the fact is, cousin,'^ she
said, "you men don't know us women. In the first place
they say that there are more of us born than there are of '
you: and that doesn't happen merely to give you a good
number to choose from, and enable every widower to find
a supernumerary; it is because it was meant that some
women should lead a life different from the domestic one.
The womanly nature can be of use otherwhere besides in
marriage, in our world. To be sure, for the largest class
of women there is nothing like marriage, and I suppose the
usages of society are made for the majority, and exceptional
people mustn't grumble if they don't find things comforta-
ble ; but I am persuaded that there is a work and a way
for those who cannot marry."
" Well^ there 's Uncle Jacob has just been preaching to me
that no man can be developed fully without a wife," said I.
" Uncle Jacob has matrimony on the brain ! it 's lucky
he is n't a despotic Czar, or, I believe, he 'd marry all the
men and women, willy nilly. I grant that the rare, real
marriage, that occurs one time in a hundred, is the true
ideal state for man and woman, but it does n't follow that
all and everything that brings man and woman together in
marriage is blessed, and I take my stand on St. Paul's doc-
Mne that there are both men and women called to BOThe
110 MY WIFE AND I
higher state ; now, it seems to me that the numher of these
increases with the advancement of society. Marriage re-
quires so close an intimacy that there must be perfect agree-
ment and sympathy; the lower down in the scale of being
one is, the fewer distinctive points there are of difference
or agreement. It is easier for John and Patrick, and
Bridget and Katy, to find comfortable sympathy and agree-
ment than it is for those far up in the scale of life where
education has developed a thousand individual tastes and
peculiarities. We read in history of the Kape of the
Sabines, and how the women thus carried off at haphazard
took so kindly to their husbands that they wouldn't be
taken back again. Such things are only possible in the
barbarous stages of society, when characters are very rudi-
mentary and Lple. If a similar experixnent were made
on women of the cultivated classes in our times, I fancy
some of the men would be killed; I know one would,"
she said, with an energetic grasp of her little fist and a
flash out of her eyes.
''But the ideal marriage is the thing to be sought,"
said I.
"For you, who are born with the right to seek, it is the
thing to be sought," she said; "for me, who am born to
wait till I am sought by exactly the right one, the chances
are so infinitesimal that they ought not to be considered;
I may have a fortune left me, and die a millionaire; there
is no actual impossibility in that thing's happening, it
is a thing that has happened to people who expected it as
little as I do, but it would be the height of absurdity to
base any calculation upon it: and yet all the arrangements
that are made about me and for me are made on the pre-
sumption that I am to marry. I went to Uncle Jacob and
tried to get him to take me through a course of medical
study, to fit me for a professional life, and it was impossi-
ble to get him to take any serious view of it, or to believe
COUSIN CAKOLINE 111
what I said; he seemed really to think I was plotting to
upset the Bible and the Constitution, in planning for an
independent life."
"After all, Caroline, you must pardon me if I say that
it does not seem possible that a woman like you will be
allowed that is, you know you will well find
somebody that is, you will be less exacting by and by. "
"Exacting! why do you use that word, when I don't
exact anything? I am not so very ideal in my tastes, I
am only individual; I must have in myself a certain feel-
ing towards this possible individual, and I don't find it.
In one case certainly I asked myself why I did n't. The
man was all he should be, I did n't object to him in the
slightest degree as a man; but looked on respecting the
marriage relation, he was simply intolerable. It must be
that I have no vocation to marry, and yet I want what any
live woman wants; I want something of my own; I want
a life-work worth doing; I want a home of my own; I
want money that I can use as I please, that I can give and
withhold, and dispose of as absolutely miney and not an-
other's; and the world seems all arranged so as to hinder
my getting it. If a man wants to get an education there
are colleges with rich foundations, where endowments have
been heaped up, and scholarships founded, to enable him
to prepare for life at reasonable expense. There are no
such for women, and their schools, such as they are, infi-
nitely poorer than those given to men, involve double the
expense. If you ask a professional man to teach you pri-
vately, he laughs at you, compliments you, and sends you
away with the feeling that he considers you a silly, cracked-
brain girl, or perhaps an unsuccessful angler in matrimonial
waters; he seems to think that there is no use teaching
you, because you will throw down all, and run for the first
man that beckons to you. That sort of presumption is in-
sufferable to me."
112 MY WIFE AND I
"Oh, well, Carrie, you know those old doctors, they
get a certain jog- trot way of arranging human life; and
then men that are happily married are in such bliss, and
such women-worshipers that they cannot make up their
mind that anybody they care about should not enter their
paradise."
"I do not despise their paradise," said Caroline; "I
think everybody most happy that can enter it. I am thank-
ful to see that they can. I am delighted and astonished
every day at beholding the bliss and satisfaction with which
really nice, pretty girls take up with the men they do, and
I think it all very delightful; but it 's rather hard on me
that, since I can't have that, I mustn't have anything
else."
"After all, Caroline, is not your dissatisfaction with the
laws of nature 1 "
"Not exactly; I won't quarrel with the will that made
me a woman, not in my deepest heart. Neither being a
woman do I want to be unwomanly. I would not, if I
could, do as George Sand did, put on men's clothes and
live a man's life. Anything of that sort in a woman is
very repulsive and disgusting to me. At the same time,
I do think that the customs and laws of society might be
modified so as to give to women who do not choose to
marry, independent position and means of securing Home
and fortune. Marriage never ought to be entered on as
a means of support. It seems to me that our sex are
enough weighted by nature, and that therefore all the laws
and institutions of society ought to act in just the contrary
direction, and tend to hold us up to widen our way, to
encourage our efforts, because we are the weaker party, and
need it most. The world is now arranged for the strong,
and I think it ought to be rearranged for the weak."
I paused, and pondered all that she had been saying.
" My mother " I began.
COUSIN CAROLINE 113
"Now, please don't quote your mother to me. I know
what she would say. If two angels were sent down from
heaven, the one to govern an empire, and the other to
sweep the streets, they would not wish to change with each
other; it is perhaps true.
"But then, you see, that is only possihle because they
are angels. Your mother has got up somewhere into that
region, but I am down in the low lands, and must do the
best I can on my plane. I can conceive of those moral
heights where one thing is just as agreeable as another, but
I have not yet reached them. Besides, you know Jacob
wrestled with his angel, and was commended for it ; and
I think we ought to satisfy ourselves by good, strong effort
that our lot is of God. K we really cannot help ourselves,
we may be resigned to it as his will."
"Caroline," I said, "if you might have exactly what
you want, what would it have been ? "
"In the first place, then, exactly the same education
with my brothers. I hear of colleges now, somewhere far
out West, where a brother and sister may go through the
same course together; that would have suited me. I am
impatient of ha If -education. I am by nature very thorough
and exact. I want to be sure of doing whatever I under-
take as well as it can be done. I don't want to be flat-
tered and petted for pretty ignorance. I don't want to be
tolerated in any halfway, slovenly work of any kind be-
cause I am a woman. When I have a thorough general
education, I then want to make professional studies. I have
a great aptitude for medicine. I have a natural turn for
the care of sick, and am now sent for far and near as one
of the best advisers and watchers in case of sickness. In
that profession I don't doubt I might do great good, be
very happy, have a cheerful home of my own, and a plea-
sant life-work; but I don't want to enter it half taught.
I want to be able to do as good work as any man's; to be
Il4 MY WIFE AND I
held to the same account, and receive only what I can
fairly win."
"But, Caroline, a man's life includes so much drudgery.''
"And does not mine? Do you suppose that the care of
all the house and dairy, the oversight of all my father's
home affairs, is no drudgery? Much of it is done with
my own hands, hecause no other work than mine can con-
tent me. But when you and I went to school together, it
was just so : you know I worked out my own problems and
made my own investigations. Now, all that is laid aside;
at least, all my efforts are so haphazard and painfully in-
complete that it is discouraging to me."
" But would not your father consent ? "
"My father is a man wedded to the past, and set against
every change in ideas. I have tried to get his consent to
let me go and study, and prepare myself to do something
worth doing, hut he is perfectly immovable. He says I
know more now than half the women, and a great deal too
much for my good, and that he cannot spare me. At
twenty-one he makes no further claim on ,any of my bro-
thers; their minority comes to an end at a certain period
mine, never."
We were walking in the moonlight up and down under
the trees by the house. Caroline suddenly stopped.
"Cousin," she said, "if you succeed, if you get to be
what I hope you will, high in the world, a prosperous
editor, speak for the dumb, for us whose lives bum them-
selves out into white ashes in silence and repression."
"I will," I said.
"You will write to me; I shall rejoice to hear of the
world through you; and I shall rejoice in your success,"
she added.
"Caroline," I said, "do you give up entirely wrestling
with the angel ? "
"Ko; if I did, I should not keep up. I have hope
COUSIN CAROLINE 115
from year to year that something may happen to bring
things to my wishes; that I may obtain a hearing with
papa; that his sense of justice may be aroused; that I may
get Uncle Jacob to do something besides recite verses and
compliment me; that your mother may speak for me.^'
" You have never told your heart to my mother ? "
"'No; I am very reticent, and these adoring wives have
but one recipe for all our troubles."
"I think, Caroline, that hers is a wide, free nature,
that takes views above the ordinary level of things, and
that she would understand and might work for you. Tell
her what you have been telling me. "
" You may, if you please. I will talk with her af ter^
ward; perhaps she will do something for me.''
CHAPTER X
WHY don't you take HEB
The next day I spoke to my Uncle Jacob of Caroline's
desire to study, and said that some way ought to be pro-
vided for taking her out of her present confined limits.
He looked at me with a shrewd, quizzical expression,
and said: "Providence generally opens a way out for girls
as handsome as she is. Caroline is a little restless just at
present, and so is getting some of these modern strong-
minded notions into her head. The fact is, that our region
is a little too much out of the world; there is nobody
around here, probably, that she would think a suitable
match for her. Caroline ought to visit, now, and cruise
about a little in some of the watering-places next summer,
and be seen. There are few girls with a finer air, or more
sure to make a sensation. I fancy she would soon find the
right sphere under these circumstances."
"But does it not occur to you, uncle, that the very idea
of going out into the world, seeking to attract and fall in
the way of offers of marriage, is one from which such a
spirit as Caroline's must revolt? Is there not something
essentially unwomanly in it something humiliating? I
know, myself, that she is too proud, too justly self-respect-
ing, to do it. And why should a superior woman be con-
demned to smother her whole nature, to bind down all her
faculties, and wait for occupation in a sphere which it is
unwomanly to seek directly, and unwomanly to accept
when offered to her, unless offered by the one of a thou-
sand for whom she can have a certain feeling ? ''
WHY don't you take HER 117
"To tell the truth," said my uncle, looking at me again,
"I always thought in my heart that Caroline was just the
proper person for you just the woman you need hrave,
strong, and yet lovely; and I don't see any objection in
the way of your taking her."
Elderly people of a benevolent turn often get a matter-
of-fact way of arranging the affairs of their juniors that is
sufficiently amusing. My uncle spoke with a confidential
air of good faith of my taking Caroline as if she had been
a lot of land up for sale. Seeing my look of blank embar-
rassment, he went on :
"You perhaps think the relationship an objection, but
I have my own views on that subject. The only objection
to the intermarriage of cousins is one that depends entirely
on similarity of race peculiarities. Sometimes cousins,
inheriting each from different races, are physiologically as
much of diverse blood as if their parents had not been re-
lated, and in that case there is n't the slightest objection
to marriage. Now, Caroline, though her father is your
mother's brother, inherits evidently the Selwyn blood.
She 's all her mother, or rather her grandmother, who was
a celebrated beauty. Caroline is a Selwyn, every inch, and
you are as free to marry her as any woman you can meet."
"You talk as if she were a golden apple, that I had
nothing to do but reach forth my hand to pick," said I.
"Did it never occur to you that I couldn't take her if I
were to try ? "
"Well, I don't know," said Uncle Jacob, looking me
over in a manner which indicated a complimentary opinion.
"I 'm not so sure of that. She 's not in the way of seeing
many men superior to you."
"And suppose that she were that sort of woman who
did not wish to marry at all ? " said I.
My uncle looked quizzical, and said, " I doubt the exist-
ence of that species. "
118 MY WIFE AND I
"It appears to me/' said I, "that Caroline is by nature
so much more fitted for the life of a scholar than that
of an ordinary domestic woman, that nothing but a most
absorbing and extraordinary amount of personal affection
would ever make the routine of domestic life agreeable to
her. She is very fastidious and individual in her tastes,
too, and the probabilities of her finding the person whom
she could love in this manner are very small. Kow, it
appears to me that the taking for granted that all women,
without respect to taste or temperament, must have no
sphere or opening for their faculties except domestic life
is as great an absurdity in our modern civilization as the
stupid custom of half-civilized nations, by which every
son, no matter what his character, is obliged to confine
himself to the trade of his father. I should have felt it a
hardship to be condemned always to be a shoemaker if my
father had been one."
"Nay," said my uncle, "the cases are not parallel. The
domestic sphere of wife and mother to which woman is
called is divine and godlike; it is sacred and solemn, and
no woman can go higher than that, and anything else to
which she devotes herself falls infinitely below it."
"Well, then," said I, "let me use another simile. My
father was a minister, and I reverence and almost adore
the ideal of such a minister, and such a ministry as his
was. Yet it would be an oppression on me to constrain
me to enter into it. I am not adapted to it, or fitted for
it. I should make a failure in it, while I might succeed
in a lower sphere. Now, it seems to me that just as no
one should enter the ministry as a means of support or
worldly position, but wholly from a divine enthusiasm, so
no woman should enter marriage for provision, or station,
or support; but simply and only from the most purely
personal affection. And my theory of life would be, to
have society so arranged that independent woman shall
WHY DON'T YOU TAKE HER 119
liave every facility for developing her mind and perfecting
herself that independent man has, and every opportunity
in society for acquiring and holding property, for securing
influence, and position, and fame, just as man can. If
laws are to make any difference between the two sexes,
they ought to help, and not to hinder the weaker party.
Then, I think, a man might feel that his wife came to him
from the purest and highest kind of love not driven to
him as a refuge, not compelled to take him as a demiei'
ressortf now struggling and striving to bring her mind to
him, because she mtist marry somebody, but choosing
him intelligently and freely, because he is the one more to
her than all the world beside."
"Well,'' said my uncle regretfully, "of course I donH
want to be a match- maker, but I did hope that you and
Caroline would be so agreed; and I think now, that if you
would try, you might put these notions out of her head,
and put yourself in their place."
"And what if I had tried, and become certaiB that it
was of no use 1 "
"You don't say she has refused youl" said my uncle,
with a start.
" No, indeed ! " said I. " Caroline is one of those wo-
men whose whole manner keeps off entirely all approaches
of that kind. You may rely upon it, uncle, that while
she loves me as frankly and truly and honestly as ever
sister loved a brother, yet I am perfectly convinced that it
is mainly because I have kept myself clear of any misun-
derstanding of her noble frankness, or any presumption
founded upon it. Her love to me is honest comradeship,
just such as I might have from a college mate, and there is
not th0* least danger of its sliding into anything else.
There may be an Endymion to this Diana, but it certainly
won^t be Harry Henderson."
"H'm! " said my uncle. "Well, I 'm afraid then that
120 MY WIFE AND I
she never will marry, and you certainly must grant that a
woman unmarried remains forever undeveloped and incom-
plete."
"No more than a man,'' said L "A man who never
becomes a father is incomplete in one great resemblance to
the Divine Being. Yet there have been men with the
element of fatherhood more largely developed in celibacy
than is usual in marriage. There was Fenelon, for in-
stance, who was married to humanity. Every human
being that he met held the place of a child m his heart.
No individual experience of fatherhood could make such
men as he more fatherly. And in like manner there are
women with more natural motherhood than many mothers.
Such are to be found in the sisterhoods that gather to-
gether lost and orphan children, and are their mothers in
God. There are natures who do not need the development
of marriage; they know instinctively all it can teach them.
But they are found only in the rarest and highest regions. "
"Well,'' said my uncle, "for every kind of existence in
creation God has made a mate, and the eagles that live on
mountain-tops, and fly toward the sun, have still their
kindred eagles. Now, I think, for my part, that if Fene-
lon had married Madame Guyon, he would have had a
richer and a happier life of it, and she would have gone off
into fewer vagaries, and they would have left the Church
some splendid children, who might, perhaps, have been
born without total depravity. You see, these perfected
specimens owe it to humanity to perpetuate their kind."
"Well," said I, "let them do it by spiritual fatherhood
and motherhood. St. Paul speaks often of his converts as
those begotten of him the children of his soul ; a thou-
sandfold more of them there were than there co3ld have
been if he had weighted himself with the care of an indi-
vidual family. Think of the spiritual children of Plato
and St. Augustine I "
WHY don't you take HER 121
"This may be all very fine, youngster," said my uncle,
" but very exceptional ; yet for all that, I should be sorry
to see a fine woman like Caroline withering into an old
maid. "
"She certainly will," said T, "unless you and mother
stretch forth your hands and give her liberty to seek her
destiny in the mode in which nature inclines her. You
will never get her to go husband-hunting. The mere idea
suggested to her of exhibiting her charms in places of re-
sort, in the vague hope of being chosen, would be sufficient
to keep her out of society. She has one of those indepen-
dent natures to which it is just as necessary for happiness
that she should make her own way, and just as irksome to
depend on others, as it is for most young men. She has
a fine philosophic mind, great powers of acquisition, a curi-
osity for scientific research; and her desire is to fit herself
for a physician, a sphere perfectly womanly, and in
which the motherly nature of woman can be most beauti-
fully developed. Now, help her with your knowledge
through the introductory stages of study, and use your
influence afterward to get her father to give her wider
advantages. "
"Well, the fact is," said my uncle, "Caroline is a
splendid nurse; she has great physical strength and endur-
ance, great courage and presence of mind, and a wonderful
power of consoling and comforting sick people. She has
borrowed some of my books, and seemed to show a consid-
erable acuteness in her remarks on them. But somehow
the idea that a lovely young woman should devote herself
to medicine has seemed to me a great waste, and I never
seriously encouraged it."
"Depend upon it," said T, "Caroline is a woman who
will become more charming in proportion as she moves
more thoroughly and perfectly in the sphere for which
nature has adapted her. Keep a great, stately, white swan
122 MY WIFE AND I
shut up in a barnyard and she has an ungainly gait, be-
comes morose, and loses her beautiful feathers ; but set her .
free to glide off into her native element and all is harmo-
nious and beautiful. A superior woman, gifted with per-
sonal attractions, who is forgetting herself in the enthusi-
asm of some high calling or profession, never becomes an
old maid; she does not wither; she advances as life goes
on, and often keeps her charms longer than the matron
exhausted by family cares and motherhood. A charming
woman, fully and happily settled and employed in a life-
work which is all in all to her, is far more likely to be
attractive and to be sought than one who enters the ranks
of the fashionable waiters on Providence."
"Well, well," said my uncle, "I'll think of it. The
fact is, we fellows of threescore ought to be knocked on
the head peaceably. We have the bother of being progres-
sive all through our youth, and by the time we get some-
thing settled, up comes your next generation and begins
kicking it all over. It 's too bad to demolish the house we
spend our youth in building just when we want rest, and
don't want the fatigue of building over."
"For that matter," said I, "the modem ideas of wo-
man's sphere were all thought out and expressed in the
Greek mythology ages and ages ago. The Greeks didn't
fit every woman to one type. There was their pretty,
plump little Aphrodite, and their godlike Venus di Milo.
There was Diana, the woman of cold, bright, pure physi-
cal organization, independent, free, vigorous. There
was Minerva, the impersonation of the purely intellectual
woman, who neither wished nor sought marriage. There
was Juno, the housekeeper and domestic queen, and Ceres,
the bread-giver and provider. In short, the Greeks con-
ceived a variety of spheres of womanhood ; but we, in mod-
ern times, have reduced all to one the vine that twines,
and the violet hid in the leaves; as if the Victoria Begia
WHY don't you take HER 128
bad n't as good a right to grow as the daisy, and as if there
were not female oaks and pines as well as male ! ''
"Well, after all," he said, "the prevalent type of sex
through nature is that of strength for man and dependence
for woman."
"Nay," said I; "if you appeal to nature in this matter
of sex, there is the female element in grand and powerful
forms, as well as in gentle and dependent ones. The she
lion and tiger are more terrible and untamable than the
male. The Greek mythology was a perfect reflection of
nature, and clothed woman with majesty and power as well
as with grace; how splendid those descriptions of Homer
are, where Minerva, clad in celestial armor, leads the
forces of the Greeks to battle I What vigor there is in
their impersonation of the Diana; the woman stroilg in
herself, scorning physical passion, and terrible to approach
in the radiant majesty of her beauty, striking with death
the vulgar curiosity that dared to profane her sanctuary I
That was the ideal of a woman, self-suiricient, victorious,
and capable of a grand, free, proud life of her own, not
needing to depend upon man. The Greeks never would
have imagined such goddesses if they had not seen such
women, and our modern civilization is imperfect if it does
not provide a place and sphere for such types of woman-
hood. It takes all sorts of people to make up a world,
and there ought to be provision, toleration, and free course
for all sorts."
"Well, youngster," said my uncle, "I think you'll
write tolerable leaders for some radical paper, one of these
days, but you fellows that want to get into the chariot of
the sun and drive it, had better think a little before you
set the world on fire. As for your Diana, I thank Heaven
she is n't my wife, and I think it would be pretty cold
picking with your Minerva."
"Permit me to say, uncle, that in this ' latter-day glory '
124 MY WIFE AND I
that is coming, men have got to learn to judge women by
some other standard than what would make good wives /or
them^ and acknowledge sometimes a femininity existing in
and for itself. As there is a possible manhood complete
without woman, so there is a possible womanhood complete
without man."
"That 's not the Christian idea," said my uncle.
"Pardon me," I replied, "but I believe it is exactly
what St. Paul meant when he spoke of the state of celi-
bacy, in devotion to the higher spiritual life, as being a
higher state for some men and women than marriage."
"You are on dangerous ground there," said my uncle;
"you will run right into monastic absurdity."
"High grounds are always dangerous grounds," said I,
"full of pitfalls and precipices, yet the Lord has persisted
in making mountains, precipices, pitfalls, and all, and
being made they may as well be explored, even at the risk
of breaking one*s neck. We may as well look every ques-
tion in the face, and run every inquiry to its ultimate."
"Go it then," said my uncle, "and joy go with you;
the chariot of the sun is the place for a prospect! Up
with you into it, my boy, that kind of driving is interest-
ing; in fact, when I was young, I should have liked it
myself, but if you don't want to kick up as great a bob-
bery as Phaeton did, you 'd better mind his father's advice:
spare the whip, and use the reins with those fiery horses
of the future."
"But, now," said I, "as the final result of all this, will
you help Caroline 1 "
"Yes, I will; soberly and seriously, I will. I'll drive
over there and have a little talk with the girl as soon as
you 're gone."
"And, uncle," said I, "if you wish to gain influence
with her, don't flatter nor compliment; examine her, and
appoint her tasks exactly as you would those of a young
WHY don't you take HER 125
man in similar circumstances. You will please her best
so; she is ready to do work and make serious studies;
she is of a thorough, earnest nature, and will do credit to
your teaching."
"What a pity she wasn't born a boy," said my uncle
under his breath.
"Well, let you and me do what we can," said I, "to
bring in such a state of things in this world that it shall
no longer be said of any woman that it was a pity not to
have been born a man."
Subsequently I spoke to my mother on the same subject,
and gave her an account of my interview with Caroline.
I think that my mother, in her own secret heart, had
cherished very much the same hopes for me that had been
expressed by Uncle Jacob. Caroline was an uncommon
person, the star of the little secluded neighborhood, and
my mother had seen enough of her to know that, though
principally absorbed in the requirements of a very hard
domestic sphere, she possessed an uncommon character and
great capabilities. Between her and my mother, however,
there had been that silence which often exists between two
natures, both sensitive and both reticent, who seem to act
as non-conductors to each other. Caroline stood a little in
awe of the moral and religious force of my mother, and
my mother was a little chilled by the keen intellectualism
of Caroline.
There are people that cannot imderstand each other with-
out an interpreter, and it is not unfrequently easier for
men and women to speak confidentially to each other than
to their own sex. There are certain aspects in which each
sex is sure of more comprehension than from its own. I
served, in this case, as the connecting wire of the galvanic
battery to pass the spark of sympathetic comprehension
between these two natures.
My mother was one of those women naturally timid,
126 MT WIFB AND I
reticent, retiring, encompassed by physical diffidence a
with a mantle so sensitive that, even in an argument
with me, the blood would flush into her cheeks yet, she
had withal that deep, brooding, philosophical nature, which
revolves all things silently, and with intensest interest, and
comes to perfectly independent conclusions in the irrespon-
sible liberty of solitude. How many times has this great
noisy world been looked out on, and silently judged, by
l^ese quiet, thoughtful women of the Virgin Mary type,
who have never uttered their Magnificat till they uttered
it beyond the veil ! My mother seemed to be a woman in
whom religious faith had risen to that amount of certainty
and security, that she feared no kind of investigation or
discussion, and had no prejudices or passionate preferences.
Thus she read the works of the modern physical philosophi-
cal school with a tranquil curiosity and a patient analysis,
apparently enjoying every well-turned expression, and re-
ceiving with interest, and weighing with deliberation, every
record of experiments and every investigation of facts.
Her faith in her religion was so perfect that she could
afford all these explorations, no more expecting her Chris-
tian hopes to fall, through any discoveries of modern sci*
ence, than she expected the sun to cease shining on account
of the contradictory theories of astronomers. They who
have lived in communion with God have a mode of evi-
dence unknown to philosophers ; a knowledge at first hand.
In the same manner the wideness of Christian charity
gave my mother a most catholic tolerance for natures un-
like her own.
" I have always believed in the doctrine of vocations,"
she said, as she listened to me; "it is one of those points
where the Komish Church has shown a superior good sense
in discovering and making a place for every kind of na-
ture. "
"Caroline has been afraid to confide in you, lest you
WHY don't you take heb 127
should think her struggles to rise above her destiny, and
her dissatisfaction with it, irreligious.^
"Far from it," said my mother; "I wholly sympathize
with her; people don't realize what it is to starve faculties;
they understand physical starvation, but the slow fainting
and dying of desires and capabilities for want of anything
to feed upon, the withering of powers for want of exercise,
is what they do not understand. This is what Caroline is
condemned to, by the fixed will of her father, and whether
any mortal can prevail with him, I don't know."
" You might, dear mother, I am sure."
" I doubt it ; he has a manner that freezes me. I think
in his hard, silent, interior way, he loves me, but any ar-
gument addressed to him, any direct attempt to change his
opinions and purpose, only makes him harder."
" Would it not, then, be her right to choose her course
without his consent and against it ? " My mother sat
with her blue eyes looking thoughtfully before her.
"There is no point," she said slowly, "that requires
more careful handling, to discriminate right from wrong,
than the limits of self-sacrifice. To a certain extent it is
a virtue, and the noblest one, but there are rights of the
individual that ought not to be sacrificed; our own happi-
ness has its^te^^ place, and I cannot see it to be more right
to suffer injustice to one's self than to another, if one can
help it. The individual right of self-assertion of child
against parent is like the right of revolution in the State,
a difficult one to define, yet a real one. It seems to me
that one owes it to God, and to the world, to become all
that one can be, and to do all that one can do, and that a
blind, unreasoning authority that forbids this is to be re-
sisted by a higher law. If I would help another person
to escape from an unreasoning tyranny, I ought to do as
much for myself."
"And don't you think," said I, "that the silent self'
128 MY WIFE AND I
abnegation of some fine natures has done harm by increas-
ing in those around them the habits of tyranny and selfish-
ness 1 "
"Undoubtedly,'' said my mother, "many wives make
their husbands bad Christians, and really stand in the way
of their salvation, by a weak, fond submission, and a sort
of morbid passion for self-sacrifice really generous and
noble men are often tempted to fatal habits of selfishness
in this way."
" Then would it not be better for Caroline to summon
courage to tell her father exactly how she feels and views
his course and hers 1 "
"He has a habit," said my mother, "of cutting short
any communication from his children that doesn't please
him, by bringing down his hand abruptly and saying, * No
more of that, I don't want to hear it.' With me he ac-
complishes the same by abruptly leaving the room. The
fact is," said my mother, after a pause, "I more than sus-
pect that he set his foot on something really vital to Caro-
line's life, years ago, when she was quite young."
" You mean an attachment 1 "
" Yes. I had hoped that it had been outgrown or super-
seded; probably it may be, but I think she is one of the
sort in which such an experience often destroys all chance
for any other to come after it."
" Were you told of this 1 "
" I discovered it by an accident, no matter how. I was
not told, and I know very little, yet enough to enable me
to admire the vigor with which she has made the most of
life, the cheerfulness and thoroughness with which she has
accepted hard duties. Well," she added, after a pause,
"I will talk with Caroline, and we will see what can be
done, and then," she added, "we can carry the matter to
a higher One, who understands all, and holds all in his
hands."
WHY don't you take HEB 129
My mother spoke with a bright, assured face of this
resort, sacred in every emergency.
This was the last night of my stay at homej the next
day I was to start for my ship to go to Europe. I sat up
late writing to Caroline, and left the letter in my mother's
hands.
CHAPTER XI
I LAY THE FIRST STONE IN MY FOUNDATION
My story now opens in New York, whither I am come
to seek my fortune as a maker and seller of the invisible
fabrics of the brain.
During my year in Europe I had done my best to make
myself known at the workshops of different literary periodi-
cals, as a fabricator of these airy wares. I tried all sorts
and sizes of articles, from grave to gay, from lively to
severe, sowing them broadcast in various papers, without
regard to pecuniary profit, and the consequence was ihat I
came back to New York as a writer favorably known, who
had made something of a position. To be sure, my foot
was on the lowest round of the ladder, but it was on the
ladder, and I meant to climb.
" To climb to what 1 -' In the answer a man gives to
that question lies the whole character of his life-work. If
to climb be merely to gain a name, and a competence, a
home, a wife, and children, with the means of keeping
them in ease and comfort, the question, though beset with
difficulties of practical performance, is comparatively sim-
ple. But if in addition to this a man is to build himself
up after an ideal standard, as carefully as if he were a tem-
ple to stand for eternity ; if he is to lend a hand to help
that great living temple which God is perfecting in human
society, the question becomes more complicated still.
I fear some of my fair readers are by this time impatient
to see something of "my wife." Let me tell them for
their comfort that at this moment, when I entered New
I LAY THB FIRST STONE IN MY FOUNDATION 131
York on a drizzly, lonesome December evening, she was
there, fair as a star, though I knew it not. The same may
be true of you, young man. If you are ever to be mar-
ried, your wife is probably now in the world; some house
holds her, and there are mortal eyes at this hour to whom
her lineaments are as familiar as they are imknown to you.
So much for the doctrine of predestination.
But at this hour that I speak of, though the lady in
question was a living and blessed fact, and though she
looked on the same stars, and breathed the same air, and
trod daily the same sidewalk with myself, I was not, as I
perceive, any the wiser or better for it at this particular
period of my existence. In fact, though she was in a large
part the unperceived spring and motive of all that I did,
yet at this particular time I was so busy in adjusting the
material foundations of my life that the ideas of marrying
and giving in marriage were never less immediately in my
thoughts. I came into New York a stranger. I knew
nobody personally, and I had no time for visiting.
I had been, in the course of my wanderings, in many
cities. I had lingered in Paris, Eome, Florence, and
Kaples, and, with the exception of London, I never foimd
a place so difficult to breathe the breath of any ideality, or
any enthusiasm, or exaltation of any description, as New
York. London, with its ponderous gloom, its sullen,
mammoth, aristocratic shadows, seems to benumb, and
chill, and freeze the soul; but Kew York impressed me
like a great hot furnace, where twig, spray, and flower
wither in a moment, and the little birds flying over drop
down dead. My first impulse in life there was to cover,
and conceal, and hide in the deepest and most remote cav-
erns of my heart anything that was sacred, and delicate,
and tender, lest the flame should scorch it. Balzac in his
epigrammatic manner has characterized Kew York as the
city where there is "neither faith, hope, nor charity," and.
132 MT WIFE AND I
as he never came here, I suppose he must have taken his
impressions from the descriptions of unfortunate compa-
triots, who have landed strangers and been precipitated
into the very rush and whirl of its grinding selfishness,
and its desperate don't-care manner of doing things. There
is abundance of selfishness and hardness in Paris, but it
is concealed under a veil of ideality. The city wooes you
like a home, it gives you picture-galleries, fountains, gar-
dens, and grottoes, and a good-natured lounging population,
who have nothing to do but make themselves agreeable.
I must confess that my first emotion in making my way
about the streets of New York, before I had associated
them with any intimacy or acquaintances, was a vague sort
of terror, such as one would feel at being jostled among
cannibals, who on a reasonable provocation would n't hesi-
tate to skin him and pick his bones. There was such a
driving, merciless, fierce " take-care-of -yourself , and devil
take the hindmost '^ air, even to the drays and omnibuses
and hackmen, that I had somewhat the feeling of being in
an unregulated menagerie, not knowing at what moment
some wild beast might spring upon me. As I became more
acquainted in the circles centring around the different
publications, I felt an acrid, eager, nipping air, in which
it appeared to me that everybody had put on defensive
armor in regard to his own innermost and most precious
feelings, and like the lobster, armed himself with claws to
seize and to tear that which came in his way. The rivalry
between great literary organs was so intense, and the com-
petition so vivid, that the offering of any flower of fancy
or feeling to any of them seemed about as absurd as if
a man should offer a tea-rose bud to the bawling, shout-
ing hackmen that shake their whips and scream at the
landing.
Everything in life and death, and time and eternity,
whether high as heaven or deep as hell, seemed to be
I LAY THE FIRST STONE IN MY FOUNDATION 188
looked upon only as subject-matter for advertisement and
material for running a paper. Hand out your wares ! ad-
vertise them, and see what they will bring seemed to be
the only law of production, at whose behest the most
delicate webs and traceries of fancy, the most solemn and
tender mysteries of feeling, the most awful of jeligious
emotions, came to have a trademark and market value!
In short, New York is the great business mart,- the Vanity
Fair of the world, where everything is pushed by advertis-
ing and competition, not even excepting the great moral
enterprise of bringing in the miUennium; and in the first
blast and blare of its busy, noisy publicity and activity I
felt my inner spirits shrink and tremble with dismay.
Even the religion of this great emporium bears the deep
impress of the trademark which calendars its financial value.
I could not but think what the sweet and retiring Gali-
lean, who in the old days was weary and worn with the
rush of crowds in simple old Palestine, must think if he
looks down now on the way in which his religion is adver-
tised and pushed in modem society. Certain it is, if it be
the kingdom of God that is coming in our times, it is
coming with very great observation, and people have long
since forgotten that they are not to say "Lo, here I" and
" Lo, there ! '' since that is precisely what a large part of
the world are getting their living by doing.
These ideas I must confess bore with great weight on
my mind, as I had just parted from my mother, whose last
words were that whatever else I did, and whether I gained
anything for this life or not, she trusted that I would live
an humble, self-denying, Christian life. I must own that
for the first few weeks of looking into the interior manage-
ment of literary life in New York, the idea at times often
seemed to me really ludicrous. To be humble, yet to seek
success in society where it is the first duty to crow from
morning till night, and to praise, and vaunt, and glorify,
134 MY WIFE AND I
at the top of one's lungs, one's own party, or paper, or
magazine, seemed to me sufficiently amusing. However,
in conformity with a solemn promise made to my mother,
I lost no time in uniting myself with a Christian body, of
my father's own denomination, and presented a letter from
the church in Highland to the brethren of the Bethany
Church.
And here I will say that for a young man who wants
shelter and nourishment and shade for the development of
his fine moral sensibilities, a breakwater to keep the waves
of materialism from dashing over and drowning his higher
life, there is nothing better, as yet to be found, than a
union with some one of the many bodies of differing names
and denominations calling themselves Christian churches.
A Christian church, according to the very best definition
of the name ever yet given, is a congregation of faithful
men, in which the pure word of God is preached, and the
sacraments duly ministered according to Christ's ordinance;
and making due allowance for all the ignorance, and preju-
dice, and mistakes, and even the willful hypocrisy, which,
as human nature is, must always exist in such connections,
I must say that I think these churches are the best form
of social moral culture yet invented, and not to be dis-
pensed with till something more fully answering the pur-
pose has been tested for as long a time as they.
These are caravans that cross the hot and weary sands
of life, and while there may be wrangling and undesirable
administration at times within them, yet, after all, the
pilgrim that undertakes alone is but a speck in the wide
desert, too often blown away, and withering like the leaf
before the wind.
The great congregation of the Bethany on Sabbath days,
all standing up together and joining in mighty hymn-sing-
ing, though all were outwardly unknown to me, seemed
to thrill my heart with a sense of solemn companionship,
I LAY THE FIRST STONE IN MY FOUNDATION 135
in my earliest and most sacred religious associations. It
was a congregation largely made up of young men, who
like myself were strangers, away from home and friends,
and whose hearts, touched and warmed by the familiar
sounds, seemed to send forth magnetic odors like the in-
terlocked pine-trees under the warm sunshine of a June
day.
I have long felt that he who would work his brain for
a living, without premature wear upon the organ, must
have Sunday placed as a sacred barrier of entire oblivion,
so far as possible, of the course of his week-day cares.
And what oblivion can be more complete than to rise on
the wings of religious ordinance into the region of those
diviner faculties by which man recognizes his heirship to
all that is in God 7
In like manner I found an oasis in the hot and hurried
course of my week-day life, by dropping in to the weekly
prayer meeting. The large, bright, pleasant room seemed
80 social and homelike, the rows of cheerful, well-dressed,
thoughtful people seemed, even before I knew one of
them, fatherly, motherly, brotherly, and sisterly, as they
joined with the piano in familiar hymn-singing, while the
pastor sat among them as a father in his family, and easy
social conversation went on with regard to the various
methods and aspects of the practical religious life.
To me, a stranger, and naturally shy and undemonstra-
tive, this socialism was in the highest degree warming and
inspiring. I do not mean to set the praise of this church
above that of a hundred others, with which I might have
become connected, but I will say that here I met the types
of some of those good old-fashioned Christians that Haw-
thorne celebrates in his "Celestial Railroad," under the
name of Messrs. "Stick to the Right '' and "Foot it to
Heaven," men better known among the poor and afflicted
than in fashionable or literary circles, men who, without
186 MY WIFE AND I
troubling their heads about much speculation, are footing
it to heaven on the old time-worn, narrow way, and carry-
ing with them as many as they can induce to go.
Having thus provided against being drawn down and
utterly swamped in the bread-and-subsistence struggle that
was before me, I sought to gain a position in connection
with some paper in New York. I had offers imder con-
sideration from several of them. The conductors of the
" Moral Spouting Horn " had conversed with me touching
their projects, and I had also been furnishing letters for
the "Great Democracy," and one of the proprietors had
invited me to a private dinner, I suppose for the purpose
of looking me over and trying my paces before he con-
cluded to purchase me.
Mr. Goldstick was a florid, middle-aged man, with a
slightly bald head, an easy portliness of manner, and that
air of comfortable patronage which men who are up in the
world sometimes carry towards yoimg aspirants. It wa$
his policy and his way to put himself at once on a footing
of equality with them, easy, jolly, and free; justly think-
ing that thereby he gained a more imguarded insight into
the inner citadel of their nature, and could see in the easy
play of their faculties just about how much they could be
made to answer his purposes. I had a chatty, merry din-
ner of it, and found all my native shyness melting away
under his charming affability. In fact, during the latter
part of the time I almost felt that I could have told him
anything that I could have told my own mother. What
did we not talk about that is of interest in these stirring
times? Philosophy, history, science, religion, life, death,
and immortality all received the most graceful off-hand
treatment, and were discussed with a singular unanimity
of sentiment that unanimity which always takes place
when the partner in a discussion has the controlling pur-
pose to be of the same mind as yourself. When, under
I LAY THE FIRST STONE IN MY FOUNDATION 187
tlie warm and sunuy air of this genial nature, I had fully
expanded, and confidence was in full blossom, came the
immediate business conversation in relation to the paper.
"I am rejoiced," said Mr. Goldstick, "in these days of
skepticism to come across a young man with real religious
convictions. I am not, I regret to say, a religious professor
myself, but I appreciate it, Mr. Henderson, as the element
most wanting in our modem life." Here Mr. Goldstick
sighed and rolled up his eyes, and took a glass of wine.
I felt encouraged in this sympathetic atmosphere to un-
fold to him my somewhat idealized views of what might be
accomplished by the daily press, by editors as truly under
moral vows and consecrations as the clergymen who minis-
tered at the altar.
He caught the idea from me with enthusiasm, and went
on to expand it with a vigor and richness of imagery, and
to illustrate it with a profusion of incidents, which left me
far behind him, gazing after him with reverential admira-
tion.
"Mr. Henderson," said he, "the ' Great Democracy ' is
not primarily a money-making enterprise it is a great
moral engine ; it is for the great American people, and it
contemplates results which look to the complete regenera-
tion of society."
I ventured here to remark that the same object had been
stated to me by the "Moral Spouting Horn."
His countenance assumed at once an expression of in-
tense disgust.
"Is it possible," he said, "that the charlatan has been
trying to get hold of you? My dear fellow," he added,
drawing near to me with a confidential air, "of course I
would be the last man to infringe on the courtesies due to
my brethren of the press, and you must be aware that our
present conversation is to be considered strictly confiden-
4iaL"
138 MY WIFE AND I
I assured him with fervor that I should consider it so.
"Well, then," he said, "between ourselves, I may say
that the * Moral Spouting Horn ' is a humbug. On mature
reflection," he added, "I don't know but duty requires me
to go farther, and say, in the strictest confidence, you
understand, that I consider the * Moral Spouting Horn ' a
swindle. "
Here it occurred to me that the same communication had
been made in equal confidence by the proprietor of the
" Moral Spouting Horn " in relation to the " Great Demo-
cracy." But, much as I was warmed into confidence by the
genial atmosphere of my friend, I had still enough prudence
to forbear making this statement.
"Now," said he, "my young friend, in devoting yourself
to the service of the * Great Democracy ' you may consider
yourself as serving the cause of God and mankind in ways
that no clergyman has an equal chance of doing. Beside
the press, sir, the pulpit is efifete. It is, so to speak," he
added, with a sweep of the right hand, "nowhere. Of
course, the responsibilities of conducting such an organ
are tremendous, tremendous," he added reflectively, as I
looked at him with awe ; " and that is why I require in
my writers, above all things, the clearest and firmest moral
convictions. Sir, it is a critical period in our history;
there is an amount of corruption in this nation that threat-
ens its dissolution ; the Church and the Pulpit have proved
entirely inadequate to stem it. It rests with the Press."
There was a solemn pause, in which nothing was heard
but the clink of the decanter on the glass, as he poured out
another glass of wine.
"It is a great responsibility," I remarked, with a sigh.
"Enormous!" he added, with almost a groan, eying
me sternly. "Consider," he went on, "the evils of the
tremendously corrupted literature which is now being
poured upon the community. Sir, we are fast drifting to
I LAY THE FIRST STONE IN MY FOUNDATION 139
destruction, it is a solemn fact. The public mind must be
aroused and strengthened to resist; they must be taught to
discriminate ; there must be just standard of moral criti-
cism no less than of intellectual, and that must be attended
to in our paper."
I was delighted to find his views in such accordance
with my own, and assured him I should be only too happy
to do what I could to forward them.
"We have been charmed and delighted," he said, "with
your contributions hitherto; they have a high moral tone
and have been deservedly popular, and it is our desire to
secure you as a stated contributor in a semi-editorial capa-
city, looking towards future developments. We wish that
it were in our power to pay a more liberal sum than we
can ofifer, but you must be aware, Mr. Henderson, that
great moral enterprises must always depend, in a certain
degree, on the element of self-sacrifice in their promoters."
I reflected, at this moment, on my father's life, and
assented with enthusiasm remarking that "if I could
only get enough to furnish me with the necessaries of life
I should be delighted to go into the glorious work with
him, and give to it the whole enthusiasm of my soul."
"You have the right spirit, young man," he said. "It
is delightful to witness this freshness of moral feeling."
And thus, before our interview was closed, I had signed
a contract of service to Mr. Goldstick, at very moderate
wages, but my heart was filled with exulting joy at the
idea of the possibilities of the situation.
I was young, and ardent; I did notf at this moment,
want to make money so much as to make myself felt in the
great world. It was the very spirit of Phaeton; I wanted
to have a hand on the reins, and a touch of the whip, and
guide the fiery horses of Progress. I had written stories,
and sung songs, but I was not quite content with those; I
wanted the anonymous pulpit of the Editor to speak in,
140 MY WIFE AND I
the opportunity of being the daily invisible companion
and counselor of thousands about their daily paths. The
ofiPer of Mr. Goldstick, as I understood it, looked that way,
and I resolved to deserve so well of him, by unlimited de-
votion to the interests of the paper, that he should open
my way before me.
CHAPTER xn
BAXmSLOB COMltADlSS
I SOON became well acquainted with my collaborators on
tlie paper. It was a pleasant surprise to be greeted in the
foreground by the familiar face of Jim Fellows, my old
college classmate. Jim was an agreeable creature, bom
with a decided genius for gossip. He had in perfection
the faculty which phrenologists call individuality. He
was statistical in the very marrow of his bones, apparently
imbibing all the external facts of every person and every-
thing around him by a kind of rapid instinct. In college,
Jim always knew all about every student; he knew all
about everybody in the little town where the college was
situated, their name, history, character, business, their
front-door and their back-door affairs. Ko birth, marriage,
or death ever took Jim by surprise ; he always knew all
about it long ago. Now, as a newspaper is a gossip market
on a large scale, this species of talent often goes farther in
our modem literary life than the deepest reflection or the
highest culture.
Jim was the best-natured fellow breathing; it was im*
possible to ruffle or disturb the easy, rattling, chattering
flow of his animal spirits. He was like a Frenchman in
his power of bright, airy adaptation to circumstances and
determination and ability to make the most of them.
" How lucky ! " he said, the morning I first shook hands
with him at the office of the " Great Democracy '' ; "you are
just on the minute; the very lodging you want has been
vacated this morning by old Styles; sunny room- south
142 MY WIFE AND I
windows close by here water, gas, and so on, all cor-
rect; and, best of all, me for your opposite neighbor."
I went round with him, looked, approved, and was set-
tled at once, Jim helping me with all the good-natured
handiness and activity of old college days. We had a
rattling, gay morning, plunging round into auction-rooms,
bargaining for second-hand furniture, and with so much
zeal did we drive our enterprise, seconded by the co-labors
of a charwoman whom Jim patronized, that by night I
found myself actually settled in a home of my own, mak-
ing tea in Jim's patent bachelor tea-kettle, and talking
over his and my affairs with the freedom of old cronies.
Jim made no scruple in inquiring in the most direct man-
ner as to the terms of my agreement with Mr. Goldstick,
and opened the subject succinctly, as follows:
"Now, my son, you must let your old grandfather ad-
vise you a little about your temporalities. In the first
t)lace, what 's Old Soapy going to give you ? "
" If you mean Mr. Goldstick " said I.
"Yes," said he, "call him * Soapy ' for short. Did he
come down handsomely on the terms ? "
"His offers were not as large as I should have liked;
but then, as he said, this paper is not a money-making affair,
but a moral enterprise, and I am willing to work for less. "
" Moral grandmother ! " said Jim in a tone of unlimited
disgust. "He be choked, as it were. Why, Harry
Henderson, are your eye-teeth in such a retrograde state as
that? Why, this paper is a fortune to that man; he lives
in a palace, owns a picture-gallery, and rolls about in his
own carriage."
" I understood him, " said I, " that the paper was not
immediately profitable in a pecuniary point of view."
" Soapy calls everything unprofitable that does not yield
him fifty per cent, on the money invested. Talk of moral
enterprise ! What did he engage you for ? "
I stated the terms.
" For how long 1 '*
"For one year."
"Well, the best you can do is to work it out now.
Never make another bargain without asking your grand-
father. Why, he pays me just double; and you know,
Harry, I am nothing at all of a writer compared to you.
But then, to be sure, I fill a place you 've really no talent
for."
" What is that ? "
"General professor of humbug," said Jim. "No sort of
business gets on in this world without that, and I 'm a real
genius in that line. I made Old Soapy come down, by
threatening to * rat, ' and go to the * Spouting Horn, ' and
they could n't afiford to let me do that. You see, I 've
been up their back stairs, and know all their little family
secrets. The * Spouting Horn ' would give their eye-teeth
for me. It's too funny," he said, throwing himself back
and laughing.
" Are these papers rivals ? " said I.
"Well, I should * rayther ' think they were," said he,
eying me with an air of superiority amounting almost to
contempt. "Why, man, the thing that I'm particularly
valuable for is, that I always know just what will plague
the * Spouting Horn ' folks the most. I know precisely
where to stick a pin or a needle into them; and one great
object of our paper is to show that the * Spouting Horn ' is
always in the wrong. No matter what topic is uppermost,
I attend to that, and get off something on them. For you
see, they are popular, and make money like thunder, and,
of course, that isn't to be allowed. Now," he added,
pointing with his thumb upward, " overhead, there is really
our best fellow Bolton. Bolton is said to be the best
writer of English in our day ; he 's an A No. 1, and no
mistake ; tremendously educated, and all that, and he knows
144 MY WIFE AND I
exactly to a shaving what 's what everywhere; he 'b a gen-
tleman, too; we call him the Dominie. Well, Bolton
writes the great leaders, and fires off on all the awful and
solemn topics, and lays off the politics of Europe and the
world generally. "When there 's a row over there in Eu-
rope, Bolton is magnificent on editorials. You see, he has
the run of all the rows they have had there, and every
bohbery that has been kicked up since the Christian era.
He Ul tell you what the French did in 1700 this, and the
Germans in 1800 that, and of course he prophesies splen-
didly on what 's to turn up next. '*
''I suppose they give him large pay," said I.
"Well, you see, Bolton 's a quiet fellow and a gentleman
one that hates to jaw and is modest, and so they keep
him along steady on about half what / would get out of
them if I were in his skin. Bolton is perfectly satisfied.
If I were he, I shouldn't be, you see. I say, Harry, I
know you 'd like him. Let me bring him down and intro-
duce him," and before I could either consent or refuse,
Jim rattled upstairs, and I heard him in an earnest, per-
suasive treaty, and soon he came down with his captive.
I saw a man of thirty-three or thereabouts, tall, well
formed, with blight, dark eyes, strongly marked features,
a finely turned head, and closely cropped black hair. He
had what I should call presence something that im-
pressed me, as he entered the room, with the idea of a
superior kind of individuality, though he was simple in his
manners, with a slight air of shyness and constraint. The
blood flushed in his cheeks as he was introduced to me,
and there was a tremulous motion about his finely cut lips,
betokening suppi^essed^ sensitiveness. The first sound of
his voice, as he spoke, stnick on my ear agreeably, like
the tones of a fine instrument, and, reticent and retiring
as he seemed, I felt myself singularly attracted toward
hiiiL
BACHELOR COMRADES 145
What impressed me most, as he joined in the conversa-
tion with my rattling, free and easy, good-natured neigh-
bor, was an air of patient, amused tolerance. He struck
me as a man who had made up his mind to expect nothing
and ask nothing of life, and who was sitting it out pa-
tiently, as one sits out a dull play at the theatre. He was
disappointed with nobody, and angry with nobody, while
he seemed to have no confidence in anybody. With all
this apparent reserve, he was simply and frankly cordial to
me, as a newcomer and a fellow-worker on the same paper.
"Mr. Henderson," he said, "I shall be glad to extend
to you the hospitalities of my den, such as they are. If
I can at any time render you any assistance, dc^'t hesitate
to use me. Perhaps you would like to walk up and look
at my books ? I shall be only too happy to put them at
your disposal."
We went up into a little attic room whose walls were
literally lined with books on all sides, only allowmg space
for the two southerly windows which overlooked the city.
"I like to be high in the world, you see," he said, with
a smile.
The room was not a large one, and the centre was occu-,
pied by a large table, covered with books and papers. A
cheerful coal fire was burning in the little grate, a large
leather armchair stood before it, and, with one or two other
chairs, completed the furniture of the apartment. A small,
lighted closet, whose door stood open on the room, dis-
played a pallet bed of monastic simplicity.
There were two occupants of the apartment who seemed
established there by right of possession. A large Maltese
cat, with great, golden eyes, like two full moons, sat
gravely looking into the fire, in one corner, and a very
plebeian, scrubby mongrel, who appeared to have known
the hard side of life in former days, was dozing in the
other. Apparently, these (/enii loci were so strong in their
146 MY WIFE AND I
sense of poBsession that our entrance gave them no disturb-
ance. The dog unclosed his eyes with a sleepy wink as
we came in, and then shut them again, dreamily, as satis-
fied that all was right.
Bolton invited us to sit down, and did the honors of his
room with a quiet elegance, as if it had been a palace in-
stead of an attic. As soon as we were seated, the cat
sprang familiarly on the table and sat down coeily by Bol-
ton, rubbing her head against his coat-sleeve.
**Let me introduce you to my wife," said Bolton, strok-
ing her head. "I3i, Jenny, what now?" he added, as
she seized his hands playfully in her teeth and claws.
"You see, she has the connubial weapons," he said, "and
insists on being treated with attention ; but she 's capital
company. I read all my articles to her, and she never
makes an unjust criticism."
Puss soon stepped from her perch on the table and en-
sconced herself in his lap, while I went round examining
his books. The library showed varied and curious tastes.
The books were almost all rare.
"I have always made a rule," he said, "never to buy
a book that I could borrow*"
I was amused, in the course of the conversation, at the
relations which apparently existed between him and Jim
Fellows, which appeared to me to be very like what might
be supposed to exist between a philosopher and a lively pet
squirrel it was the perfection of quiet, amused tolerance.
Jim seemed to be not in the slightest degree under con-
straint in his presence, and rattled on with a free and easy
slang familiarity, precisely as he had done with me.
"What do you think Old Soapy has engaged Hal for? "
he said. "Why, he only offers him" Here followed
the statement of terms.
I was annoyed at this matter-of-fact way of handling my
private affairs, but on meeting the eyes of my new friend I
BACHELOK COMRADES 147
discerned a glance of quiet humor which reassured me.
He seemed to regard Jim only as another form of the inev*
itable.
"Don't yen think it is a confounded take-in?" said
Jim.
"Of course," said Mr. Bolton, with a smile, "but he
will survive it. The place is only one of the stepping-
stones. Meanwhile," he said, "I think Mr. Henderson
can find other markets for his literary wares, and more
profitable ones. I think," he added, while the blood again
hse in his cheeks, " that I have some influence in certain
literary quarters, and I shall be happy to do all that I can
to secure to him that which he ought to receive for such
Careful work as this. Your labor on the paper will not
by any means take up your whole power or time."
"Well," said Jim, "the fact is the same all the world
over the people that grow a thing are those that get the
least for it. It isn't your farmers, that work early and
late, that get rich by what they raise out of the earth, it 'a
Ihe middlemen and the hucksters. And just so it is in
literature; and the better a fellow writes, and the more
wotk he puts into itj the less he gets paid for it; Why,
now, look at rae," h^ said, perching himself astride the
arm of a chair, "I 'm a genuine literary humbug, but I '11
bet you I '11 make more money than either of you, because,
you see, I 've no modesty and no conscience. Confound it
all, those are luxuries that a poor fellow can't afford to
keep. I 'm a sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal, but
I 'm just the sort of fellow the world wants, and, hang it,
they shall pay me for being that sort of fellow. I mean
to make it shell out, and you see if I don't. I '11 'bet you,
now, that I 'd write a book that you would n't, either of
you, be hired to write, and sell one hundred thousand
copies of it, and put the money in my pocket, marry the
handsomest, richest, and best educated girl in Kew Yorkf
148 MY WIFE AND I
while you are trudging on, doing good, careful work, as
you call it."
"Remember us in your will," said I.
"Oh yes, I will," he said. "I '11 found an asylum for
decayed authors of merit a sort of literary * H6tel des
Invalides. ' "
We had a hearty laugh over this idea, and, on the
whole, our evening passed off very merrily. When I
shook hands with Bolton for the night, it was with a silent
conviction of an interior affinity between us.
It is a charming thing in one's rambles to come across
a tree, or a flower, or a fine bit of landscape that one can
think of afterward, and feel richer for its being in the
world. But it is more when one is in a strange place, to
come across a man that you feel thoroughly persuaded is,
somehow or other, morally and intellectually worth explor-
ing. Our lives tend to become so hopelessly commonplace,,
and the human beings we meet are generally so much one
just like another, that the possibility of a new and peculiar
style of character in an acquaintance is a most enlivening
one. There was something about Bolton both stimulating
and winning, and I lay down less a stranger that night
than I had been since I came to New York.
s
CHAPTER Xin
HAPS AND MISHAPS
I ENTERED upon Hiy new duties with enthusiasm, and
produced some editorials, for which I was complimented by
Mr. Goldstick.
"That's the kind of thing wanted!" he said; "a firm,
moral tone, and steady religious convictions; that pleases
the old standards.''
Emboldened by this I proceeded to attack a specific
abuse in New York administration, which had struck me
as needing to be at once righted. If ever a moral trumpet
ought to have its voice, it was on this subject. I read my
article to Bolton; in fact, I had gradually fallen into the
habit of referring myself to his judgment.
"It is all perfectly true," he remarked, when I had fin-
ished, while he leaned back in his chair and stroked his
cat, " but they never will put that into the paper, in the
world."
"Why," said I, "if ever there was an abuse that re-
quired exposing, it is this."
" Precisely ! " he replied.
"And what is the use," I went on, "of general moral
preaching that is never applied to any particular case ? "
"The use," he replied calmly, "is that that kind of
preaching pleases everybody, and increases subscribers,
while the other kind makes enemies, and decreases them."
"And you really think that they won't put this article
ml" said I.
"I 'm certain they won't," he replied. "The fact is, this
150 MY WIFE AND I
paper is bought up on the other side. Messrs. Goldstick
and Co. have intimate connection with Messrs. Bunkam
and Chaffem, who are part and parcel of this very afifair."
I opened my mouth with astonishment. "Then Gold-
stick is a hypocrite," I said.
"Not consciously," he answered calmly.
"Why," said I, "you would have thought by the way
he talked to me that he had nothing so much at heart as
the moral progress of society, and was ready to sacrifice
everything todt."
"Well," said Bolton quietly, "did you never see a
woman who thought she was handsome, when she was not )
Did you never see a man who thought he was witty, when
he was only scurrilous and impudent ? Did you never see
people who flattered themselves they were frank, because
they were obtuse and impertinent) And cannot you ima-
gine that a man may think himself a philanthropist, when
he is only a worshiper of the golden calf? That same
calf," he continued, stroking his cat till she purred aloud,
"has the largest church of any on earth."
"Well," said I, "at any rate I '11 hand it in."
"You can do so," he replied, "and that will be the last
you will hear of it. You see, I *ve been this way before
you, and I have learned to save myself time and trouble on
these subjects."
The result was precisely as Bolton predicted.
"We must be a little careful, my young friend," said
Mr. Goldstick, "how we handle specific matters of this
kind; they have extended relations that a young man can-
not be expected to appreciate, and I would advise you to
confine yourself to abstract moral principles; keep up a
high moral standard, sir, and things will come right of
themselves. Now, sir, if you could expose the corruptions
in England it would have an admirable moral effect, and
our general line of policy now is down on England."
HAPS AND MISHAPS 151
A day or two after, however, I fell into serious disgrace.
A part of my duties consisted in reviewing the current
literature of the day ; Bolton, Jim, and I took that depart^
ment among us, and I soon learned to sympathize with the
tea-tasters, who are said to ruin their digestion hy an in-
cessant tasting of the different qualities of tea. The enor-
mous quantity and variety of magazines and hooks that I
had to " sample " in a few days brought me into such a
state of mental dyspepsia, that I began to wish every book
in the Bed Sea. I really was brought to consider thcf
usual pleasant tone of book notices in America to be evi-
dence of a high degree of Christian forbearance. In look-
ing over my share, however, I fell upon a novel of the
modem, hot, sensuous school, in which glowing coloring
and a sort of religious sentimentalism were thrown around
actions and principles which tended directly to the dissolu-
tion of society. Here was exactly the opportunity to stem
that tide of corruption against which Mr. Goldstick so
solemnly had warned me. I made the analysis of the book
a text for exposing the whole class of principles and prac-
tices it inculcated, and uttering my warning against corrupt
literature, I sent it to the paper, and in it went. A day
wt two after Mr. Goldstick came into the office in great
disorder, with an open letter in his hand.
"What's all this?" he said; "here's Sillery and
Peacham blowing us up for being down on their books,
and threatening to take away their advertising from us.''
Nobody seemed to know anything about it, till finally
the matter was traced back to me.
"It was a corrupt book, Mr. Goldstick," said I, with
firmness, "and the very object you stated to me was to
establish a just moral criticism."
"Go to thunder! young man," said Mr. Groldstick in
a tone I had never heard before. "Have you no discrimi-
nation? are you going to blow us up? The ' Great Pernor-
152 MY WIFE AND I
cracy, ' sir, is a great moral engine, and the advertising of
this publishing house gives thousands of dollars yearly
towards its support. It 's an understood thing that Sillery
and Peacham's books are to be treated handsomely."
"I say, Captain," said Jim, who came up behind us at
this time, '4et me manage this matter; I'll straighten it
out; Sillery and Peacham know me, and I '11 fix it with
them."
"Come, Hal, my boy!" he said, hooking me by the
arm, and leading me out.
We walked to our lodgings together. I was gloriously
indignant all the way, but Jim laughed till the tears rolled
down his cheeks.
"You sweet babe of Eden," said he, as we entered my
room, " do get quiet ! I '11 sit right down and write a
letter from the Boston correspondent on that book, saying
that your article has created a most immense sensation in
the literary circles of Boston in regard to its moral char-
acter, and exhort everybody to rush to the book-store and
see for themselves. Now, * hush, my dear, lie stiU and
slumber,' while I do it."
"Why, do you mean to go to Boston? " said I.
"Only in spirit, my dear. Bless you! did you suppose
that the Boston correspondents, or any other correspon-
dents, are there, or anywhere else in fact, that they profess
to be 1 I told you that I was the professor of humbug.
This little affair lies strictly in my department."
"Jim!" said I solemnly, "I don't want to be in such
a network of chicanery."
"Oh, come, Hal, nobody else wants to be just where
they are, and, after all, it's none of your business; you
and Bolton are great moral forty-pounders. When we get
you pointed the right way for the paper you can roar and
fire away at your leisure, and the moral effect will be pro-
digious. I 'm your flying-artillery -:- all over the field
HAPS AND MISHAPS 153
everywhere, pop, and off again ; and what is it to you what
I do 1 Now you see, Hal, you must just have some general
lines ahout your work ; the fact is, I ought to have told
you before. There 's Sillery and Peacham's books have
got to be put straight along: you see there is no mistake
about that; and when you and Bolton find one you can't
praise honestly, turn it over to me. Then, again, there 's
Burill and Bangem's books have got to be put down.
They had a row with us last year, and turned over their
advertising to the * Spouting Horn. ' Now, if you happen
to find a bad novel among their books, show it up, cut into
it without mercy ; it will give you just as good a chance to
preach, with your muzzle pointed the right way, and do
exactly as much good. You see, there 's everything with
you fellows in getting you pointed right."
"But," said I, "Jim, this course is utterly subversive of
all just criticism. It makes book notices good for nothing."
"Well, they are not good for much," said Jim reflec--
tively. "I sometimes pity a poor devil whose first book
has been all cut up, just because Goldstick 's had a row
with his publishers. But then there 's this comfort, what
we run down the * Spouting Horn ' will run up, so it is
about as broad as it is long. Then there 's our magazines.
We 're in with the * Rocky Mountains ' now we 've
been out with them for a year or two and cut up all their
articles. Now you see, we are in, and the rule is, to begin
at the beginning and praise them all straight through, so
you '11 have plain sailing there. Then there 's the * Pacific '
you are to pick on that all you can. I think you had
better leave that, to me. I have a talent for saying little
provoking things that gall people, and that they can't an--
Bwer. The fact is, the * Pacific ' has got to come down a
little, and come to our terms, before we are civil to it."
" Jim Fellows " I began.
" Come, come, go and let off to Bolton, if you have got
154 MY WIFE AND I
anything more to say ; " he added, ** I want to write my
Boston letter. You see, Hal, I shall bring you out with
flying colors, and get a better sale for the book than if you
hadn't written,''
"Jim," said I, "I 'm going to get out of this paper."
" And pray, my dear sir, what will you get into 1 "
"I '11 get into one of the religious papers."
Jim upon this leaned back, kicked up his heels, and
laughed aloud. "I could help you there," he said. "I
do the literary for three religious newspapers now. These
solemn old Dons are so busy about their tweedle-dums and
tweedle-dees of justification and election, baptism and
church government, that they don't know anything about
current literature, and get us fellows to write their book
notices. I rather think that they 'd stare if they should
read some of the books that we puff up. I tell you,
Christy's Minstrels are nothing to it. Think of it, Hal,
- the solemn * Holy Sentinel * with a laudatory criticism of
Dante Eossetti's * Jenny ' in it and the * Trumpet of Zion *
with a commendatory notice of George Sand's novels."
Here Jim laughed with a fresh impulse. " You see, the
dear, good souls are altogether too pious to know anything
about it, and so we liberalize the papers, and the publish-
ers make us a little consideration for getting their books
started in religious circles."
"Well, Jim," said I, "I want to just ask you, do you
think this sort of thing is right ) "
" Bless your soul now ! " said Jim, " if you are going to
begin with that, here in New York, where are you going
to end * Where do you 'spect to die when you go to 1 '
-as the old darky said."
"Well," said I, "would you like to have Dante Eos-
setti's * Jenny ' put into the hands of your sister or younger
brother, recommended by a religious newspaper ? "
"Well, to tell the truth, Hal, I didn't write those
HAPS AND MISHAPS 155
notices. Bill Jones wrote them. Bill 's up to anything.
You know every person in England and this country has
praised Dante Eossetti, and particularly * Jenny, ' and reli-
gious papers may as well be out of the world as out of
fashion, and so mother she bought a copy for a Christ-
mas present to sister Nell. And I tell you if I did n't get
a going over about it !
" I showed her the article in the * Holy Sentinel, ' but
it didn't do a bit of good. She made me promise I
would n't write it up, and I never have. She said it waa
a shame. You see mother is n't up to the talk about high
art, that 's got up nowadays about Dante Eossetti and
Swinburne, and those. I thought myself that * Jenny '
was coming it pretty strong, and honest now, I never
could see the sense in it. But then, you see, I am not artis-
tic If a fellow should tell a story of that kind to my
sister, I should horsewhip him, and kick him down the
front steps. But he dresses it up in poetry, and it liea
around on pious people's tables, and nobody dares to say
a word because it 's ' artistic. ' People are so afraid they
shall not be supposed to understand what high art is that
they '11 knuckle down under most anything. That 's the
kind of world we live in. Well, I did n't make the world,
and I don't govern it. But the world owes me a living,
and hang it I it shall give me one. So you go up to Bol-
ton, and leave me to do my work ; I 've got to write col-
umns, and then tramp out to that confounded water-color
exhibition, because I promised Snooks a puff, I sha'n't
get to bed till twelve or one. I tell you, it 's steep on a
fellow now."
I went up to Bolton, boiling and bubbling and seething,
with the spirit of sixteen reformers in my veins. The
scene, as I opened the door, was sufficiently tranquilizing.
Bolton sat reading by the side of his shaded study-lamp,
with hia cat asleep in hia lap; the ill-favored dog, before
156 MY WIFE AND I
mentioned, was planted by his side, with his nose upturned,^
surveying him with a fullness of doggish adoration and
complacency, which made his rubbishy shop-worn figure
quite an affecting item in the picture. Crouched down on
the floor in the comer was a ragged, unkempt, freckle-
faced little boy, busy doing a sum on a slate.
"Ah, old fellow," he said, as he looked up and saw me.
"Come in; there, there, Snubby," he said to the dog,
pushing him gently into his corner, "let the gentleman sit
down. You see, you find me surrounded by my family,"
he said. "Wait one minute," he added, turning to the
boy in the comer, and taking his slate out of his hand,
and mnning over the sum. "All right, Bill. Now here 's
your book. " He took a volume of the " Arabian Nights "
from the table, and handed it to him, and Bill settled him-
self on the floor, and was soon lost in Sindbad the Sailor.
He watched him a minute or two, and then looked round
at me, with a smile. " I would n't be afraid to bet that
you might shout in that fellow's ear and he wouldn't hear
you, now he is fairly in upon that book. Is n't it worth
while to be able to give such perfect bliss in this world at
so small an expense? I 've lost the power of reading the
' Arabian Nights, ' but I comfort myself in seeing this chap. "
"Who is he?" said I.
" Oh, he 's my washerwoman's boy. Poor fellow I He
has hard times. I 've set him up in selling newspapers.
You see, I try now and then to pick up one grain out of
the heap of misery, and put it into the heap of happiness,
as John Newton said."
I was still bubbling with the unrest of my spirit, and
finally overflowed upon him with the whole history of my
day's misadventures, and all the troubled thoughts and
burning indignations that I had with reference to it.
"My dear fellow," he said, "take it easy. We have to
accept this world as a fait accompli. It takes some time
HAPS AND MISHAPS 157
ioT US to learn how little we can do to help or to hinder*
You cannot take a step in the business of life anywhere
without meeting just this kind of thing; and one part of the
science of living is to learn just what our own responsibility
is, and to let other people's alone. The fact is," he said,
'* the growth of current literature in our times has been so
sudden and so enormous that things are in a sort of revolu-
tionary state with regard to it, in which it is very difficult
to ascertain the exact right. For example, I am connected
with a paper which is simply and purely, at bottom, a finan-
cial speculation ; its owners must make money. Now, they
are not bad men as the world goes they are well-meaning
men amiable, patriotic, philanthropic some of them
are religious; they, all of them, would rather virtue would
prevail than vice, and good than evil; they, all of them,
would desire every kind of abuse to be reformed, and every
good cause to be forwarded that could be forwarded with-
out a sacrifice of their main object. As for me, I am not
a holder or proprietor. I am simply a servant engaged by
these people for a certain sum. If I should sell myself to
say what I do not think, or to praise what I consider harm-
ful, to propitiate their favor, I should be a dastard. They
understand perfectly that I never do it, and they never ask
me to. Meanwhile, they employ persons who will d6
these things. I am not responsible for it any more than
I am for anything else which goes on in the city of New
York. I am^ allowed my choice among notices, and I never
write them without saying, to the best of my ability, the
exact truth, whether literary or in a moral point of view.
Now, that is just my stand, and if it satisfies you, you can
take the same."
"But," said I, "it makes me indignant to have Gold-
stick talk to me as he did about a great self-denying moral
enterprise why, that man must know he 's a liar."
"Do you think so?" said he. "I don't imagine he
158 MY WIFE AND I
does. Groldstick has considerable sentiment. It 's quite
easy to get him excited on moral subjects, and he dearly
loves to hear himself talk he is sincerely interested in a
good number of moral reforms, so long as they cost him
nothing; and when a man is working his good faculties,
he is generally delighted with himself, and it is the most
natural thing in the world to think that there is more of
him than there is. I am often put in mind of that enthu-
siastic young ruler that came to the Saviour, who had kept
all the commandments, and seemed determined to be on
the high road to saintship. The Saviour just touched him
on this financial question, and he wilted in a minute. I
consider that to be still the test question, and there are a
good many young rulers like him, who don*t keep all the
commandments. ''
"Your Way of talking," said I, "seems to do away with
all moral indignation."
He smiled, and then looked sadly into the fire. " God
help us all," he said. "We are all struggling in the water
together and pulling one another under our best virtues
are such a miserable muddle -^ and then -^ there 's the
beam in our own eye."
There was a depth of pathos in his dark eyes as he
spoke, and suddenly a smile flashed over his features, and
looking around, he said :
** So, what do yon think of that, my cat,
A&d what do you think of that, my dog ? "
CHAPTER XIV
I MSET A YIStOK
*'I SAT, Hal, do you want to get aoquainted with any tt
the P. G. 's here in New York ? If you do, I can put you
on the track.''
"P. G.'s!'' said I innocently.
"Yes; you know that's what Plato calls pl^tty girls.
I don't helieve you remember your Greek. I 'm going out
this evening where there 's a lot of 'em -^ splendid house
on Fifth Avenue lots of tin girls gracious. Don't
know which of 'em I shall take yet. Don't you want to
go with me and see 1 "
Jim stood at the looking-glass brushing his hair and
arranging his necktie.
" Jim Fellows, you are a coxcomb, " said I.
"I don't know why I shouldn't be," said he. "The
girls fairly throw themselves at one's head. They are up
to all that sort of thing. Besides, I 'm on the lookout for
toy fortune, and it all comes in the way of business.
Come, now, don't sit there writing all the evening. Come
out, and let me show you New York by gaslight."
"No," said I; "I 've got to finish up this article for the
* Milky Way. ' The fact is, a fellow must be industrious to
make anything, and my time for seeing girls isn't come
yet. I must have something to support a wife on before
I look round in that direction."
" The idea, Harry, of a good-looking fellow like you not
making the most of his advantages I Why, there are nice
girls in this city that could help you up faster them nXk the
160 MY WIFE AND I
writing you can do these ten years. And you sitting,
moiling and toiling, when you ought to be making some
lovely woman happy ! "
" I shall never marry for money, Jim, you may depend
upon that."
" * Baa, baa, black sheep, * " said Jim. " Who is talking
about marrying for money 1 A fine girl is none the worse
for fifty thousand dollars, and I can give you a list of
twenty that you can go round among until you fall in love,
and not come amiss anywhere, if it 's falling in love that
you want to do."
"Oh, come, Jim," said I, "do finish your toilet and be
off with yourself if, you are going. I don't blame a woman
who marries for money, since the whole world has always
agreed to shut her out of any other way of gaining an
independence. But for a man, with every other avenue
open to him, to mouse about for a rich wife, I think is
too dastardly for anything."
"That would make a fine point for a paragraph," said
Jim, turning round to me, with perfect good-humor. " So
I advise you to save it for the moral part of the paper.
You see, if you waste too much of that sort of thing on
me, your mill may run low. It 's a deuced hard thing to
keep the moral a-going the whole year, you '11 find."
"Well," said I, "I am going to try to make a home
for a wife, by good, thorough work, done just as work
ought to be done; and I have no time to waste on society
in the mean while."
"And when you are ready for her," said Jim, "I sup-
pose you expect to receive her per * Divine Providence '
Express, ticketed and labeled, and expenses paid. Or,
maybe she 41 be brought to you some time by genii, as
the Princess of China was brought to the Prince of Tar-
tary, when he was asleep. I used to read about that in
the Arabian tales."
I MEET A VISION 161
I give this little passage of my conversation with Jim,
because it is a pretty good illustration of the axiom that
''It is not in man that walketh to direct his steps."
When we have announced any settled purpose or sublime
intention in regard to our future course of life, it seems
to be the delight of fortune to throw us directly into cir-
cumstances in which we shall be tempted to do what we
have just declared we never will do, and the fortunes of
our lives turn upon the most inconsiderable hinges. Mine
turned upon an umbrella.
The next morning I had business in the very lowermost
part of the city, and started off without my umbrella; but
being weather-wise, and discerning the face of the sky, I
went back to my room and took it. It was one of those
little pet objects of vertu to which a bachelor sometimes
treats himself in lieu of domestic luxuries. It had a finely
carved handle, which I bought in Dieppe, and which caused
it to be peculiar among all the umbrellas in New York.
It was one of those uncertain, capricious days that mark
the coming in of April, when Nature, like a nervous
beauty, does n't seem to know her own mind, and laughs
one moment and cries the next with a perplexing uncer-
tainty. The first part of the morning the amiable and
smiling predominated, and I began to regret that I had
encumbered myself with the troublesome precaution of an
umbrella while tramping around down town. In this
mood of mind I sat at Fulton Ferry waiting the starting
of the Bleecker Street car, when suddenly the scene was
enlivened to my view by the entrance of a young lady, who
happened to seat herself exactly opposite to me.
Now, as a writer, an observer of life and manners, 1 had
often made quiet studies of the fair flowers of modern New
York society as I rode up and down in the cars. In no
other country in the world, perhaps, has a man the oppor-
tunity of being vis-a-vis with the best and most cultured
162 MY WIFE AND I
class of young women in the public conveyances. In Eng-
land, this class are veiled and secluded from gaze by all the
ordinances and arrangements of society. They go out only
in their own carriages; they travel in reserved compart-
ments of the railway carriages; they pass from these to
reserved apartments in the hotels where they are served
apart in family privacy as much as in their own dwellings.
So that the stranger traveling in the country, unless he
have introductions to the personal hospitality of these cir-
cles, has almost no way of forming any opinion even as to
the external appearance of its younger women. In France,
a still stricter regime watches over the young, unmarried
girl, who is kept in the shade of an almost conventual seclu-
sion till marriage opens the doors of her prison. The young
American girl, however, of the better and of the best classes
is to be met and observed everywhere. She moves through
life with the assured step of a princess, too certain of her po-
sition and familiar with her power even to dream of a fear.
She looks on her surroundings from above with the eye of a
mistress, and expects, of course, to see all things give way
before her, as in our republican society they generally do.
During the few months I had spent in New York I had
diligently kept out of society. The permitted silent ac-
quaintance with my fair countrywomen which I gained
while riding up and down in street conveyances became,
therefore, a favorite and harmless source of amusement.
Not an item in the study escaped me, not a feather in that
rustling and wonderful plumage of fashion that bore them
up was unnoted. I mused on styles and characteristics,
and silently wove in my own mind histories to correspond
with the various physiognomies I studied. Let not the
reader imagine me staring point-blank, with my mouth
open, at all I met. The art of noting without appearing
to note, of seeing without seeming to see, was one that I
cultivated with assiduity.
I MEM A VISION 16a
Therefore, without any impertinent scrutiny, I satisfied
myself of the fact that a feminine presence of an unusual
kind and quality was opposite to me. It was, at first
glance, one of the New York princesses of the blood, accus-
tomed to treading on clouds and breathing incense. There
was a quiet savoir faire and self-possession as she sat down
on her seat, as if it were a throne ; and there was a species
of repressed vitality and decision in all her little involun-
tary movements that interested me as live things always do
interest, in proportion to their quantum of life. We all
are familiar with the fact that there are some people, who,
let them sit still as they may, and conduct themselves never
so quietly, nevertheless impress their personality on those
around them, and make their presence felt. An attraction
of this sort drew my eyes toward my neighbor. She was
a young lady of medium height, slender and elastic figure,
features less regularly beautiful than piquant and expres*
sive. I remarked a pair of fine dark eyes the more from
the contrast with a golden cr^pe of hair. The combination
of dark eyes and lashes with fair hair always produces
effect of a striking character. She was attired as became
a Fifth Avenue princess, who has the world of fashion at
her feet, yet, to my thinking, as one who had chosen
and adapted her material with an eye of taste. A delicate
cashmere was folded carelessly round her shoulders, and
her little hands were gloved with a careful nicety of fit;
and dangling from one finger was a toy purse of gold and
pearl, in which she began searching for the change to pay
her fare. I saw, too, as she investigated, an expression
of perplexity, slightly tinged with the ludicrous, upon her
face. I perceived at a glance the matter. She was sur-
veying a ten-dollar note with a glance of amused vexation,
and vainly turning over her little purse for the smaller
change or tickets available in the situation. I leaned for*
ward and offered, as gentlemen generally do, to take her
164 MT WIFE AND I
fare and pass it forward. With a smile of apology she
handed me the bill, and showed the little empty purse.
" Allow me to arrange it, " I said. She smiled and blushed.
I passed up the ticket necessary for the occasion, returned
her bill, bowed, and immediately looked another way with
sedulous care.
It requires an extra amount of discretion and delicacy to
make it tolerable to a true lady to become in the smallest
degree indebted to a gentleman who is a stranger. I was
aware that my fair vis-a-vis was inwardly disturbed at
having inadvertently been obliged to accept from me even
80 small an obligation as a fare ticket; but as matters were,
there was no help for it. On the whole, though I was
sorry for her, I could not but regard the incident as a spe-
cies of good luck for myself. We rode along ^ perhaps
each of us conscious at times of being attentively considered
by the other, until the car turned up Park Row, before
the Astor House; she signaled the conductor to stop, and
got out. Here it was that the beneficent intentions of the
fates, in causing me to bring my umbrella, were made
manifest.
Just as the car started again, came one of those sudden
gushes of rain with which perverse April delights to rufifle
and discompose unwary passengers. It was less a decent,
decorous shower than a dash of water by the bucketful.
Immediately I jumped out and stepped to the side of my
gentle neighbor, begging her to allow me to hold my um-
brella over her, and see her in safety across Broadway.
She meant to have stopped at one or two places, she said,
but it rained so she would thank me to put her into a Fifth
Avenue stage. So we went together, threading our way
through rushing and trampling carriages, horses, and cars,
a driving storm above, below, and around, which seemed
to throw my fair princess entirely upon my protection for
R few moments, till I had her safe in the up-town omnibus.
I MEET A VISION 165
As it was my route, also, I, too, entered, and by this time
feeling a sort of privilege of acquaintance, arranged the
fare for her, and again received a courteous and apologetic
acknowledgment. Before a very elegant house in Fifth
Avenue my unknown alighted, and the rain still continu-
ing, there was an excuse for my attending her up the steps,
and ringing the door-bell for her.
We were kept waiting in this position several minutes,
when she very gracefully expressed her thanks for my
kindness, and begged that I would walk in.
Surprised and pleased, I excused myself on plea of en-
gagements, but presented her with my card, and said I
would do myself the pleasure of calling at another time.
With a little laugh and blush she handed me a card from
a tiny pearl and gold case, on which was engraved "Eva
Van Arsdel," and in the corner, "Wednesdays."
"We receive on Wednesdays, Mr. Henderson/' she said,
"and mamma will be so happy to make your acquaintance."
Here the door opened, and my fairy princess vanished
from view, with a parting vision of a blush, smile, and
bow, and I was left outside with the rain and the mud and
the dull, commonplace grind of my daily work.
The house, as I noted it, was palatial in its aspect.
Clear, large windows, which seemed a single sheet of crys-
tal, gave a view of banks of flowering hyacinths, daffodils,
crocuses, and roses, curtained in by misty falls of lace
drapery. Evidently it was one of those Circean regions
of retreat, where the lovely daughters of fashionable wealth
in New York keep guard over an eternal lotus-eater's para-
dise; where they tread on enchanted carpets, move to the
sound of music, and live among flowers and odors a life of
blissful ignorance of toil or care.
" To what purpose, " I thought to myself, " should I call
there, or pursue the vision into its own regions? JEneas
might as well try to follow Venus to the scented regions
166 MY WIFE AND I
above Idalia, where her hundred altars forever buniy and
her flowers never die."
But yet I was no wiser and no older than other men at
three-and-twenty, and the little card which I had placed
in my vest pocket seemed to diffuse an agreeable, electric
warmth, which constantly reminded me of its presence
there. I took it out and looked at it. I spelled the name
over, and dwelt on every letter. There was so much posi-
tive character in the little lady, such a sort of spicy,
racy individuality, that the little I had seen of her was like
reading the first page of an enchanting romance, and I
could not repress a curiosity to go on with it. To-day was
Monday; the reception day was Wednesday. Should I
go?
Prudence said, "No; you are a young man with your
way to make; you are self-dependent; you are poor; you
have no time to spend in helping rich idle people to hunt
butterflies, and string rose-leaves, and make dandelion-
chains. K you set your foot over one of those enchanted
thresholds, where wealth and idleness rule together, you
will be bewildered, enervated, and spoiled for any really
high or severe task- work; you will become an idler, a
dangler; the power of sustained labor and self-denial will
depart from you, and you will run like a breathless lackey
after the chariot of wealth and fashion."
On the other hand, as the little bit of enchanted paste-
board gently burned in my vest pocket, it said :
" Why should you be rude ? It is incumbent on you as
a gentleman to respond to the invitation so frankly given.
Besides, the writer who aspires to influence society must
know society; and how can one know society unless one
studies it ? A hermit in his cell is no judge of what is
going on in the world. Besides, he does not overcome the
world who runs away from it, but he who meets it bravely.
It is the part of a coward to be afraid of meeting wealth
I MEET A VISION 167
aud luxury and indolence on their own grounds. He really
conquers who can keep awake, walking straight through
the enchanted ground; not he who makes a detour to get
round it."
All which I had arrayed in good set terms as I rode back
to my room, and went up to Bolton to look up hi his library
the authorities lor an article I was getting out on the Do-
mestic Life of the Ancient Greeks. Bolton had succeeded
in making me feel so thoroughly at home in his library that
it was to all intents and purposes as if it were my own.
As I was tumbling over the books that filled every cor-
ner, there fell out from a little niche a photograph, or
rather ambrotype, such as were in use in the infancy of
the art. It fell directly into my hand, so that taking it
up it was impossible not to perceive what it was, and I
^cognized in an instant the person. It was the head of
my Cousin Caroline, not as I knew her now, but as I re-
membered her years ago, when she and I went to the
Ajcademy together.
It is almost an involuntary thing, on such occasionsi to
exclaim, " Who is this ? " But Bolton was so very reticent
a being that I found it extremely difficult to ask him a
personal question. There are individuals who unite a
^eat winning and sympathetic faculty with great reticence.
They make you talk, they win your confidence, they are
interested in you, but they ask nothing from you, and they
tell you nothing. Bolton was all the while doing obliging
things for me and for Jim, but he asked nothing from us ;
and while we felt safe in saying anything in the world
before him, and while we never felt at the moment that
conversation flagged, or that there was any deficiency in
sympathy and good fellowship on his part, yet upon reflec-
tion we could never recall anything which let us into the
interior of his own life-history.
The finding of this little memento impressed me, there-
168 MY WIFE AND I
fore, oddly, as if a door had suddenly been opened into
a private cabinet where I had no right to look, or an open
letter which I had no right to read had been inadvertently
put into my hands. I looked round on Bolton, as he sat
quietly bending over a book that he was consulting, with
his pen in hand and his cat at his elbow ; but the question
I longed to ask stuck fast in my throat, and I silently put
back the picture in its place, keeping the incident to ponder
in my heart. What with the one pertaining to myself,
and with the thoughts suggested by this, I found myself in
a disturbed state that I determined to resist by setting
myself a definite task of so many pages of my article.
In the evening, when Jim came in, I recounted my
adventure and showed him the card.
He surveyed it with a prolonged whistle. "Good
nowl^^ he said; "the ticket sent by the Providence Ex-
press. I see"
" Who are these Van Arsdels, Jim ? "
"Upper tens," said Jim decisively. "Not the oldest
Tens, but the second batch. Not the old Knickerbocker
Vanderhoof, and Vanderhyde, and Vanderhorn set that
Washy Irving tells about, but the modem nobs. Old
Van Arsdel does a smashing importing business is worth
his millions has five girls, all handsome two out
two more to come out, and one strong-minded sister who.
has retired from the world, and is n't seen out anywhere.
The one you saw was Eva; they say she 's to marry Wat
Sydney, the greatest match there is going in New York.
How do you say shall you go, Wednesday ? "
" Do you know them ? "
" Oh yes. Alice Van Arsdel is a splendid girl, and we
are good friends, and I look in on them sometimes just to
give them the light of my countenance. They are always
after me to lead the german in their parties; but I've
given that up. Hang it all! it's too steep on a fellow
I MEET A VISION 169
that has to work all day, with no let-up, to be kept
dancing till daylight with those girls. It don't pay I '^
"I should think not," said I.
"You see," pursued Jim, "these girls have nothing un-
der heaven to do, and when they 've danced all night, they
go to bed and sleep till eleven or twelve o'clock of the
next day and get their rest; while we fellows have to be
up and in our offices at eight o'clock next morning. The
fact is, it may do for once or twice, but it knocks a fellow
up pretty fast. It 's a bad thing for the fellows ; fchey get
to taking wine and brandy and one thing or another to
keep up, and the Devil only knows what comes of it."
"And are these Van Arsdels in that frivolous set?"
said I.
"Well, you see they are not really frivolous, either;
they are nice girls, well educated, graduated at the Uni-
versal Thingumbob College, where they teach girls every-
thing that ever has been heard of, before they are seven-
teen. And then they have lived in Paris, and lived in
Germany, and lived in Italy, and picked up all the lan-
guages; so that when they have anything to say they have
a choice of four languages to say it in."
"And have they anything to say worth hearing in any
of the four ? " said I.
"Well, yes, now, honor bright. There's Alice Van
Arsdel: she 's ambitious as the Devil, but, after all, a good,
warm-hearted girl under it and smart! there 's no doubt
of that."
" And this lady ? " said I, fingering the card.
"Eva? Well, she 's had a great run; she 's killing, as
they say, and she's pretty no denying that; and, really,
there 's a good deal to her, like the sponge cake at the
bottom of the trifle, you know, with a good smart flavor of
wine and spice."
"And she 's engaged to whom did you say ? "
170 MY WIFE AND I
"Wat Sydney."
"And what sort of a man is he ? "
"What sort? why, he's a rich man; owns all sorts of
things, gold mines in California, and copper mines in
Lake Superior, and salt works, and railroads. In fact, the
thing is to say what he does n't own. Immense head for
business, regular steel- trap to deal with, has the snap
of a pike."
"Pleasing prospect for a domestic companion," said I.
"Oh, as to that, I believe Wat is good-hearted enough
to his own folks. They say he is very devoted to his old
mother and a parcel of old-maid aunts, and as he 's rich
it 's thought a great virtue. Nobody sings my praises, I
notice, because I mind my mammy and Aunt Sarah. You
see, it takes a million-power solar microscope to bring out
fellows' virtues."
" Is the gentleman handsome ? "
" Well, if he was poor, nobody would think much of his
looks. If he had, say, a hundred thousand or two, he
would be called fair to middling in looks. As it is, the
girls rave about him. He 's been after Eva now for six
months, and the other girls are ready to tear her eyes out.
But the engagement has n't come out yet. I think she 's
making up her mind to him."
"Not in love, then?"
"Well, she 's been queen so long she 's blasee and diffi-
cult, and likes to play with her fish before she lands him.
But of course she must have him. Girls like that must
have money to keep 'em up; that's the first requisite.
I tell you the purple and fine linen of these princesses come
to something. Now, as rich men go, she 'd find ten worse
than Wat where there 's one better. Then she 's been out
three seasons. There 's Alice just come out, and Alice is
a stunner, and takes tremendously ! And then there 's
Angeline, a handsome, spicy little witch, smarter than
I MEET A VISION 171
either, that is just fluttering, and scratching, and tearing
her hair with impatience to have her turn. And behind
Angeline there 's Marie she 's got a confounded pair of
eyes. So you see, there ' no help for it; Miss Eva must
abdicate and make room for the next comer.''
"Well," said I, "about this reception?"
"Oh, go, by all means," said Jim. "It will be fun.
I'll go with you. You see it's Lent now, thank the
stars ! and so there 's no dancing, only quiet evenings
and lobster salad; because, you see, we're all repenting of
our sins and getting ready to go at it again after Easter.
A fellow now can go to receptions, and get away in time to
have a night's rest, and the girls now and then talk a little
sense between whiles. They can talk sense when they
like, though one wouldn't believe it of 'em. Well, take
care of yourself, my son, and I '11 take you round there on
Wednesday evening." And Jim went whistling down the
stairs, leaving me to finish my article on the Domestic
Life of the Ancient Greeks.
I remember that very frequently that evening, while
stopping to consider how I should b^gin the next sentence,
I unconsciously embellished the margin of my manuscripts
by writing "Eva, Eva, Eva Van Arsdel" in an absent-
minded, mechanical way. In fact, from that time, that
name began often to obtrude itself on every bit of paper
when I tried my pen.
The question of going to the Wednesday evening recep-
tion was settled in the affirmative. What was to hinder
my taking a look at fairy land in a purely philosophical
spirit? I^othing, certainly. If she were engaged she was
nothing to me, never would be. So, clearly there was
no danger.
CHAPTER XV
THE GIRL OF OUB PERIOD
[Letter from Eva Van Arsdel to Mrs. Courtney.]
My dear Friend and Teacher, I scarcely dare
trust myself to look at the date of your kind letter. Can
it really be that I have let it lie almost a year, hoping,
meaning, sincerely intending to answer it, and yet doing
nothing about it? Oh, my dear friend, I was a better
girl while I was under your care than I am now; in those
times I really did my duties; I never put off things, and
I came somewhere near satisfying myself. Now, I live in
a constant whirl a whirl that never ceases. I am carried
on from day to day, from week to week, from month to
month, with nothing 4 show for it except a succession of
what girls call "good times." I donH read anything but
stories; I don't study; I don't write; I don't sew; I
don't draw, or play, or sing, to any real purpose. I just
"go into society," as they call it. I am an idler, and the
only thing I am good for is that I help to adorn a house
for the entertainment of idlers that is about all.
Now Lent has come, and I am thankful for the rest from
parties and dancing; but yet Lent makes me blue, because
it gives me some time to think ; and besides that, when all
this whirling stops awhile, I feel how dizzy and tired it
has made me. And then I think of all that you used to
tell me about the real object of life, and all that I so sin-
cerely resolved in my school-days that I would do and be,
and I am quite in despair about myself.
THE GIRL OF OUR PERIOD 173
It is three years since I really "came out/' as the phrase
goes. Up to that time I was far happier than I have been
since, because I satisfied myself better. You always said,
dear friend, that I was a good scholar, and faithful to every
duty ; and those days, when I had a definite duty for each
hour, and did it well, were days when I liked myself bet-
ter than now. I did enjoy study. I enjoyed our three
years in Europe, too, for then, with much variety and many
pleasures, I had regular studies; I was learning something,
and did not feel that I was a mere do-nothing.
But since I have been going into company I am perfectly
sick of myself. For the first year it was new to me, and
I was light-headed and thought it glorious fun. It was
excitement all the time dressing, and going, and seeing,
and being admired, and well, flirting. I confess I liked
it, and went into it with all my might parties, balls,
operas, concerts all the winter in New York, and parties,
balls, etc., at Newport and Saratoga in summer. It was
a sort of prolonged delirium. I didnH stop to think about
anything, and lived like a butterfly, by the hour. Oh, the
silly things I have said and done ! ^ I find myself blushing
hot when I think of them, because, you see, I am so ex-
citable, and sometimes am so carried away that afterward
I don't know what I may have said or done !
And now all this is coming to some end or other. This
going into company can't last forever. We must be mar-
ried that's what we are for, they say; that's what all
this dressing, and dancing, and flying about has got to end
in. And so mamma and Aunt Maria are on thorns to get
me off their hands and well established. I have been out
three seasons. I am twenty- three, and Alice has just come
out, and it is expected, of course, that I retire with honor.
I will not stop to tell you that I have rejected about the
usual number of offers that young ladies in my position
get, and I have n't seen anybody that I care a copper for.
174 MY WIFE AND I
Well, now, in this crisis comes this Mr. Sydney, who
proposed to me last fall, and I refused point-hlank, simply
and only because I did n't love him, which seemed to me
at that time reason enough. Then mamma and Aunt Maria
took up the case, and told me that I was a foolish girl to
throw away such an offer: a man of good character and
standing, an excellent business man, and so immensely rich
with such a splendid place at Newport, and another in
New York, and a fortune like Aladdin's lamp!
I said I did n't love him, and they said I had n't tried ;
that I could love him if I only made up my mind to, and
why wouldn't I try? Then papa turned in, who very
seldom has anything to say to us girls, or about any family
matters, and said how delighted he should be to see me
married to a man so capable of taking care of me. So,
among them all, I agreed that I would receive his visits
and attentions as a friend^ with a view to trying to love
him ; and ever since I have been banked up in flowers and
confectionery, and daily drifting into relations of closer and
closer intimacy.
Do I find myself in love ? Not a bit. Frankly, dear
friend, to tell the awful truth, the thing that weighs down
my heart is, that if this man were not so rich I know I
should n't think of him. If he were a poor young man,
just beginning business, I know I should not give him a
second thought; neither would mother, nor Aunt Maria,
nor any of us. Bat here are all these worldly advantages I
I confess I am dazzled by them. I am silly, I am weak,
I am ambitious. I like to feel that I may have the prize
of the season the greatest offer in the market. I know
I am envied, and oh, dear me I though it 's naughty, yet
one does like to be envied. Besides, to tell the truth,
though I am not in love with him, I am not in love with
anybody else. I respect him, and esteem him, and all
that, in a quiet, negative sort of way, and mother and
THE GIRL OF OUR PERIOD 175
Aunt Maria say everything else vrill come after mar-
riage. Will it ? Is it right ? Is this the way I ought to
marry ]
But then, you know, I must marry somebody that,
they say, is a fixed fact. It seems to be understood that
I am a sort of helpless affair, to be taken care of, and that
now is my time to be disposed of; and they tell me every
day that if I let this chance go, I shall regret it all my
life.
Do you know I wish there were convents that one could
go out of the world into? Cousin Sophia Sewell has joined
the Sisters of St. John, and says she never was so happy
She does look so cheerful, and she is so busy from morning
till night, and has the comfort of doing so much good to
a lot of those poor little children, that I envy her.
But I cannot become a Sister. What would mamma say
if she knew I even thought of it ? Everybody would think
me crazy. .Nobody would believe how much there is in
me that never comes to light, nor how miserable it makes
me to be the poor, half-hearted thing that I am.
You know, dear friend, about sister Ida's peculiar
course, and how very much it has vexed mamma. Yet,
really and truly, I can't help respecting Ida. It seems to
me she shows a real strength of principle that I lack. She
went into gay society only a little while before she gave it
up, and her reasons, I think, were good ones. She said
it weakened her health, weakened her mind; that there
was no use in it, and that it was just making her physi-
cally and morally helpless, and that she wanted to live for
a purpose of her own. She wanted to go to Paris, and
study for the medical profession; but neither papa, nor
mamma, nor any of the family would hear of it. But Ida
persisted that she would do something, and finally papa
took her into his business, to manage the foreign correspon-
dence, which she does admirably, putting all her knowledge
176 MY WIFE AND I
of languages to account. He gives her the salary of a con-
fidential clerk, and she lays it up, with the intention
finally of carrying her purpose.
Ida is a good, noble woman, of a strength and indepen-
dence perfectly incomprehensible to me. I can desire, but
I cannot do; I am weak and irresolute. People can talk
me round, and do anything with me, and I cannot help
myself.
Another thing makes me unhappy. Ida refused to be
confirmed when I was, because, she said, confirmation was
only a sham; that the girls were just as wholly worldly
after as before, and that it did no earthly good.
Well, you see, I was confirmed; and, oh, dear me! I
was sincere, God knows. I wanted to be good to live a
higher, purer, nobler life than I have lived; and yet, after
all, it is I, the child of the Church, that am living a life
of folly, and show, and self-indulgence ; and it is Ida, who
doubts the Church, that is living a life of industry, and
energy, and self-denial.
Why is it? The world that we promise to renounce,
that our sponsors promised that we should renounce what
is it, and where is iti Do those vows mean anything? if
so, what? I mean to do all that I ought to; but how to
know what ? There 's Aunt Maria, my godmother, she
did the renouncing for me at my baptism, and promised
solemnly that I should abjure "the vain pomp and glory
of the world, with all covetous desires of the same ; that I
should not follow, or be led by them ; " yet she has never,
that I see, had one thought of anything else but how to
secure to me just exactly those very things. That I should
be first in society, be admired, followed, flattered, and
make a rich, splendid marriage, has been her very heart's
desire and prayer; and if I should renounce the vain pomp
and glory of the world, really and truly, she would be
utterly heartbroken. So would mamma.
THE GIRL OF OUR PERIOD 177
I don't mean to lay all the blame on them, either. /
have been worldly, too, and ambitious, and wanted to
shine, and been only too willing to fall in with all their
views. But it really is hard for a person like me to stand
alone, against my own heart, and all my relatives, particu-
larly when I don't know exactly, in each case, what to do,
and what not; where to begin to resist, and where to yield.
Ida says that it is a sin to spend nights in dancing, so
that one has to lie in bed like an invalid all the next day.
She says it is a sin to run down one's health for no good
purpose ; and yet we girls all do it everybody does it.
We all go from party to party, from concert to ball, and
from ball to something else. We dance the german three
or four nights a week; and then, when Sunday comes,
sometimes I find that there is the Holy Communion and
then I am afraid to go. I am like the man that had not
on the wedding garment.
It seems to me that our Church services were made for
real Christians people like the primitive Christians, who
made a real thing of it; they gave up everything and went
down and worshiped in the catacombs, for instance. I
remember seeing those catacombs where they held their
church far down under ground, when I was in Kome.
There would be some meaning in such people's using our
service, but when I try to go through with it I fear to take
such words on my lips. I wonder that nobody seems to
feel how awful those words are, and how much they must
mean, if they mean anything. It seems to me so solemn
to say to God, as we do say in the Communion service,
"Here we offer and present unto Thee, Lord, ourselves,
our souls and bodies, to be a reasonable, holy, and living
sacrifice unto Thee "
I see so many saying this who never seem to think of
it again; and, oh, my dear friend, I have said it myself
and been no better afterward, and now, alas ! I too often
178 MY WIFE AND I
turn away from the holy ordinance because I feel that it
is only a mockery to utter them, living as I do.
About this marriage. Mr. Sydney is not at all a reli-
gious man; he is all for this world, and I don't think I
shall grow much better by it. I wish there were somebody
that could strengthen me, and help me to be my better self.
I have dreams of a sort of man like King Arthur, and the
Knights of the Holy Grail a man, noble, holy, and reli-
gious. Such an one I would follow if I broke away from
every one else ; but, alas ! no such are in our society, at least
I never have met any. Yet I have it in me to love, even to
deaths if I found a real hero. I marked a place in a book
the other day, which said, " There is not so much difficulty
in being willing to die for one as finding one worth dying
for." I haven't, and they laugh at me as a romantic girl
when I tell them what I would do if I found my ideal.
Well, I suppose you see how it 's all likely to end. We
drift,' and drift, and I should n't wonder if I drifted at last
into this marriage. I see it all before me, just what it
will be, a wonderful wedding, that turns all Kew York
topsy-turvy; diamonds, laces, cashmeres, infinite flowers,
and tuberoses of course, till one's head aches; clang and
ding, and bang and buzz ; triumphal processions to all the
watering-places; tour in Europe, and then society life in
New York ad infinitum,
^ Oh, dear, if I only could get up some enthusiasm for
him! He likes me, but he don't like the things that I
like, and it is terribly slow work entertaining him -.-but
when we are married we sha'n't see so much of each other,
I suppose, and shall get on as other folks do. Papa and
mamma hardly ever see much of each other, but I suppose
they are all right. Aunt Maria says, love or no love at
the beginning, it all comes to this sort of jog-trot at the
end. The husband is the man that settles the bilk, and
takes care of the family, that's all.
THE GIRL OF OUR PERIOD 179
Ida says but I won't tell you what Ida says she
always makes me feel blue.
Do write me a good scolding letter; rouse me up; shame
me, scold me, talk hard to me, and see if you can't make
something of me. Perhaps it isn't too late.
Your affectionate bad girl, Eva.
[Letter from Mrs. Courtney to Eva Van ArsdeL]
My dear Child, You place me in an embarrassing
position in asking me to speak on a subject, yrhen your
parents have already declared their wishes.
Nevertheless, my dear, I can but remind you that you
are the child of a higher than any earthly mother, and in
an affair of this moment you should take counsel of our
holy Church. Take your Prayer-Book and read her solemn
service, and see what those marriage vows are that you
think of taking. Are these to be taken lightly and unad-
visedly ?
I recollect, when I was a young girl, we used to read
"Sir Charles Grandison,'' and one passage in the model
Harriet Byron's letters I copied.into my scrap-book. Speak-
ing of one who had proposed to her, she says: "He seems
to want the mind that I would have the man blessed with
that I am to vow to love and honor. I purpose whenever
I marry to make a very good, and even dutiful wife; must
I not vow obedience, and shall I break my marriage vow?
I would not, therefore, on any consideration, marry a man
whose want of knowledge might make me stagger in the
performance of my duty to him; who would, perhaps,
command from caprice or want of understanding what I
think unreasonable to be complied with."
I quote this because I think it is old-fashioned good
sense, in a respectable old English novel, worth a dozen of
the modern school. To me, there is indicated in your
description of Mr. Sydney just that lack of what you
180 MY WIFE AND I
would need in a husband, which would make difficult, per-
haps impossible, the performance of your marriage vows.
It is evident that his mind does not impress yours or con-
trol yours, and that there are no mental sympathies between
you.
That a man is a good business man, that he is fitted to
secure the rent or taxes of the house one lives in, and to
pay one's bills, is not all. Think, my child, that this
man, for whom you can "get up no enthusiasm," whose
company wearies you, is the one whom you are proposing
to take by the hand before Gk)d'6 altar, and solemnly pro-
mise that, forsaking all others^ you will keep only unto
him, so long as you both shall live, to love, to honor, and
to obey. Can you do it?
You say you can get up no enthusiasm for this man, yet
you have a conception of a man for whom you could leave
all things, whom you could love unto the death.
It is out of just such marriages, made by girls with just
such hearts as yours, that come all these troubles that are
bringing holy marriage into disrepute in our times. A
woman marries, thoughtlessly and unadvisedly, a man
whom she consciously does not love, hoping that she shall
love him, or that she shall do as well as others do; then
by accident or chance she is thrown into the society of the
very one whom she could have loved with enthusiasm, and
married for himself alone. The modem school of novels
is full of these wretched stories, and people now are cla-
moring for free divorce, to get out of marriages that they
never ought to have fallen into.
Amid all this confusion the Church stands from age to
age and teaches. She shows you exactly what you are to
promise; she warns you against promising lightly, or un-
advisedly, and I can only refer my dear child to her mo-
ther's lessons. Marriage vows, like confirmation vows,
are recorded in heaven, and must not be broken.
THE CARL OF OUR PERIOD 181
The time for reflection is before they are made. Instead
of clamoring for free divorce, as a purifier of marriage, all
Christians should purify it as the Church recommends, by
the great care with which they enter into it. That is my
doctrine, my love. I am a good old English Church-
woman, and don't believe in any modem theories. The
teachings of the Prayer-Book are enough for me. I know
that, in spite of them all, there are thoughtless confirma-
tion vows and marriage vows daily uttered in our Church,
but it is not for want of clear and solemn instruction. But
you, my love, with your conscientiousness, and good sense,
and really noble nature, will I am sure act worthily of
yourself in this matter.
Another consideration I suggest to you. This man,
whom I suppose to be a worthy and excellent man, has his
rights. He has the right to the whole heart of the woman
he marries to whom at the altar he gives himself and all
which he possesses. A woman who has what you call an
enthusiasm for a man can do much with him. She can
bear with his faults; she can inspire and lead him; she
can raise him in the scale of being. But without this en-
thusiasm, this real love, she can do nothing of the kind;
it is a thing that cannot be dissembled or affected. And
after marriage, the man who does not find this in his wife
has the best reason to think himself defrauded.
Now, if for the sake of possessing a man's worldly goods,
his advantages of fortune and station, you take that rela-
tion when you really are unable to give him your heart,
you act dishonestly. You take and enjoy what you cannot
pay for. Not only that, but you deprive him through all
his life of the blessing of being really loved, which he .
might obtain with some other woman.
The fact is, you have been highly cultivated in certain
departments; your tastes would lead you into the world of
art and literature. He has been devoted to business, and
182 MY WIFE AND I
in that way has amassed a fortune, but he has no know-
ledge and no habits that would prepare him to sympathize
with you.
I am not here undervaluing the worth of those strong,
sterling qualities which belong to an upright and vigorous
man. There are many women who are impressed by just
that sort of power, and admire it in men, as they do phy-
sical strength and courage; it dazzles their imagination,
and they fall in love accordingly. You happen to have
another kind of fancy he is not of your sort.
But there are doubtless women whom he would fully
satisfy ; who would find him a delightful companion ; who,
in short, would be exactly what you are not, in love with
him. My dear, men need wives who are in love with
them. Simple tolerance is not enough to stand the strain
of married life, and to marry when you cannot truly love
is to commit an act of dishonesty and injustice. Remem-
bering, therefore, that you are about to do what never can
be imdone, and what must make or mar your whole future,
I speak this in all sincere plainness, because I am, and ever
must be, Your affectionate and true friend,
M. Courtney.
[Ida Van Arsdel to Mrs. Courtney.]
My dear Friend, I am glad you have written as
you have to Eva. It is perfectly inexplicable to me that
a girl of her general strength of character can be so unde-
cided. Eva has been deteriorating ever since she came
from Europe. This fashionable life is to mind and body
just like a hotbed to tender plants in summer, it wilts
everything down. Eva was a good scholar and I had great
hopes of her. She had a warm heart ; she has really high
and noble aspirations, but for two or three years past she
has done nothing but run down her health and fritter away
her mind on trifles. She is not half the girl she was at
THE GIRL OF OUR PERIOD 183
school, either mentally or physically, and I am grieved and
indignant at the waste. Her only chance of escape and
salvation is to marry a true man.
But when people set out as a first requisite that the man
must be rich, how many are the chances of finding that?
The rich men of America are either rich men's sons who,
from all I have seen of them, are poor trash enough, or
business men, who have made wealth by their own exer-
tions. But how few there are who make money who do
not sacrifice their spiritual and nobler natures to do it?
How few with whom the making of money is not the be-
ginning, middle, and end of life, and how little can such
men do to uphold and elevate the moral nature of a wife !
Mr. Sydney is a man, heart, soul, and strength, inter-
ested in that mighty game of chance and skill by which, in
America, money is made. He is a railroad king a prince
of stocks a man going with a forty-thousand steam power
through New York waters. He wants a wife a brilliant,
attractive, showy, dressy wife, to keep his house and orna-
ment his home; and he is at Eva's feet, because she is, on
the whole, the belle of his circle. He chooses en Grand
Seigneur J and undoubtedly he is as much in love with her
as such a kind of man can be. But, in fact, he knows
nothing about Eva ; he does not even know enough to know
the dangers of marrying such a woman. With all her fire,
and all her softness, all her restless enthusiasms, her long-
ings and aspirations and inconsistencies, what could he do
with her? The man who marries Eva ought to know her
better than she knows herself, but this man never would
know her if they lived together an age. He has no traits
by which to estimate her, and the very best result of the
marriage will be a mutual laisser aller of two people who
agree not to quarrel, and to go their own separate ways, he
to his world, and she to hers; and this sort of thing is
what is called in our times a good marriage.
184 MY WIFE AND I
I am out of patience with Eva for her very viitues. It
is her instinct to want to please and to comply, and because
mamma and Aunt Maria have set their hearts on this
match, and because she is empty-hearted and tired, and
ennuyeuse^ she has no strength to stand up for herself.
Her very conscientiousness weakens her; she doubts, but
does not decide. She has just enough of everything in
her nature to get her into trouble, and not enough to get
her put. A phrenologist told her she needed destructive-
ness. Well, she does. The pain-giving power is a most
necessary part of a well-organized human being. Nobody
can ever do anything without the courage to be disagreeable
at times, which I have plenty of. They do not try to
control me, or enslave me. Why ? Because I made my
declaration of independence, and planted my guns, and got
ready for war. This is dreadfully unamiable, but it did
the thing; it secured peace; I am let alone. I am allowed
my freedom, but everybody interferes with Eva. She is
conquered territory has no rights that anybody is bound
to respect. It provokes me.
As to the religious part of your letter, dear friend, I
thank you for it. I cannot see things as you do, however.
To me it appears that in our day everything has got to be
brought to the simple test of, What good does it do ? If
baptism, confirmation, and eucharist make unworldly, self-
denying, self-sacrificing people just as certainly as petunia-
seed make petunias, why, then, nobody will have any doubt
of their necessity, and the Church will have its throngs.
I don't see now that they do. Go into a fashionable party
I have been in, and watch the girls, and see if you can tell
who have been baptized and confirmed, and who have not.
The first Christians carried Christianity over all the
pomp and power of the world simply by the unworldly life
they lived. Nobody doubted where the true Church was
in those days. Christians were a set of people like nobody
THE GIRL OF OUR PERIOD 185
else in the world, and whenever and wherever and by
whatever means that kind of character that they had is
created, it will have power.
I like the Episcopal Church, but I cannot call it the
church till I see evidences that it answers practically the
purpose of a church better than any other. For my part
I go to hear a dreadfully heretical preacher on Sunday,
who lectures in a black coat in a hall, simply because he
talks to me on points of duty which I am anxious to hear
discussed. Eva, poor child, wears down her health and
strength with night after night in society, and spends all
her money on dress; doing no earthly thing for any living
creature, except in the pleasure-giving way, like a bird or
a flower, and then is shocked and worried about me because
I read scientific works on Sunday.
I make conscience of good health, early hours, thick
shoes, and mental and bodily drill, and subjection. Please
Gknl, I mean to do something worthy a Christian woman
before I die, and to open a path through which weaker
women shall walk out of this morass of fashion-slavery and
subjection where they flounder now. I take for my motto
that sentence from one of Dr. Johnson's allegories you
once read to us: "No life pleasing to God that is not use-
ful to man." I hope, ray dear friend, I shall keep the
spirit of Christ, though I wander from the letter. Such
words as you have spoken to me, however, can never come
amiss. Perhaps when I am old and wiser, like many
another self-confident wanderer, I may be glad to come back
to my mother's house, and then, perhaps, I shall be a stiff
little Churchwoman. At all events I shall always be your
loving and grateful pupil. Ida.
[Eva Van Arsdel to Isabel Con vers.]
My dear Belle, Thanks for your kind letter with
all its congratulations and inquiries, for though as yet
186 MY WIFE AND I
I have no occasion for congratulation, and nothing to
answer to inquiry, I appreciate these all the same.
No, Belle, the " old sixpence " is not gone yet, you
will have to keep to your friend a while longer. I am
not engaged, and you have full liherty to contradict that
report everywhere and anywhere.
Mr. Sydney is, of course, very polite, and very devoted,
very much a friend of the family and all that, hut I am
not engaged to him, and you need never helieve any such
thing of me till you hear it directly, under my own hand
and seal.
There have been a lot of engagements in our set lately.
Lottie Trevillian is going to marry Sim Carrington, and
Bessie Somers has at last decided to take old Watkins
though he is twenty-five years older than she; and then
there 'a Oousin Maria Elmore has just turned a splendid
affair with young Livingstone, really the most brilliant
match of the winter. I am positively ashamed of myself,
under these circumstances, to be sitting still, and unable
to report progress. My old infelicity in making up my
mind seems to haunt me, and I dare say I shall live to be
a dreadful example.
By the bye, I have had a curious sort of an adventure
lately. You know when I was up at Englewood visiting
you last summer, I was just raving over those sonnets on
Italy, which appeared in the " Milky Way '' over the sig-
nature of "X." You remember those verses on "Fra
Angelico'' and the "Campanile," don't you? Well, I
have found out who this " X *' is. It 's a Mr. Henderson that
is now in New York, engaged on the staff of the " Great
Democracy." We girls have noticed him once or twice
walking with Jim Fellows (you remember Jim) ; Jim
says he is a perfect hermit, devoted to study and writing,
and never goes into society. Well, was n't it odd that the
fates should have thrown this hermit just in my way 1
THE GIRL OF OUR PERIOD 187
The other morning I came over from Brooklyn, where I
had been spending three days with Sophia, and when I got
into the car whom should I see but this identical Mr. Hen-
derson right opposite to me. I took a quiet note of him,
between whiles thinking of one or two lines in his sonnet.
He is nice-looking, manly, that is, and has fine dark eyes.
Well, do you know, the most provoking thing, when I
came to pay my fare I found that I had no tickets nor
small change what could have possessed me to come so
I can't imagine, and mamma makes it all the worse by say-
ing it 's just like me. However, he interposed and ar-
ranged it for me in the nicest and' quietest way in the
world. I was going up to call at Jennings', the other side
of the Astor House, to see about my laces, but by the time
we got there, there came on such a rain as was perfectly
dreadful. My dear, it was one of those shocking affairs
peculiar to New York, which really come down by the
bucketful, and I had nothing for it but to cross Broadway
as quick as I could to catch a Fifth Avenue omnibus, and
let my lace go till a more convenient season.
Well, as I stepped out into the storm, who should I find
quite beside me but this gentleman, with his umbrella over
my head. I could see at the moment that it had one of
those quaint handles that they carve in Dieppe. We were
among cars, and policemen, and trampling horses, and so
on, but he got me safe into an up-town omnibus, and I felt
so much obliged to him.
I supposed, of course, that there it might end, but,
would you believe it, quite to my surprise, he got into the
omnibus too! "After all," I said to myself, "perhaps his
route lies up town like mine." He wasn't in the least
presuming, and sat there very quietly, only saying, "Per-
mit me," as he passed up a ticket for me when the fare was
to be paid, so saving me that odious necessity of making
change with my great awkward bill. I was mortified
188 MY WIFE AND I
enough but knowing who it was, had a sort of internal
hope that one day I could apologize and make it all right,
for, my dear, I determined on the spot that we would in-
vite him to our receptions, and get Jim Fellows to make
him come. I think there is no test of a gentleman like
the manner in which he does a favor for a stranger lady
whom the fates cast upon his protection. So many would
be insufferably presuming and assuming he was just
right, so quiet, so simple, so unpretentious, yet so consid-
erate.
He rode on very quietly till we were opposite our house,
and then was on duty again with his umbrella, up to the
very door of the house, and holding it over me while we
were waiting. I couldn't help expressing my thanks, and
asking him to walk in; but he excused himself, giving his
card, and saying he would be happy to call and inquire
after my health, etc. ; and I gave him mine, with our
Wednesday receptions on it, and told him how pleased
mamma would be to have him call. It was all I could do
to avoid calling him by his name, and letting him see how
much I knew about him; but I didn't. It was rather
awkward, was n't it ?
Now, I wonder if he will call on Wednesdays. Jim
Fellows says he is so shy, and never goes out; and you
know if there is anything that can't be had, that is the
thing one is wild to get; so mamma and all of us are quite
excited, and wondering if he will come. Mamma is all
anxiety to apologize, and all that, for the trouble I have
given him.
It 's rather funny, is n't it an adventure in prosaic old
New York? I dare say, now, he has forgotten all about
it, and never will think of coming into such a trifling set
as we girls are. Well, I will let you know if he comes.
Ever your affectionate Eva.
CHAPTER XVI
I AM INTRODUCED INTO SOCIETY
Bolton and I were sitting, np to our ears in new books
which had been accumulating for notice for days past, and
which I was turning over and dipping into here and there
with the jaded, half-disgusted air of a child worn out hj
the profusion of a Thanksgiving dinner.
" I feel perfectly savage," I said. "What a never-ending
harvest of trash ! Two, or at the most three, tolerable ideas,
turned and twisted in some novel device, got up in large
print, with wide margins and, behold, a modem book I
I would like to be a black frost and nip them all in a night ! "
"Your dinner didn't agree with you, apparently," said
Bolton, as he looked up from a new scientific work he was
patiently analyzing, making careful notes along the margin ;
"however, turn those books over to Jim, who understands
the hop, skip, and jump style of criticism. Jim has about
a dozen or two of blank forms that only need the name of
the book and publisher inserted, and the work is done."
"What a perfect farce," said I.
"The notices are as good as the books," said Bolton.
" Something has to be said to satisfy the publishers and do
the handsome thing by them; and the usual string of com-
mendatory phrases and trite criticism, which mean nothing
in particular, I presume imposes upon nobody. It is
merely a form of announcing that such and such wares are
in the market. I fancy they have very little influence on
public opinion."
"But do you think," said I, "that there is any hope of
190 MY WIFE AND I
a just school of book criticism something that should be
a real guide to buyers and readers, and a real instruction to
writers ? "
''That is a large question," said Bolton, ''and a matter
beset with serious difficulties. While books are a matter
of commerce and trade; while magazines which criticise
books are the property of booksellers, and newspapers de-
pend on them for advertising patronage, it is too much to
expect pf human nature that we should always get wholly
honest, unbiased opinions. Then, again, there is the
haste, and rush, and hurry of our times, the amount of
literary driftwood that is all the while accumulating!
Editors and critics are but mortal men, and men kept, as
a general thing, in the last agonies of weariness and bore-
dom. There is not, for the most part, sensibility enough
left to enable them to read through or enter into the pur-
port of one book in a hundred; yet, for all this, you do
observe here and there in the columns of our best papers
carefully studied and seriously written critiques on books;
these are hopeful signs. They show a conscientious effort
on the part of the writers to enter into the spirit of the
work, and to give their readers a fair account of it; and,
if I mistake not, the number of such is on the increase."
" Well, " said I, " do you suppose there is any prospect
or possibility of a constructive school of criticism honest,
yet kindly and sympathetic, that shall lead young authors
into right methods of perfecting themselves ? "
"We have a long while to wait before that comes," said
Bolton. "Who is appreciative and many-sided enough to
guide the first efforts of genius just coming to conscious-
ness? How many could profitably have advised Haw-
thorne when his peculiar Rembrandt style was just form-
ing? As a race, we Anglo-Saxons are so self-sphered that
we lack the power to enter into the individuality of another
mind, and giy.6 profitable advice for its direction.
I AM INTRODUCED INTO SOCIETY 191
" English criticism has generally been unappreciative and
brutal; it has dissected butterflies and humming-birds with
mallet and cleaver witness the review that murdered
Keats, and witness in the letters of Charlotte Bronte the
perplexity into which sensitive, conscientious genius was
thrown by obstreperous, conflicting criticism. The most
helpful, because most appreciative reviews, she says, came
to her f ronjL France. "
"I suppose," said I, "that it is the dramatic element in
the French character that fits them to be good literary crit-
ics. They can enter into another individuality. One
would think it a matter of mere common sense, that in
order to criticise justly you must put yourself for the time
being as nearly as possible at the author's point of sight;
form a sympathetic estimate of what he is striving to do,
and then you can tell how nearly he attains his purpose.
Of this delicate constructive criticism, we have as yet, it
seems to me, almost no specimens in the English language.
Sainte-Beuve has left models in French, in this respect,
which we should do well to imitate. We Americans are
a good-natured set, and our criticism inclines to comity and
good-fellowship far more than to the rude bluntness of our
English neighbors; and if we could make this discrimi-
nating as well as urbane, we should get about the right
thing."
Our conversation was interrupted here by Jim Fellows,
who came thundering upstairs, singing at the top of his
lungs :
" If an engine meet an engine
Coming round a curve,
If it smash both train and tender,
What does it deserve ?
Not a penny paid to any,
So far as I observe "
" Gracious, Jim ! what a noise I " said I, fts he entered
the room with a perfect war-whoop on-the chorus.
192 MY WIFE AND I
"Bless my soul, man, why are n't you dressing? Are n*t
you going up to the garden of Eden with me to-night, to
see the woman, and the serpent, and all that ? " he said,
collaring me without ceremony. "Come away to your
bower, and curl your nut-brown hair; for
' Time rolls along,
Nor waits for mortal care or bliss,
We '11 take our staff and travel on,
Till we arrive where the pretty gals is.' "
And thus singing, Jim whirled me down the stairs, and
tumbled me into my room, and went into his, where I
heard him accompanying his toilet operations with very
loud selections from the last comic opera, beating time with
his hair-brush in a bewildering manner.
Jim was certainly a natural curiosity in respect to the
eternal, unceasing vivacity of his animal spirits, which
were in a state of effervescence from morning to night,
frothing out in some odd freak of drollery or buffoonery.
There was not the smallest use in trying remonstrance or
putting on a sober face: his persistence, and the endless
variety of his queer conceits, would have overcome the
gravity of the saddest hermit that ever wore sackcloth and
ashes.
Bolton had become accustomed to see him bursting into
his room at all hours, with a breeze which fluttered all his
papers, and generally sat back resignedly in his chair, and
laughed in helpless good-nature, no matter how untimely
the interruption. "Oh, it's Jim!" he would say, in
tones of comic resignation. "It's no use; he must have
his fling ! "
"Time 's up," said Jim, drumming on my door with his
hair-brush when his toilet was completed. " Come on, my
boy, * Let us haste to Kelvyn Grove. ' "
I opened my door, and Jim took a paternal survey of
me from neck-cloth to boot- toe, turning me round and in-
I AM INTRODUCED INTO SOCIETY 198
specting me on all sides, as if I had been a Sunday-school
boy, dressed for an exhibition.
"Those girls have such confounded sharp eyes," he re-
marked, "a fellow needs to be well got up. Yes, you'll
do; and you're not bad looking, Hal, either, all things
considered, " he added encouragingly, "Come along. I've
got lots of things to make a sensation with among the girls
to-night. "
" What, for example ? "
"Oh, I've been investigating round, and know sundry
little interesting particulars as to the new engagement just
declared. I know when the engagement ring was got, and
what it cost, and where the bride's jewels are making up,
and what they are to be all secrets, you understand, of
the very deadest door-nail kind. But Jim knows them!
Oh yes ! you '11 see the flutter I '11 make in the roost
to-night! I say, if you want to cultivate your acquain-
tance with Miss Eva there, I '11 draw all the rest off, and
keep 'em so wide awake round me that they '11 never think
what becomes of you."
I must confess to feeling not a little nervous in the
prospect of my initiation into society, and regarding with
a secret envy the dashing, easy assurance of Jim. I called
him in my heart something of a coxcomb, but it was with
a half-amused tolerance that I allowed him to patronize
me.
The experience of a young man who feels that he has
his own way in life to make, and all whose surroundings
must necessarily be of the most rigid economy, when he
enters the modern sphere of young ladyhood, is like a
sudden change from Nova Zembla to the tropics. His is
a world of patient toil, of hard effort, of dry drudgery, of
severe economies; while our young American princesses,
his social equals, whose society fascinates him, to whose
acquaintance he aspires, live like the fowls of the air or the
194 MY WIFE AND I
lilies of the field, without a thought of labor, or a care, or
serious responsibility of any kind. They are "gay crea-
tures of the element," living to enjoy and to amuse them-
selves, to be fostered, sheltered, dressed, petted, and made
to have "good times" generally. In England, there are
men bom to just this life and position, hereditary pos-
sessors of wealth, ease, and leisure, and therefore able to
be hereditary idlers and triflers to live simply to spend
and to enjoy. But in America, where there are no laws
to keep fortunes in certain families, fortunes, as a general
rule, must be made by their possessors, and young men
must make them. The young, unmarried women, there-
fore, remain the only aristocracy privileged to live in idle-
ness, and wait for their duties to come to them.
The house to which I was introduced that night was one
of those New York palaces that are furnished with eclectic
taste, after a survey of all that Europe has to give. The
suites of rooms opened into each other in charming vista,
and the walls were hung with the choicest paintings. It
was evident that cultured skill and appreciation had pre-*
sided over the collection of the endless objects of artistic
elegance and vertu which adorned every apartment ; it was
no vulgar display of wealth, but a selection which must
have been the result of study and care.
Jim, acting the part of master of ceremonies, duly pre-
sented me to Mr. and Mrs. Van Arsdel, and the bevy of
young ladies, whose eyes twinkled with dangerous merri-
ment as I made my bow to them.
Mr. Van Arsdel was what one so often sees in these pal-
aces, a simple, quiet, silent man, not knowing or caring a
bodle about any of the wonders of art and luxury with
which his womankind have surrounded him, and not pre-
tending in the least to comprehend them ; but quietly in-
dulgent to the tastes and whims of wife and daughters, of
whose superior culture he is secretly not a little proyd.
I AM INTKODUCED INTO SOCIETY 195
In Wall Street Mr. Van Arsdel held up his head, and
found much to say ; his air was Napoleonic ; in short, there
his foot was on his native heath. But in his own house,
among Cuyps, and Fibres, and Rembrandts, and Fra An-
gelicos, with a set of polyglot daughters who spake with
tongues, he walked softly, and expressed himself with
humility, like a sensible man.
Mrs. Van Arsdel had been a beauty from her youth,
had come of a family renowned for belles, and was still a
very handsome woman, and, of course, versed in all those
gentle diplomacies and ineffable arts and crafts by which
the sons of Adam are immediately swayed and governed.
Kever was stately swan sailing at the head of a brood of
fair young cygnets more competent to leadership than she
to marshal her troop of bright, handsome daughters through
the straits of girlhood to the high places of matrimony.
She read, and classified, and ticketed, at a glance, every
young man presented to her, yet there was not a shade of
the scrutiny dimming the bland cordiality of her reception.
She was winning, warming, and charming; fully alive to
the Sclat of a train of admirers, and to the desirableness of
keeping up a brilliant court.
"Mr. Henderson, '* she said, with a rich, mellow laugh,
"I tell Eva there is some advantage, first or last, in almost
everything. One of her scatter-brained tricks has brought
us the pleasure of your acquaintance."
"Mamma has such a shocking way of generalizing about
us girls, '* said Eva; "if we once are caught doing a thing
she talks as if we made a regular habit of it. Now, I have
come over from Brooklyn hundreds of times, and never failed
to have the proper change in my purse till this once."
"I am to regard it, then, as a special piece of good for-
tune, sent to me.^" said I, drawing somewhat nearer, as
Mrs. Van Arsdel turned to receive some new arrivals.
I had occasion this evening to admire the facility with
196 MY WIFE AND I
which Jim fulfilled his promise of absorbing to himself the
attention of the young hostesses, and leaving me the advan-
tage of a tete-a-tete with my new acquaintance. I could
see him at this moment, seated by Miss Alice, a splendid,
brilliant brunette, while the two pretty younger sisters, not
yet supposed to be out, were seated on ottomans, and all
in various stages of intense excitement. I could hear :
" Oh, Mr. Fellows, now, you must tell us ! indeed, I am
quite wild to know ! how could you find it out 1 '^ in vari-
ous, eager tones. Jim, of course, was as fully aware of
the importance of a dramatic mystery as a modem novel-
writer, and pursued a course of most obdurate provocation,
letting out only such glimpses and sparkles of the desired
intelligence as served to inflame curiosity, and hold the
attention of the circle concentrated upon himself.
"I think you are perfectly dreadful! Oh, Mr. Fellows,
.^np-it really is a shame that you don't tell us; really now I
shall break friendship with you," the tones here became
threatening. Then Jim struck a tragic attitude, and laid
his hand on his heart, and declared that he was a martyr,
and there was more laughing, and such a chatter and con-
fusion of tongues that nothing definite could be made out.
The length of time that young people, from eighteen to
twenty, and even upward, can keep themselves in ecstasies
of excitement, with such small stock of real things of any
sort to say, is something that invariably astonishes old and
sober people, who have forgotten that they once were in
this happy age, when everything made them laugh. There
was soon noise enough, and absorption enough, in the little
circle widened by the coming in of one or two other
young men to leave me quite unnoticed, and in the back-
ground. This was not to be regretted, as Miss Eva as-
sumed with a charming ease and self-possession that r51e of
hospitality and entertainment for which I fancy our young
American princess has an especial talent.
I AM INTRODUCED INTO SOCIETY 197
"Do you know, Mr. Henderson," she said, "we scarcely
expected you, as we hear you never go out."
" Indeed ! " said I.
" Oh yes ! your friend, Mr. Fellows there, has presented
you to us in most formidable aspects such a Diogenes!
so devoted to your tub ! no getting you out on any terms ! "
"I'm sure," I answered, laughing, "I wasn't aware
that I had ever had the honor of being discussed in your
circle at all."
"Oh, indeed, Mr. Henderson, you gentlemen who make
confidants of the public are often known much better than
you know. I have felt acquainted with many of your
thoughts for a long while."
What writer is insensible to such flattery as this ? espe-
cially from the prettiest of lips. I confess I took to this
sort of thing kindly, and was ready if possible for a little
more of it. I began to say to myself how charming it wa^
to find beauty and fashion united with correct literary
taste.
"Now," she said, as the rooms were rapidly filling, "let
me show you if I have not been able to read aright some
of your tastes. Come into what I call my * Italy. ' " She
lifted a portiere^ and we stepped into a charming little bou-
doir, furnished in blue satin, whose walls were finished in
compartments, in each of which hung a copy of one of Fra
Angelico's angels. Over the white marble mantel was a
superb copy of "The Paradise." "There," she said, turn-
ing to me, with a frank smile, " am I not right 1 "
"You are, indeed, Miss Van Arsdel. What beautiful
copies! They take me back to Florence."
" See here, " she added, opening a velvet case, " here is
something that I know you noticed, for I read what you
thought of it."
It was an exquisite copy of that rarest little gem of Fra
Angelico's painting, "The Death-Bed of the Virgin Mary,"
1^8 MY WIFE AND I
-^in time past the theme of some of my verses, which
Miss Van Arsdel thus graciously recalled.
"Do you know," she said, "the only drawback, when
one reads poems that exactly express what one would like
to say, is that it makes us envious; one thinks, why
could n*t / have said it thus 1 "
"Miss Van Arsdel," said I, "do you remember the lines
of Longfellow, * I shot an arrow into the air ' 1 "
"What are they ? " she said.
I repeated:
'^ ' I shot an arrow into the air,
It fell to earth, I knew not where;
For, 80 swiftly it flew, the si^t
Could not follow it in its flight.
' I breathed a song into the air,
It fell to earth, I knew not where;
For who has sight so keen and strong,
That it can follow the flight of song ?
' Long, long afterward, in an oak
I found the arrow, still unbroke ;
And the song, from beginning to end,
I found again in the heart of a friend.'
"Do you know," I said, "that this expresses exactly
what a poet wants 1 It is not admiration, it is sympathy.
Poems are test papers, put in the atmosphere of life to
detect this property ; we can find by them who really feel
with us; and those who do, whether near or far, are
friends. The making of friends is the most precious gift
for which poetic utterance is given."
"I don't think," said she, "you should say *make
friends ' friends are discovered, rather than made. There
are people who are in their own nature friends, only they
don't know each other; but certain things like poetry,
music, and painting, are like the Freemasons' signs they
reveal the initiated to each other."
And 80 on we went, delioiously talking and ranging
I AM INTKODUCED INTO SOCIETY 199
through portfolios of engravings that took us through past
days ; rambling through all our sunny Italian life, up the
Campanile, through the old Duomo; sauntering through
the ilexes of the Boboli Garden; comparing notes on the
pictures in the Pitti and the Belle Arti in short, we had
one of that blessed kind of times which comes when two
enthusiasts go back together over the brightest and sun-
niest passages of their experience. My head swam; a
golden haze was around me, and I was not quite certain
whether I was in the body or not. It seemed to me that
we two must always have known each other, so very simple
and natural did it seem for us to talk together, and to un-
derstand one another. ''But," she said, suddenly checking
hetself^ ** if we get to going on all these thmgs there is no
tod to it, and I promised sister Ida that I would present
yoti in her study to-night."
''Seems to me it is so very delightful here!" said I
deprecatingly, not well pleased to come out of my dfeua.
"Ah, but you don't know, Mr. Henderson, this pro-
posed presentation is a special honor. I assure you that
this is a distinction that id almost never accorded to toy ol
our eallers; you must know sister Ida has retired from the
World, and given herself up to the pursuit of wisdom, and
it is the rarest thing on eatrth that she vouchsafes to care
for seeing any one."
"I should be only too much flattered," said I^ as I
followed my guide across a hall, and into a little plainly
furnished study, whose air of rigid simplicity contrasted
with the luxury of all the other parts of the house.
CHAPTER XVn
THE TOUNO LADT PHILOSOPHER
Seated, readiag by a shaded study-lamp, was a young
woman of what I should call the Jeanie Deans order
one whose whole personal appearance indicated that sort of
compact, efficient union of energy and simplicity character-
istic of the Scottish heroine. Her hair, of a pretty curly
brown, was cut short, k la Rosa Bonheur; her complexion
glowed with a sort of a wholesome firmness, indicative of
high health; her large, serious gray eyes had an expression
of quiet resolution, united with careful observation. Her
figure inclined to the short, stout, and well-compacted order,
which gave promise of vitality and power of endurance
without pretensions to beauty. There was a wholesome,
thoughtful cheerfulness and good-humor in the expression of
the face that made it decidedly prepossessing and attractive.
The furniture of the room, too, was in contrast with all
the other appointments of the house. It was old and
worn, and of that primitive kind that betokened honest
and respectable mediocrity. There was a quaint, old-fash-
ioned writing-desk, with its array of drawers and pigeon-
holes; there were old slippery wooden armchairs, unre-
lieved by cushions ; while the floor was bare, excepting in
front of the fire, where it was covered by a large square of
what New England housekeepers call rag-carpet. The
room, in fact, was furnished like the sitting-room of an
old New England farmhouse. A cheerful, bountiful wood
fire, burning on a pair of old-fashioned brass andirons,
added to the resemblance.
THE YOUNG LADY PHILOSOPHER 201
" You see, Mr. Henderson, " said Miss Eva, when I had
been introduced and seated, "you are now in the presence
of Miss Van Arsdel proper. This room is papa's and Ida's
joint territory, where their own tastes and notions have
supreme sway ; and so, you see, it is sacred to the memories
of the past. There is all the old furniture that belonged
to papa when he was married. Poor man! he has been
pushed out into grandeur, step by step, till this was all
that remained, and Ida opened an asylum for it. Do you
know, this is the only room in the house papa cares much
for. You see, he was bom on a farm, dear gentleman,
and he has an inveterate yearning after primitive simplicity
huckleberries and milk, you know, and all that. Don't
this look like the old * keeping-room ' style 1 "
"Yes," said I, "it looks like home. I know rooms just
like it."
"But I like these old primitive things," said Ida. "I
like hardness and simplicity. I am sick to death of soft-
ness and perfumed cushions and ease. We women are
sweltered under down beds, and smothered with luxuries,
in our modern day, till all the life dies out of us. / want
to live while I live, and to keep myself in such trim that
I can do something and I won't pet myself nor be
petted."
"There," said Eva, laughing, "blood will tell; there's
the old Puritan broken loose in Ida. She don't believe
any of their doctrines, but she goes on their track. She 's
just like a St. Bernard dog that she brought home once.
As soon as snow came, he was wild to run out and search
in it, and used to run off whole days in the woods, just
because his ancestors were trained to hunt travelers. Ida
is as bent on testifying and going against the world as any
old Coveaanter."
"The world needs going against," said Ida. "By the
bye, Mr. Henderson, you must allow me to thank you for
202 MY WIFE AND I
your aHide cfn the Woman of our Times, in the * Milky
Way.* It is bracing, and will do good."
"And I," said Eva, kindling with a sort of fiaine-like
tivacity, "have been perfectly dying to tell you that you
don't know us fashionable girls, and that we are not, after
All, such poor trash as you seem to think. All the out-of-
jointness of society is not our fault."
"I protest, Miss Eva," said I, astonished at the eager-
iiess of her manner. "I'm Sure I don't know what I
have said to give that impression."
" Oh, I dare say not. . You have oiily used the good
dtock phrases and sftid the usual things. Tou reformers
And Inoridists, tod all that, have got a way of setting us
girls down as sinners tss a matter of coutse, so that you
lltevet think When you do it. The * dolls of fashion, ' the
' butterflies, ' etc. , etc. , are used to point the mordl and
lUlorn the tale. The girl of the period is th6 s^apego^t for
all the naughty things going. !Now, I say the girl of the
period isn't a particle Worse than the boy of the period;
and I think teformei^ had bettei* ttirn their attention id
Mm."
'*But I don't reffiembe*," Said I, astonished and cotl-
ftteed at the Sudd^ vivacity 6f this Attack, "that 1 said
anything."
"Oh yes, bat I do. You see, it 's the party that 's hit
that knows when a blow is struck. You see, Mr. Hender-
son, it is n't merely you, but everybody, from the London
* Spectator ' down, when they get on their preaching-caps,
And come forth to right the wrongs of society, begin about
us our dressiness, our expensiveness, our idleness, out
extravagance, our heartlessness. The men, poor, deaf
creatures, are led Astray and ruined by us. It 's the old
story of Adam, * The woman beguiled me. ' " *
"You see," said Ida, laughing, "Eva's conscienc6 trou-
M^ Iter; thAt 's Wh;^ she 'S so sensitive."
THE YOUNG LADY PHILOSOPHER 208
"Well, that's the truth," said Eva. "I'm in the
world, and Ida has gone out of it; and so she can sit by,
all serene, when hits are made at us, and say, ' I told you
so.' But, you see, / am in, and am all the while sure
that about half what they say of us is true, and that makes
me sensitive when they say too much. But, I insist upon
it, it isn't all true; and if it is, it isn't our fault. We
are in the world just as we are in a railroad car, and we
can't help its carrying us on, even if we don't like the
places it takes us through.''
" Unless you get out of it, " said Ida.
"Yes; but it takes courage to get out alone, at some
desolate way station, and set up your tent, and make your
Way, and have everybody in the cars screaming remon-
strances or laughing at you. Ida has the courage to do it,
but I have n't. I don't believe in myself enough to do it,
00 I stay in the car, and wish I didn't, and wish wo were
all going a better way than we do."
"No," said Ida; "women are brought up in a way to
smother all the life out of them All literature from the
earliest ages teaches them that it is graceful to be pretty
and helpless; they aspire to be superficial and showy.
They are directed to look on themselves as flowers : -**
* Gay without toil, and lovely without art,
They spring to cheer the sense, and warm the heart;
Kor blush, my fair, to be compared to these
Your best, your noblest mission, is to please,* "
"Well," said Eva, flushing, "was n't it a man that wrote
that? and don't they always misunderstand usi We are
soft we are weak we do love beauty, and ease, and
comfort ; but there is a something in us more than they give
us credit for. Where is that place in Carlyle 1 " she said,
rising with a hasty impulse, and taking down a Volume, and
running rapidly over the leaves. " Oh, here it is I " and
she read with energy from Carlyle'* "Hero Worship: ''-*-
204 MY WIFE AND I
" 'It is a calmnny to say that men are Deryed to heroic
action by ease, hope of pleasure, recompense sugar- plums
of any kind in this world or the next. In the meanest
mortal there is something nobler. The poor, swearing
soldier, hired to be shot, has his honor of a soldier differ-
ent from drill, regulations, and the shilling a day. It is
not to taste sweet things, but to do noble and true things,
and vindicate himself under God's heaven as a God-made
man, that the poorest son of Adam dimly longs. Show
him the way of doing that, and the dullest drudge kindles
into a hero.
" * They wrong man greatly who say he is to be seduced
by ease. Difficulty, abnegation, martyrdom, death, are
allurements that act on the heart of man. Kindle the
inner genial life of him, and you have a flame that burns
up all lower considerations. '
"Now," she said, her face glowing, and bringing down
her little fist with emphasis, "that is true of women as
well as men. They wrong woman greatly who say she is
to be seduced by ease. Difficulty, abnegation, martyrdom,
death, are allurements that act on the heart of woman.
Now, Mr. Henderson, every woman that is a woman feels
this in the depths of her heart, and it is this feeling sup-
pressed that is at the bottom of a great deal of unhappiness
in woman's life. You men have your chance to express it
that is your great good fortune. You are called to be
heroes your hour comes but we are buried under eter-
nal commonplaces and trifles."
"Yet, Miss Eva," said I, "I don't think we are so very
much better off than you. The life of the great body of
men is a succession of mere ignoble drudgeries, with no-
thing great or inspiring. Unless we leam to ennoble the
commonplace by a heroic spirit, most of us must pass
through life with no expression of this aspiration; and I
think that more women succeed in doing this than men
THE YOUNG LADY PHILOSOPHER 205
in fact, I think it is the distinctive prerogative of woman
to idealize life hy shedding an ennohling spirit upon its
very trifles."
"That is true," she said frankly; "hut I confess it
never occurred to me ; yet don't you think it harder to be
heroic in every-day affairs ? "
"Certainly; but those that can inspire commonplace
drudgery with noble and heroic meanings are the true
heroes. There was a carpenter once in Nazareth who
worked thirty years quietly at his bench; but who doubts
that every stroke of that work was inspired and heroic, as
much as the three public years that followed 1 And there
are women, like him, toiling in poverty hard-working
wives, long-suffering mothers, whose every breath is heroic.
There can be no commonplace where such noble creatures
live and suffer."
"Yes, Mr. Henderson," said Ida, "heroism can be in
any life that is a work-lifQ and life which includes en-
ergy and self-denial. But fashionable life is based on mere
love of ease. All it seeks is pleasurable sensation and
absence of care and trouble, and it starves this heroic capa-
bility ; and that is the reason, as Eva says, why there is so
much repressed unhappiness in women. It is the hunger
of starving faculties. What are all these girls and women
looking fori Amusement, excitement. What do they
dread more than anything? Effort, industry, self-denial.
Not one of them can read a serious book through not
because they are not able, but because it takes an effort.
They read nothing but serial stories, and if there is much
thought in them, they skip it, to get at the story. All
the education they get in schools lies idle ; they do nothing
with it, as a general thing. They neither read, write, nor
speak their French, Italian, or German and what is the
use of having got them ? Men study languages as a key
to literature, and use literature for some purpose; women
206 MY WIFE AND I
study only to forget. It does not take four languages and
all the ologies to enable them to dance the german and com-
pose new styles of trimming. They might do all they do
equally as well without these expensive educations as with "
"There now, you have got sister Ida on her pet topic,"
said Eva, with heightened color; "she will take up her
prophecy now, and give it to us wicked daughters of Zion ;
but, after all, it only makes one feel worried and bad, and
one doesn't know what to do. We don't make the world ;
we are born into and find it ready made. We find certain
things are customs certain things are expected of us
and we begin to say A, and then we must say B, and so
xm through the whole alphabet. We don't want to say B,
but we must because we have said A. It is n't every one
that is brave and strong enough to know where to stop,
and face the world, and say, * No, I will not do it. ' We
must keep step with our neighbors."
"Well," said Ida, "who is it that says, * Be not con-
formed to the world ' 1 "
"Yes, I know," said Eva; "there's the Bible there
are all the lessons and prayers and hymns of the Church
all going one way, and our lives all going the other all
our lives everybody's life even nice people's lives
fdl go the other way ; except now and then one. There 's
our new rector, now, he is beginning to try to bring us up
to live as the Church directs ; but mamma and Aunt Maria,
and all of them, cry out that he is High Church, and going
to Popery, and all that; they say that if one is to live as
he says, and go out to prayers morning and evening, and
to Holy Communion every Sunday, it will just upset our
whole plan of life, that one might as well go into a convent
and so it will. One can't be in parties all night, and
go to prayers every morning; one can't go through that
awful Holy Communion every Sunday, and live as we gen-
erally do through the week. All our rector is trying to
THE YOUKG LADY PHILOSOPHER 207
do is simply to make a reality of our profession ; he wants
us to carry out in good faith what is laid down in the
Prayer-Book; but you see we can't do it without giving up
the world as we have it arranged now. For my part, I 'm
going to the daily services in Lent, if I don't any other
time, and though it does make me feel dreadfully wicked
and uncomfortable."
"Oh, you poor child!" said Ida; "why haven't you
strength to do as you please ? "
"Why haven't I the arm of a blacksmith 1 why can't
I walk ten miles ? There are differences of power in mind
as well as body," said Eva.
The conversation was interrupted at this moment by
Mr. Van Arsdel, who entered quietly, with his spectacles
and newspapers.
"The children are having lively times in there," he
said, " and I thought I 'd just come here and sit where
it 's quiet, and read my papers."
"Papa says that every evening," said Eva.
"Well, the fact is, Mr. Henderson," said he, with a
confiding sort of simplicity, "Ida and I feel at home in
here, because it 's just the little old place wife and I had
when we began. You see, these are all my old things that
we first went to housekeeping with, and I like them. I
did n't want to have them sent off to auction, if they are
old and clumsy."
"And he should have them, so he should, pa-sey dear,"
said Eva caressingly, putting her arm round his neck.
"But come, Mr. Henderson, I suppose the gay world out-
side will expect us."
I had risen and was looking over the library. It was
largely composed of modem scientific and physiological
works.
"You see my light reading," said Ida, with a smile.
"Ida's books are a constant reproach to me," said Eva;;
208 MY WIFE AND I
" but I dip in now and then, and fish up some wonderful
pearl out of them; however, I confess to just the fatal
laziness she reprobates I donH go through anything."
"Well, Mr. Henderson, we wonH keep you from the
world of the parlors," said Ida; "but consider you have
the entree here whenever you want a quiet talk; and we
will be friends," she said, stretching out her hand with the
air of a queen.
"You honor me too much. Miss Van Arsdel," said I.
"Come now, Mr. Henderson, we can't allow our princi-
pal literary lion to be kept in secret places," said Miss
Eva. " You are expected to walk up and down and show
yourself; there are half a dozen girls to whom I have
promised to present you."
And in a moment I found myself standing in a brilliant
circle of gay tropical birds of fashion, where beauty, or the
equivalent of beauty, charmingness, was the rule, and not
the exception. In foreign lands, my patriotic pride had
often been fed by the enthusiasm excited by my country-
women. The beauty and grace of American women, their
success in foreign circles, has passed into a proverb; and
in a New York company of young girls one is really dazzled
by prettiness. It is not the grave, grand, noble type of
the Madonna and the Venus di Milo, but the delicate, bril-
liant, distracting prettiness of young birds, kittens, lambs,
and flowers something airy and fairy belonging to
youth and youthful feeling. You see few that promise to
ripen and wax fairer in middle life ; but almost all are like
delicate, perfectly blossomed flowers fair, brilliant, and
graceful, with a fragile and evanescent beauty.
The manners of our girls have been criticised, from the
foreign standpoint, somewhat severely. It is the very
nature of republican institutions to give a sort of uncon-
ventional freedom to it^ women. There is no upper world
ol court and aristocracy to make laws for them, or press
THE YOUNG LADY PHILOSOPHEB 209
down a framework of etiquette upon them. Individual
freedom of opinion and action pervades every school ; it is
breathed in the very air, and each one is, in a great degree,
a law unto herself. Every American girl feels herself in
the nobility ] she feels adequate to the situation, and per-
fectly poised in it. She dares do many things not per-
mitted in foreign lands, because she feels strong in herself,
and perfectly sure of her power. Yet he who should pre-
sume on this frank generosity of manner will find that
Diana has her arrows, and that her step is free only be-
cause she knows her strength, and understands herself per*
fectly, and is competent to any situation.
At present, the room was full of that battledore-and-
shuttlecock conversation, in which everything in heaven
above or earth beneath is bantered to and fro, flitting and
flying here and there from one bright lip to another.
"Now, really and truly, girls, are you going to the early
services this Lent 1 Oh, Mr. Selwyn is such a good man !
and wasn't his pastoral letter beautiful? We really ought
to go. But, girls, I can't get up indeed I can't; do
you know, it 's dreadful seven o'clock only think of
it. You won't go, Eva?"
"Yes, I shall.''
"I lay you a pair of gloves you won't, now," quoth
mouth adorned with long waxed mustaches of a true Im-
perial type.
"See if I don't."
"Oh, mamma says I mustn't try," said another; "I
have not the strength."
"And I tell Eva she can't do it," said Mrs. Van Arsdel.
"Eva is always overdoing; she worked herself ^ death in
a mission class last year, Tb# fact 19, ofi c^XL-t do these
things and go into society."
"But what 's the use of society, mamma? '' said Eva.
"Oh, well; we can't all turn into monks and nuns, you
210 MY WIFE AND I
know; and that's what these modern High Church doings
would bring us to. I *m a good, old-fashioned Episcopa-
lian; I believe in going to church on Sundays and that 's
all we used to hear about."
"Do you know, Mr. Fellows, I saw you at St. Al-
ban's 1 " said Miss Alice.
"On your knees, too," said Miss Eva.
" Do you believe in bowing to the altar 1 " said a third ;
"I think it 's quite Popish."
" Girls, what are going to be worn for hats this spring 1
have you been to Madame De TuUegig's? I declare it 's a
shame! but Lent is just the busiest time about one's
clothes; one must have everything ready for Easter, you
know. How do you like the new colors, Mr. Fellows 1 "
" What ! the hell-fire colors ? " said Jim.
"Oh, horrors! You dreadful creature, you ought to be
ashamed of yourself ! " screamed in four or five voices.
" Am ashamed sackcloth and ashes, and all that ; eat
nothing but codfish," said Jim. "But that's what they
call 'em, anyway hell-fire colors."
" I never did hear such a profane creature. Girls, is n't
he dreadful ? "
" I say. Miss Alice, " said Jim, " do you go to confession
up there 1 'Cause, you see, if that thing is getting about,
I think I '11 turn priest."
I think you ought to go to confession," said she.
I shall in the good times coming, when we have lady
priests. "
"Oh, Mr. Henderson, do you believe in women's
rights ? "
"Certainly."
"Well, for my part, I have all the rights I want," said
Miss Alice.
"I should think you did," said Jim Fellows; "but it 's
hard on us."
THE YOtJNG LADY PHILOSOPHER 211
"Well, I think that is all infidelity," said another;
"goes against the Bihle. Do you think women ought to
speak in public ? "
" Ristori and Fanny Kemble, for instance, " said I.
"Oh, well, they are speaking other people's words;
but their own 1 "
" Why not as well as in private 1 "
"Oh, because why, I think it's dreadful; don't
you 1 "
"I can't perceive why. I am perfectly charmed to hear
women speak, in public or private, who have anything
good or agreeable to say."
" But the publicity is so shocking I "
"Is it any more public than waltzing at the great public
balls?"
"Oh, well, I think lecturing is dreadful; you'll never
convince me. I hate all those dreadful, raving, tearing,
stramming women."
In which very logical and consecutive way the leading
topics of the age were elegantly disposed of; and at eleven
o'clock I found myself out on the pavement with the in-
exhaustible Jim, who went singing and whistling by my
side as fresh as a morning blackbird. My head was in a
pretty thorough whirl; but I was initiated into society,
to what purpose shall hereafter appear.
CHAPTER xvrn
FLIBTATIOlf
"Look there," said Jim Fellows, throwing down a pair
of Jouvin^s gloves. "That 's from the divine Alice.''
" A present ? "
"A philopena."
"Seems to me, Jim, you are pushing your fortunes in
that quarter."
"Yes; having a gay time! Adoring at the shrine and
all that," said Jim. "The lovely Alice is like one of the
Madonna pictures to he knelt to, sworn to, vowed to -
hut I can't be the possessor. In the mean while, let's
have as good a time as possible. We have the very best
mutual understanding. I am her sworn knight, and wear
her colors behold I "
And Jim opened bis coat, and showed a pretty knot of
carnation-colored ribbon.
" But, I thought, Jim, you talked the other night as if
you could get any of them you wanted."
"Who says I couldn't, man? Does not the immortal
Shakespeare say, ' She is a woman, therefore to be won * ?
You don't go to doubting Shakespeare at this time of day,
I hope ? "
" Well, then "
"Well, then; you see, Hal, we get wiser every day
that is, I do and it begins to be borne in on my mind
that these rich girls won't pay, if you could get them.
The game isn't worth the candle."
" But there is real thought and feeling and cultiva-
4
FLIRTATION 218
tion among them," said I, taking up the gauntlet with
energy.
"So there is real juice in hothouse grapes; but if I
should have a present of a hothouse to-morrow, what
should I have to run it with ? These girls have the educa-
tion of royal princesses, and all the habits and wants of
them; and what could a fellow do with them if he got
themf We haven't any Parliament to vote dowries to
keep them up on. I declare, I wish you had heard those
girls the other night go on about that engagement, and
what they expected when their time comes. Do you know
the steps of getting engaged ? "
I cannot say I have that happiness," said I.
Well, first, there 's the engagement ring, not a sign of
love, you understand, but a thing to be discussed and com-
pared with all the engagement rings, past, present, and to
come, with Tom's ring, and Dick's ring, and Harry's ring.
11 you could have heard the girls tell over the prices of the
diferent engagement rings for the last six months, and
bring up with Eivington's, which, it seems, is a solitaire
worth a thousand ! Henceforth nothing less is to be thought
of. Then the wedding present to your wife. Rivington
gives $30,000 worth of diamonds. Wedding fees, wedding
journey to every expensive place that can be thought of,
you ought to have a little fortune to begin with. The
lovely creatures are perfectly rapacious in their demands
under these heads. I heard full lists of where they were
going and what they wanted to have. Then comes a
liouse, in a fashionable quarter, to the tune of fifty thou-
sand dollars ; then furniture, carriages, horses, opera- boxes.
The short of the matter is, old Van Arsdel's family are
1 laving a jolly time on the income of a million. There are
six of them, and every one wants to set up in life on the
same income. So, you see, the sum is how to divide a
million so as to make six millions out of it. The way to
214 MY WIFE AND I
do it is plain. Each son and daughter must marry a mil-
lion, and get as much of a man or woman with it as pleases
Heaven.''
"And suppose some of them should love some man, or
woman, more than gold or silver, and choose love in place
of money ? " said I.
"Well," said Jim, "that's quite supposable; any of
these girls is capable of it. But, after all, it would be
rough on a poor girl to take her at her word. What do
they know about it? The only domestic qualification the
most practical of them ever think of attaining is how to
make sponge-cake. I believe, when they are thinking of
getting married, they generally make a little sponge-cake
and mix a salad dressing, that fits them for the solemn and
awful position of wife and mother, which you hear so much
about. Now, the queenly Alice is a splendid girl, and
can talk French and German and Italian; but her know-
ledge of natural history is limited. I imagine she thinks
gloves grow in packs on the trees, and artificial flowers are
raised from seed, and dresses develop by uniform laws of
nature at the rate of three or four a month. If you could
get the darling to fly to your arms, and the old gentleman
should nH come round and give her what he could afford,
how could you console her when she finds out the price of
gloves and gaiter boots and all the ordinary comforts ? I'm
afraid the dear child will be ready to murder you for help-
ing her to her own way. So you see, Jim does n't invest
in engagement rings this year."
Thereupon I sung : ^.
" A sly old fox one day did spy
A bunch of grapes that hung so high/' etc.
"Sing away, my good fellow," said Jim. "Maybe I
am the fox ; but I'm a fox that has cut his eye-teeth.
I 'm too cute to put my neck in that noose, you see. No,
sir; you can mention to Queen Victoria that if she wants
FLIRTATION 215
Jim Fellows to marry one of her daughters, why Parlia-
ment has got to come down handsomely with dowry to
keep her on. They are worth keeping, these splendid
creations of nature and art; hut it takes as much as to run
a first-class steamer. They go exactly in the line of fine
pictures and statuary, and all that. They may he adorahle
and inspiring, and exalting and refining and purifying, the
very poetry of existence, the altogether lovely; but, after
all, it is only the rich that can afford to keep them. A
wife costs more in our day than a carriage or a conscience,
and both those are luxuries too expensive for Jim."
" Jim ! Jim ! ! Jim ! ! ! " I exclaimed, in tones of expos-
tulation ; but the impracticable Jim cut a tall pirouette, and
sung:
*' My old massa told me so,
Best looking nigger in the country, I
I looked in the glass and I found it so a o 0.*'
The crescendo here made the papers flutter, and created
a lively breeze in the apartment.
"And now, farewell, divinest Alice, Jim must go to
work. Let 's see. Oh! I *ye promised a rip-staving skin-
ner on Tom Brown in that Custom House affair."
" What is that business ? What has Brown done ? If
all is true that is alleged he ought to be turned out of de-
cent society."
"Oh, pshaw I you don't understand; it's nothing but a
dust we 're kicking up because it 's a dry time. Brown 's
a good fellow enough, I dare say, but you know we want
to sell our papers, and these folks want hot hash with their
breakfast every morning, and somebody has got to be
served up. You see the * Seven Stars ' started this story,
and sold immensely, and we come in on the wave; the
word to our paper is * pitch in,' and so I 'm pitching in."
" But, Jim, is it the fair thing to do when you don't
know the truth of the story ? "
216 MY WIFE AND I
"The truth I well, my dear fellow, who knows or cares
anything about truth in our dayst We want to sell our
papers."
"And to sell your papers you will sell your honor as a
man and a gentleman."
" Oh, bother, Hal, with your preaching I "
" But, Jim, you ought to examine both sides and know
the truth."
"I do examine; generally write on both sides when
these rows come on. I 'm going to defend Brown in the
'Forum; ' you See, they sent round yesterday for an article;
0 you see, Jim makes his little peculium both ways."
" Jim, is that the square thing ? "
" Why not ? It would puzzle the Devil himself to make
out what the truth is in one of our real double and twisted
New York newspaper rows. I don't pretend to do it, but
I '11 show up either side or both sides if I 'm paid for it.
We young men must live I If the public must have spicery
we must get it up for them. We only serve out what they
order. I tell you, now, what this great American people
wants is a semi-occasional row about something, no matter
what; a murder, or a revival, or a great preacher, or the
'Black Crook; ' the Lord or the Devil, anything to make
matters lively, and break up the confounded dull times
round in the country."
"And so you get up little personal legends, myths, about
this or that man ? "
"Exactly; that's what public men are good for. They
are our drums and tamborines; we beat on 'em to amuse
the people and make a variety ; nobody cares for anything
more than a day; they forget it to-morrow, and something
else turns up."
"And you think it right," said I, "to use up character
just as you do bootblacking to make your boots shine 1
How would you like to be treated so yourself 1 "
FLIRTATION 217
*' Should n't mind it a bit -^ bless yout buttons it
don't hurt anybody. Nobody thinks the worse of them.
Why, you could prove conclusively that any of our public
men break the whole Ten Commandments at a smash
break 'em for breakfast, dinner, and supper, and it
wouldn't hurt 'em. People only oh and ah and roll up
their eyes and say ' Terrible ! ' and go out to meet him, and
it 's * My dear fellow, how are youl why haven't you been
round to our house lately 1 ' By and by they say, * Look
here, we 're tired of this about Brown, give us more va*
riety. ' Then Jones turns up, and off go the whole pack
after Jones. That keeps matters lively, you see."
I laughed, and Jim was perfectly satisfied. All that he
ever wanted in an argument was to raise a laugh, and he
Was triumphant, and went scratching on with his work
With untiring industry. He always left me with an un*
easy feeling, that by laughing and letting him alone I was
but half doing my duty, and yet it seemed about as feasible
to present moral considerations to a bobolink.
"There," he said, after half an hour of scribbling,
"there 's so much for old Mam."
"Who 'sold *Mam'?"
"Haven't heard? why, your mistress and mine, the old
Mammon of unrighteousness ; she is mistress of all things
here below. You can't even carry on religion in this
world but through her. You must court old Mam, or
your churches, and your missions, and all the rest go under,
and Jim works hard for her, and she owes him a living."
"There have been men in our day who prevailed in
spite of her."
" Who, for example ? "
" Garrison. "
"Well, he's top of the heap now, sure enough, but I
tell you that was a long investment. Jim has to run on
ready cash and sell what 's asked for now. I stand at my
218 MY WIFE AND I
counter, * Walk up, gentlemen, what '11 you take 1 Orders
taken and executed with promptness and dispatch. Beli-
gion 1 yes, sir. Here 's the account of the work of Divine
grace in Skowhegan; fifty awakened and thirty-nine indul-
ging in hope. Here 's criticism on Boanerges' orthodoxy,
showing how he departs from the great vital doctrines of
grace, giving up Hell and all the other consolations of our
holy religion. We '11 serve you out orthodoxy red hot.
Anything in this line ? Here 's the latest about sweet lit-
tle Dame aux Cam^lias, and lovely little Kitty Blondine.
" Oh! Kitty is my darling, my darling, my darling," etc.
And here 's the reformatory, red hot, hit or miss, here 's
for the niggers and the Paddies and the women and all the
enslaved classes. Jim will go it for any of them, only
give him his price.' I think of getting up a show-bill
with list of prices affixed. Jim will run anybody up or
run anybody down to order."
I put my hand over his mouth. "Come, you bom
magpie," said I, "you sha'n't make yourself out so much
worse than you are."
[Eva Van Arsdel to Isabel Convers.]
My dear Belle, I told you I would write the end of
my little adventure, and whether the "hermit " comes or
not. Yes, my dear, sure enough, he did come, and mamma
and we all like him immensely ; he had really quite a suc-
cess among us. Even Ida, who never receives calls, was
gracious, and allowed him to come into her sanctum because
he is a champion of the modern idea about women. Have
you seen an article in the " Milky Way " on the Women
of our Times, taking the modern radical ground? Well, it
was by him ; it suited Ida to a hair, but some little things
in it vexed me because there was a phrase or two about the
"fashionable butterflies," and all that; that comes a great
%
FLIRTATION 219
deal too near the truth to be altogether agreeable. I don't
care when Ida says such things, because she 's another
woman, and between ourselves we know there is a deal of
nonsense current among us, and if we have a mind to talk
about it among ourselves, why, it 's like abusing one's own
relations in the bosom of the family, one of the sweetest
domestic privileges, you know; but, when lordly man be-
gins to come to judgment and call over the roll of our sins,
I am inclined to tell him to look at home, and to say,
" Pray, what do you know about us, sir V I stand up for
my sex, right or wrong; so you see, we had a spicy little
controversy, and I made the hermit open his eyes (and,
between us, he has handsome eyes to open). He looked
innocently astonished at first to be taken up so briskly
and called to account for his sayings. You see, the way
these men have of 'going on and talking without book about
us quite blinds them; they can set us down conclusively
in the abstract when they don't see us or hear us, but when
a real live girl meets them and asks an account of their
sayings they begin to be puzzled. However, I must say
my lord can talk when he fairly is put up to it. He is
a true, serious, earnest-hearted man, and does talk beauti-
fully, and his eyes speak when he is silent. The forepart
of the evening, you see, we were in a state of most charm-
ing agreement; he was in our little "Italy," and we had
the nicest of times going over all the pictures and portfolios
and the dear old Italian life; it seems as if we had both
of us seen, and thought of, and liked the same things it
was really curious!
Well, like enough, that 's all there is to it. Ten to one
he never will call again. Mamma invited him to be here
every Wednesday, quite urged it upon him, but he said
his time was so filled up with work. There, you see, is
where men have the advantage of girls ! They have some-
thing definite to fill up their time, thought, and hearts; we
220 MY WIFE AND I
nothing, so we think of them from sheer idleness, and
they forget us through press of business. Ten to one he
never calls here again. Why should hef I shouldn't
think he would. I would n't if I were he. He is nH a
dancing man, nor an idler, but one that takes life earnestly,
and, after all, I dare say he thinks us fashionable girls a sad
set. But I 'm sure he must admire Ida; and she was
wonderfully gracious for her, and gave him the entree of
her sanctum, where there never are any but rational say-
ings and doings.
Well, we shall see.
I am provoked with what you tell me about the reports
of my engagement to Mr. Sydney, and I tell you now once
again, '^No, no." I told you in my last that I was not
engaged, and I now tell you what is more^ that I never can,
shall, or will be engaged to him; my mind is made up,
but how to get out of the net that is closing round me I
don't see. I think all these things are "perplexing and
disagreeable." If a girl wants to do the fair thing it is
hard to know how. First you refuse outright, and then
my lord comes as a friend. Will you only allow him the
liberty to try and alter your feelings, and all that? You
shall not be forced; he only wants you to get more ac-
quainted, and the result is you go on getting webbed and
meshed in day after day more and more. You can't refuse
flowers and attentions offered by a friend; if you take
them you may be quite sure they will be made to mean
more. Mamma and Aunt Maria have a provoking way of
talking about it constantly as a settled thing, and one can't
protest from morning till night, apropos to every word.
At first they urged me to receive his attentions; now they
are saying that I have accepted so many I can't honorably
withdraw. And so he does n't really give me an opportu-
nity to bring the matter to a crisis; he has a silent taking-
for-granted air that is provoking. But the law that binds
FLIBTATION Ml
our sex is the law of all ghosts and spirits, -^ we can't speak
till we are spoken to; meanwhile reports spread, and peo^
pie say hateful things as if you were trying and failing.
How angry that makes me ! One is almost tempted some-
times to accept just to show that one can; but, seriously,
dear Belle, this is wicked trifling. Marriage is an awful,
a tremendous thing, and we of the Church are without
excuse if we go into it lightly or unadvisedly, and I never
shall marry till I see the man that is my fate, I have
what mamma calls domestic ideas, and I 'm going to have
them, and when I marry it shall be for the man alone, not
a pieced-up affair of carriages, horses, diamonds, opera^
boxes, cashmeres with a man, but a man for whom all the
world were well lost; then I shall not be afraid of the
Church service which now stands between me and Mr.
Sydney, I cannot, I dare not, lie to Grod and swear falsely
at the altar to gain the whole world,
I wish you could hear our new rector. He is making a
sensation among us. If the life he is calling on us all to
live is the real and true one, we shall soon have to choose
between what is called society and the Church ; for if being
a Churchwoman means all he says, one cannot be in it
without really making religion the life's business -^ which,
you know, we none of us do or have. Dear man, when
I see him tugging and straining to get our old, sleepy, rich
families into heavenly ways, I think of Pegasus yoked to
a stone cart. He is all life and energy and enthusiasm,
he breathes fire, and his wings are spread heavenward, but
there 'a the old dead, lumbering cart at his heels ! Poor
man! and poor cart too for I am in it with the rest of
the lumber!
We are in all the usual spring agonies now about clothes.
The house reverberates with the discussion of hats and
bonnets, and feathers and flowers, and overskirts and un-
derskirts, and all the paraphernalia and what m absurd
222 BfY WIFE AND I
combination it makes with the daily services in Lent.
Absurd ? No dreadful ! for at church we are reading of
our Saviour's poverty and fasting and agonies what a
contrast between his life and ours! Was it to make us
such as we are that he thus lived and died ?
Cousin Sophia is happy in her duties in the sisterhood.
Her church life and daily life are all of a piece one part
is not a mockery of the other. There 's Ida, too out of
the Church, making no profession of churchly religion, but
living wholly out of this bustling, worldly sphere, devoted
to a noble life purpose fitting herself to make new and
better paths for women. Ida has none of these dress trou-
bles; she has cut loose from all. Her simple black dress
costs incredibly less than our outfit it is all arranged
with a purpose yet she always has the air of a lady, and
she has besides a real repose, which we never have. This
matter of dress has a thousand jars and worries and vexa-
tions to a fastidious nature; one wishes one were out of it.
I have heard that nuns often say they are more blessed
than ever they were in the world, and I can conceive why,
it is a perfect and blissful rest from all that troubles
ordinary women. In the first place, the marriage question.
They know that they are not to be married, and it is a
comfort to have a definite settlement of that matter.
Then all agitations and fluctuations about that are over.
In the next place, the dress question. They have a dress
provided, put it on, and wear it without thought or in-
quiry; there is no room for thought, or use for inquiry.
In the third place, the question of sphere and work is set-
tled for them ; they know their duties exactly ; and if they
don't, there is a director to tell them; they have only to
obey. This must be rest blissful rest.
I think of it sometimes, and wonder why it is that this
dress question must smother us women and wear us out,
and take our whole life and breath as it does! In our
FLIRTATION 223
family it is perfectly fearful. If one had only one's self
to please it is hard enough what with one's own fas-
tidious taste, with dressmakers who never keep their word,
and push you off at the last moment with ahominable
things; but when one has pleased one's self, then comes
mamma, and then all the girls, every one with an opinion;
and then, when this gauntlet is run, comes Aunt Maria,
more solemn and dictatorial than the whole so that by
the time anything gets really settled one is so fatigued
that life does n't seem really worth having.
I told Mr. Henderson, in our little discussion last night,
that I envied men because they had a chance to live a real,
grand, heroic life, while we were smothered under trifles
and commonplaces, and he said, in reply, that the men had
no more chances in this way than we; that theirs was a
life of drudgeries and detail; and that the only way for
man or woman was to animate ordinary duties by a heroic
spirit. He said that woman's specialty was to idealize life
by shedding a noble spirit upon its ordinary trifles. I
don't think he is altogether right. I still think the oppor-
tunities for a noble life are ten to one in the hands of
men ; but still there is a great deal in what he says. He
spoke beautifully of the noble spirit shown by some women
in domestic life. I thought perhaps it was his mother he
was thinking of. He must have known some noble woman,
for his eye kindled when he spoke about it.
How I have run on and what a medley this letter is.
I dare not look it over, for I should be sure to toss it into
the fire. Write to me soon, dearest Bella, and tell me
what you think of matters so far.
Your ever loying Eva.
CHAPTEB XIX
I BECOME A FAMILY FSIEND
I HAYS often had occasion to admire the philosophical
justice of popular phrases. The ordinary cant phraseology
of life generally represents a homely truth because it has
grown upon reality like a lichen upon a rock. "Falling in
love '^ is a phrase of this kind; it represents just that phe-
nomenon which is all the time happening among the sons
and daughters of Adam in most unforeseen times and sea-
eons, and often when the subject least intends it, and eyn
intends something quite the contrary.
The popular phrase " falling in love " denotes something
that comes unexpectedly. One may walk into love pre-
paredly, advisedly, with the eyes of one's understanding
open; but one falls in love as one falls downstairs in a
dark entry, simply because the foot is set where there is
nothing for it to stand on, which I take to be a simile of
most philosophical good resolutions.
I flattered myself at this period of my existence that I
was a thorough-paced philosopher; a man that had out^
lived the snares and illusions of youth, and held himself
and all his passions and affections under most perfect con-
trol. The time had not yet come marked out in my su-
preme wisdom for me to meditate matrimonial ideas: in
the mean while, I resolved to make the most of that plea-
sant and convenient arbor on the Hill Difficulty which is
commonly called Friendship.
Concerning this arbor I have certain observations to
make. It is most commodiously situated, and commands
I BECOME A FABnLY FRIEND 225
charming prospocts. We are informed of some, that on
a clear day one can see from it quite plainly as far as to
the Delectable Mountains. From my own experience I
have no doubt of this fact. For a young man of five-and-
twenty or thereabouts, not at present in circumstances to
marry, what is more charming than to become the intimate
friend in a circle of vivacious and interesting young ladies,
in easy circumstances, who live in a palace surrounded by
all the elegances, refinements, and comforts of life ?
More blissful still, if he be welcomed to these bowers
of beauty by a charming and courteous mamma who hopes
he will make himself at home, and assures him that they
will treat him quite as one of the family. This means, of
course, that perfect confidence is reposed in his discretion.
He is labeled " Safe. " He is to gaze on all these
charms with a disinterested spirit, without a thought of
personal appropriation. Of course, he is not to stand in
the way of eligible establishments that may offer, but
meanwhile he can make himself generally agreeable and
useful. He may advise the fair charmers as to their read-
ing and superintend the cultivation of their minds ; he may
be on hand whenever an escort is needed to a party; he
may brighten up dull evenings by reading aloud, and, in
short, may be that useful individual that is looked on
"quite as a brother, you know."
Young men who glide into this position in families
generally, I believe, enjoy it quite as much as the moth-
millers who seem to derive such pleasure from the light
and heat of the evening lamp, and with somewhat similar
results. But though thousands of these unsophisticated
insects singe their wings every evening, the thousand-
and-first one comes to the charge with a light heart in
his bosom, and quite as satisfied of his good fortune as I
was when Mrs. Van Arsdel with the sweetest and most
motherly tones said to me, '*I know, Mr. Hend^wioii, the
226 BfY WIFE AND I
lonely life you young men must lead when you first come
to cities ; you have been accustomed to the home circle, to
mother and sisters, and it must be very dreary. Pray,
make this a sort of home ; drop in at any time ; our parlors
are always open, and some of us about; or if not, why,
there are the pictures and the books, you know, and there
is the library where you can write."
Surely it was impossible for a young man to turn away
from all this allurement. It was the qld classic story :
"The mother Circe with the Syrens- three,
Among the flowery kirtled Naldes.'
tt
Mrs. Van Arsdel, as I said, was one of three fair sisters
who had attained a great celebrity, in the small provincial
town where they were born, for their personal charms.
They were known far and near as the beautiful Miss
Askotts. Their father was a man rather in the lower
walks of life, and the fortunes of the family were made
solely by the personal attractions of the daughters.
The oldest of these, Maria Askott, married into one of
the so-called first New York families. The match was
deemed in the day of it a very brilliant one. Tom Wouver-
mans was rich, showy, and dissipated ; and in a very few
years ran through both his property and constitution, and
left his wife the task of maintaining a genteel standing
on very limited means.
The second sister, 'Ellen, married Mr. Van Arsdel when
he was in quite modest circumstances, and had been carried
up steadily by his business ability to the higher circles of
New York life. The third had married a rich Southern
planter whose fortunes have nothing to do with my story.
. The Van Arsdel household, like most American families,
was substantially under feminine rule. Mr. Van Arsdel
was a quiet, silent man, whose whole soul was absorbed in
business, and who left to his wife the whole charge of all
that concerned the household and his children. Mrs. Van
I BECOME A FAMILT FRIEND 227
Arsdel, however, was under the control of her elder sister.
There are bom dictators as well as born poets. Certain
people come into the world with the instinct and talent for
ruling and teaching, and certain others with the desire and
instinct of being taught and ruled over. There are people
born with such a superfluous talent for management and
dictation that they always, instinctively and as a matter
of course, arrange not only their own affairs, but those of
their friends and relations, in the most efficient and com-
plete manner possible. Such is the tendency of things to
adaptation and harmony, that where such persons exist we
are sure to find them surrounded by those who take delight
in being guided, who like to learn and to look up. Such
a domestic ruler was Mrs. Maria Wouvermans, commonly
known in the Van Arsdel circle as "Aunt Maria," a name
of might and authority anxiously interrogated and quoted
in all passages of family history.
Now the fact is quite striking that the persons who hold
this position in domestic policy are often not particularly
strong or wise. The governing mind of many a circle is
not by any means the mind best fitted either mentally or
morally to govern. It is neither the best nor the cleverest
individual of a given number who influences their opinions
and conduct, but the person the most perseveringly self-
asserting. It is amusing in looking at the world to see
how much people are taken at their own valuation. The
persons who always have an opinion on every possible sub-
ject ready made, and put up and labeled for immediate use,
concerning which they have no shadow of a doubt or hesi-
tation, are from that very quality bom rulers. This posi-
tiveness, and preparedness, and readiness may spring frotn
a universal shallowness of nature, but it is none the less
efficient. While people of deeper perceptions and more
insight are wavering in delicate distresses, balancing testi-
mony and praying for light, this commonplace obtuseness
228 MY WIFE AND I
comes in and leads all captive, by mere force of knowing
exactly what it wants, and being incapable of seeing be-
yond the issues of the moment.
Mrs. Maria Wouvermans was all this. She always be-
lieved in herself, from the cradle. The watchwords of her
conversation were always of a positive nature. " To be sure, "
** certainly," "of course," "I see," and "I told you so."
Correspondingly to this, Mrs. Van Arsdel, her next sis-
ter, was one who said habitually, "What would you do,
and how would you do it ? " and so the domesticfduet was
complete. Mrs. Wouvermans did not succeed in governing
or reclaiming her husband, but she was none the less self-
confident for that; and having seen him comfortably into
his grave, she had nothing to do but get together the small
remains of the estate and devote herself to " dear Ellen and
her children." Mrs. Wouvermans managed her own house,
where everything was arranged with the strictest attention
and economy, and to the making a genteel appearance on
a small sum, and yet found abundance of time to direct
sister Ellen and her children.
She was a good-natured, pleasant-mannered woman, fond
of her nieces and nephews ; and her perfect faith in her-
self, the decision of all her announcements, and the habit-
ual attitude of consultation in which the mother of the
family stood towards her, led the Van Arsdel children as
they grew up to consider "Aunt Maria," like the Bible or
civil government, as one of the great ready-made facts of
society, to be accepted without dispute or inquiry.
Mrs. Wouvermans had her own idea of the summum
bonum, that great obscure point about which philosophers
have groped in vain. Had Plato or Anaxagoras or any of
those ancient worthies appealed to her, she would have
smiled on them benignantly, and said, " Why, yes, of course,
don't you see? the thing is very simple. You must keep
the best society and ^ake a good appearance."
I BECOME A FAMILY FRIEND ^9
Mrs. Van Arsdel had been steadily guided by her in the
paths of fashionable progression. Having married into a
rich old family, Aunt Maria was believed to have myste-
rious and incommunicable secrets of gentility at her com-
mand. She was always supposed to have an early insight
into the secret counsels of that sublime, awful, mysteri-
ous they^ who give the law in fashionable life. "They
don't wear bonnets that way, now!" "My love, they
wear gloves sewed with colored silks, now!" or, "they
have do^e with hoops and flowing sleeves," or, "they are
beginning to wear hoops again! They are going to wear
long trains," or, "they have done with silver powder
now ! " All which announcements were made with a calm
solemnity of manner calculated to impress the youthful
mmd with a sense of their profound importance.
Mr. Van Arsdel followed Aunt Maria's lead with that
unquestioning meekness which is so edifying a trait in our
American gentlemen. In fact, he considered the household
and all its works and ways as an insoluble mystery which
he was well pleased to leave to his wife; and if his wife
chose to be guided by " Maria " he had no objection. So
long as his business talent continued yearly to enlarge his
means of satisfying the desires and aspirations of his fam-
ily, so long he was content quietly and silently to ascend
in the scale of luxurious living, to have his house moved
from quarter to quarter until he reached a Fifth Avenue
palace, to All it with pictures and statuary, of which he
knew little and cared less.
Under Aunt Maria's directions Mrs. Van Arsdel aspired
to be a leader in fashionable society. No house was to be
so attractive as hers, no parties so brilliant, no daughters
in greater demand. Nature had generously seconded her
desires. Her daughters were all gifted with fine personal
points as well as a more than common share of that dpicy
genial originality of mind which is, as a general thing,
rather a characteristic of young American girls.
230 MY WIFE AND I
Mr. Van Arsdel had had his say about the education of
his sons and daughters. Ko expense had been spared.
They had been sent to the very best schools that money
could procure, and had improved their advantages. The
consequences of education had been as usual to increase the
difficulties of controlling the subject.
The horror and dismay of Mrs. Van Arsdel and of Aunt
Maria cannot be imagined when they discovered almost
immediately on the introduction of Ida Van Arsdel into
society that they had on their hands an actual specimen of
the strong-minded young woman of the period; a person
who looked beyond shows, who did her own thinking, and
who despised or approved with full vigor without consult-
ing accepted standards, and was resolutely resolved not to
walk in the ways her pastors or masters had hitherto con-
sidered the only appointed ones for young ladies of good
condition.
To work embroidery, go to parties, entertain idlers, and
wait to be chosen in marriage seemed to a girl who had
spent six years in earnest study a most lame and impotent
conclusion to all that effort; and when Ida Van Arsdel
declared her resolution to devote herself to professional
studies, Aunt Maria's indignation and disgust are not to
be described.
"So shocking and indelicate! Por my part, I can't im-
agine how anybody can want to think on such subjects!
I 'm sure it gives me a turn just to look into a work on
physiology, and all those dreadful pictures of what is inside
of us I I think the less we know about such subjects the
better; women were made to be wives and mothers, and
not to trouble their heads about such matters; and to think
of Ida, of all things, whose father is rich enough to keep
her like a princess whether she ever does a thing or not !
Why should she go into it ? Why, Ida is not bad looking.
She is quite pretty, in fact; there are a dozen girls with
I BECOME A FAMILY FRIEND 231
not half her advantages that have made good matches, but
it ' 8 no use talking to her. That girl is obstinate as the ever-
lasting hills, and her father backs her up in it. Well, we
must let her go, and take care of the others. Eva is my god-
child, and we must at any rate secure something for her.*'
" Something " meant of course a splendid establishment.
The time of my introduction into the family circle was a
critical one.
In the race for fashionable leadership Mrs. Van Arsdel
had one rival whose successes were as stimulating and as
vexatious to her as the good fortune of Mordecai the Jew
was to Haman in Old Testament times. All her good for-
tune and successes were spoiled by the good fortune and
successes of another woman, who was sure to be a little
ahead of her in everything that she attempted; and this
was the more trying as this individual began life with her,
and was a sort of family connection.
In days of her youth there was one Polly Sanders, a
remote cousin of the Askotts, who was reputed a beauty by
some. Polly was what is called in New England "smart."
She was one who never lost an opportunity, and, as the
vulgar saying is, could make every edge cut. Her charms
were far less than those of the Misses Askott, and she was
in far more straitened circumstances; but she went at the
problem of life in a sort of tooth-and-nail fashion, which
often is extremely successful. She worked first in a fac-
tory, till she made a little money, with which she put her-
self to school acquired showy accomplishments, and went
up like a balloon; married a man with much the same
talent for getting along in the world as herself; went to
Paris, and returned a traveled, accomplished woman; and
the pair set up for first society people in New York, and, to
the infinite astonishment of Mrs. Wouvermans, were soon
in a position to patronize her, and to run a race, neck and
neck, with the Van Arsdel&
232 MY WIFE AND I
What woman's Christian principles are adequate to sup-
port her under such trials ? Nothing ever impressed Aunt
Maria with such a sense of the evils of worldliness as Polly
Elmore's career. She was fond of speaking of her famil-
iarly as "Polly," and recalling the time when she was
only a factory-girl. According to Aunt Maria, such grasp-
ing, unscrupulous devotion to things seen and temporal
had never been known in anybody as in the case of Polly.
Aunt Maria, of course, did not consider herself as worldly.
Nobody ever does. You do not, I presume, my dear
madam. When your minister preaches about worldly peo-
ple, your mind immediately reverts to the Joneses and the
Simpsons round the comer, and you rather wonder how
they take it. In the same manner Aunt Maria's eyes were
always being rolled up, and she was always in a shocked
state at something these dreadful, worldly, dressy Elmores
were doing. But still they went on from conquering to
conquer. Mrs. Elmore was a dashing leader of fashion
spoke French like a book was credibly reported to have
skated with the Emperor at the Bois de Boulogne and,
in short, there was no saying what feathers she did n't wear
in her cap.
The Van Arsdels no sooner did a thing than the Elmores
did more. The Van Arsdels had a house in Fifth Avenue;
the Elmores set up a French chateau on the Park. The
Van Arsdels piqued themselves on recherche society. The
Elmores made it a point to court all the literati and dis-
tinguished people. Hence, rising young men were of great
value as ornaments to the salons of the respective houses
if they had brought with them a name in the literary
world so much the more was their value it was impor-
tant to attach them to our salon, lest they should go to
swell the triumphs of the enemy.
The crowning, culminating triumph of the Elmores was
the engagement, just declared, of Maria, the eldest daugh-
I BECOME A FAMILY FRIEND 288
ter, to young Kivington, of Kivington Manor, concerning
which Aunt Maria and Mrs. Van Arsdel were greatly
moved. The engagement was declared, and brilliant wed-
ding preparations on foot that should eclipse all former
New York grandeurs; and what lijminary was there in
the Van Arsdel horizon to draw attention to that quarter?
"Positively, Ellen," said Aunt Maria, "the engagement
between Eva and Wat Sydney must come out. It pro-
vokes me to see the absurd and indelicate airs the Elmores
give themselves about this Kivington match. It 's really
in shocking taste. I 'm sure I don't envy them Sam Kiv-
ington. There are shocking stories told about him. They
say he is a perfect roue has been taken home by the
police night after night. How Polly, with all her worldli-
ness, can make such an utter sacrifice of her daughter is
what I can't see. Now Sydney, everybody knows, is a
strictly correct man. Ellen, this thing ought to come out."
"But, dear me, Maria, Eva is such a strange child.
She won't admit that there is any engagement."
" She must admit it, Ellen of course she must. It 's
Ida that puts her up to all her strange ideas, and will end
by making her as odd as she is herself. There 's that new
young man, that Henderson why don't we turn him to
account? Ida has taken a fancy to him, I hear, and it's
exactly the thing. Only get Ida's thoughts running that
way and she '11 let Eva alone, and stop putting notions into
her head. Henderson is a gentleman, and would be a very
proper match for Ida. He is literary, and she is literary.
He is for all the modern ideas, and so is she. I 'm sure,
I go with all my heart for encouraging him. It 's exactly
the thing."
And Aunt Maria
" Shook her ambrosial curls and gave the nod,"
with a magnificence equal to Jupiter in the old Homeric
days.
CHAPTER XX
I DISCOVER THE BEAUTIES OF FRIENDSHIP
Much has been written lately concerning the doctrine of
friendship between men and women. It is thought and
said by some that there lies an unexplored territory in our
American life, and we have the example of Madame Rdca-
mier set before us to show how perfectly intimate and de-
voted a whole circle of manly friends may be with one fair
woman, without detriment or disadvantage to their domes-
tic ties or hers. The adorable Juliet is the intimate friend
at once of Matthew Montmorenci, the saint, of Chateau-
briand, the poet, and of an indefinite number of artists and
men of letters, all of whom address her in language of ado-
ration and devotion, and receive from her affectionate mes-
sages in return. Chateaubriand spends every afternoon
with Juliet, and every evening with his invalid wife, like
a devoted and dutiful husband, and this state of things goes
on from year to year without trouble and without scandal.
It was with some such sublimated precedent in my head
that I allowed myself to yield to the charming temptation
opened to me by my acquaintance with Eva Van Arsdel.
Supposing by Jim's account that she was already engaged,
looking on myself as yet far off from the place where I
could think of marriage, what was there to hinder my en-
joying her society? Of course, there was no possible
danger to myself, and it would be absolute coxcombry to
think that there would be any to her. She, who had been
a queen of fashion, and who had the world under her feet,
if she deigned to think kindly of a poor littirateur, it
I DISCOVER THE BEAUTIES OF FRIENDSHIP 235
could surely lead to nothing dangerous. I might have been
warned, if I were wise, by the fact that the night after my
first presentation I lay awake and thought over all she had
said, and counted the days that should intervene before
next Wednesday evening. I would not for the world have
had Jim Fellows divine what was going on within me; in
fact, I took as much pains to cajole and pacify and take
myself in as if I had been a third party.
I woke about six o'clock in the dim gray of the next
morning, from a dream in which Eva and I were talking
together, when she seemed so vivid that I started up almost
feeling that I saw her face in the air. Suddenly I heard
the bell of a neighboring church strike the hour, and
thought of what she had said the evening before about
attending morning services.
What was to hinder my going to the church and seeing
her again? There was a brisk morning walk, that was a
good thing, and certainly morning devotion was something
so altogether right and reasonable that I wondered I never
had thought of it before. I dressed myself and turned out
into the streets to seek the little church of the Holy Sepul-
chre where the new rector of whom Eva had spoken held
early Lenten services.
There was something quaint and rather exciting to my
imagination to be one of a small band who sought the
church at this early hour. The sunlight of the rising day
streamed through the painted window and touched with
a sort of glory the white dress of the priest; the organ
played softly in subdued melody, and the words of the
morning service had a sort of touching lovely sound.
"Where two or three are gathered together in my name,
there am I in the midst of them " seemed to come to my
thoughts with new force as I looked on the small number,
two or three in a pew, who were scattered up and down
through the church. She was there in a seat not far from
236 MY WIFE AND I
me, shrouded in a simple black dress and veil, and seemed
wholly and entirely absorbed by her Prayer- Book and devo-
tions.
As the little company dispersed at the dose of the ser-
vices, I stood in the door and joined her as she passed out.
"Good-morning, Miss Van Arsdel," I said.
She started and looked surprised, and a bright color
flushed in her cheeks.
"Mr. Henderson! you quite astonish me."
"Why so?"
"There are so very few who get out at this hour; and
you, I believe, are not of the Church."
"I don't know what you mean by the Church, exactly,"
said I.
" Oh, " said she, looking at me with a conscious smile,
" I know what everybody means that says the Church
it generally means our Church the one that is the Church
for us; but you, I think, belong to the Bethany," she
added.
"I dp," said I, "but I have large sympathies for all
others, particularly for yours, which seems to me in some
points more worthily to represent what a church should
be than any other."
She looked pleased, and said with warmth, "Mr. Hen-
derson, you must not judge our Church by such very
imperfect specimens as you see among us. We are very
unworthy children of a noble mother; our Church has
everything in it to call us to the highest and best life,
only we fall far below her teaching."
"I think I can see," I said, "that if the scheme of liv-
ing set forth by the Episcopal Church were carried out
with warmth and devotion, it would make an ideal sort of
society. "
"It would be a really consecrated life," she said, with
warmth. "If all would agree to unite in daily morning
I DISCOVER THE BEAUTIES OF FRIENDSHIP 237
and evening prayers for instance, '^ she said, "bow beauti-
ful it would be. I never enjoy reading my Bible alone in
my room as I do to bave it read to me bere in cburcb;
somehow to me there is a sacred charm about it when I
hear it read there, and then to have friends, neighbors, and
families meet and pray together as one, every day, would
be beautiful. I often think I should like to live close by
one of those beautiful English cathedrals where they have
choral services every day, and I would go morning and
evening, but here, in this dreadful, flashy, busy, bustling
New York, there is no such thing, I suppose, as getting
any number of people to agree to daily worship."
"In that respect," said I, "we modern Christians seem
to be less devout than the ancient heathen or the Moham-
medans; you recollect Hajji Baba sums up the difference
between the Englishman and the Persian by saying, * We
Persians pray seven times a day, and they, never. ' "
"I like to come to church," she said; "it seems a shelter
and a refuge. Nowadays there are so many things said
that one doesn't know what to think of; so many things
disputed that one has always supposed to be true; such a
perfectly fatiguing rush of ideas and assertions and new
ways that for my part I am glad to fall back upon some-
thing old and established, that I feel sure isn't going to
melt away into mist before to-morrow."
"I -can well appreciate that feeling," I said, "for I have
it myself."
"Do you? Oh, Mr. Henderson, you don't know how
it perplexes one. There 's sister Ida, now! she has a cir-
cle of friends the ver j nicest sort of people they seem to
be I but, dear me ! when I am with them a little while,
I get perfectly bewildered. No two of them seem to be-
lieve alike on any subject; and if you quote the Bible to
them, they just open their eyes and look amazed at you,
as if that was something quite behind the age; and as
288 MY WIFE AND I
there is no standard with them, of course there is nothing
settled. You feel as if life was built on water, and every-
thing was rocking and tilting till you are quite dizzy.
Now, I know I am a poor sort of a specimen of a Chris-
tian ; but I could n't live so ! I fly back from this sort of
thing, like a frightened bird, and take refuge in the Church
there is something iixed, positive, and definite, that has
stood the test of time; it is noble and dignified, and I
abide by that.''
" There is all that about it, '' said I ; " and so very much
that is attractive and charming in the forms of your Church,
that I think if you would only open your arms wide, and
be liberal as the spirit of this age, you would indeed be the
Church of the world."
" You think we are not liberal ? " she said.
"When you call yourselves the Church, and make no
account of all that true, pure, good souls true followers
of the same Saviour are doing, it seems to me you are
not."
"Ah, well, Mr. Henderson, perhaps we are wrong there
I cannot say. I know there are many churches and
many dear, good souls in all; it is only to me that mine is
the Church; if that is an illusion, it is a happy one."
"Now," said I, "what a dreary picture should we have
of New York Christianity if we judged it by the few
morning worshipers at Lenten services ! "
" Yes, indeed, " she said. " I am often sorry for our rector
he is so earnest, and so few care to come; and yet he
told us in his sermon, last Sunday, that these Lenten ser-
vices were an act of union with our Saviour's self-denials
and sufferings."
"Well, Miss Van Arsdel," said I, "I doubt not there
are hundreds of thousands in this city who do really, in
spirit, unite with the Saviour in self-denials and sufferings,
daily, who do not express it in this form. If all who
I DISCOVER THE BEAUTIES OF FRIENDSHIP 239
really love the Saviour, and are living in his spirit, should
make a point of early morning service in Lent, I verily
believe the churches would be crowded to overflowing."
" You do really think so ? "
'^I do. In spite of all that appears, I think ours is
really, at heart, a religious age it is only that we do not
agree in the same external forms of expression.''
"But how beautiful! oh, how beautiful it would be if
we could ! " she said. " Oh, it would be lovely if all the
good and true could see each other, and stand side by side!
I long for visible unity and do you think, Mr. Hender-
son, we could unite in more beautiful forms than ours ? "
"No; I do not," said I; "for me, for you, for many
like us, these are the true forms, and the best; but we
must remember that others have just as sacred associations,
and are as dearly attached to other modes of worship as
we to these."
" Then you really do prefer them yourself ? "
"Well, Miss Van Arsdel, I unite with the Church of my
father and mother, because I was brought up in it; yet if
I were to choose another, it would be yours."
She looked pleased, and I added, "It seems to me one
of the most beautiful things about it is a daily service."
"Yes," she said, "and it is pleasant to have churches
where you feel that worship is daily offered whether peo-
ple attend or not. There was something sacred and beau-
tiful about the church of St. Peter's in Home to think
that at every hour of day or night worship was going on in
it. I used to like to think of it when I awoke nights
that they were praying and adoring there in this cold,
dreary world; it seems as if it was like a Father's house,
always light, and warm, and open."
"There is a beauty and use in all these forms and im-
ages," I said; "and I think if we are wise, we may take
comfort in them all, without being enslaved by any."
240 MY WIFE AND I
Here our interyiew closed, as with a graceful salutation
she left me at the door of her house.
The smile she gave me was so bright and heart- warm,
that it lightened all my work through the day; a subtle
sense of a new and charming companionship began to shed
itself through all my labors, and, unconsciously and un-
watched, commenced that process of double thought which
made everything I read or wrote suggest something I
wanted to say to her. The reader will not, therefore,
wonder that I proved my sense of the beauty of a daily
morning service by going with great regularity after this,
and as regularly walking home with my enchanting com-
panion.
I was innocently surprised to find how interesting the
morning scenery in prosaic old New York had become. It
was April, and the buds in the Park were swelling, and
the green grass springing in the cracks of the pavement,
and little sparrows twittered and nestled in the ivy that
embowered the church and all these things had a strange,
new charm for me. I told myself, every day, that I was
not in love with Eva Van Arsdel, or going to be; I took
myself to witness that all our conversation was on the most
correct and dispassionate subjects, and not in the slightest
degree inclining to any vanity of that nature. Since then,
I have learned that Eva was the kind of woman with
whom it made no difference what the subject-matter of
conversation was. It might be religion, or politics, or
conic sections, but the animus of it was sure to be the
same thing. It was her vital magnetism that gave the
interest. It was, in fact, hardly any matter what we
talked about, or whether we talked at all, it was the charm
of being together that made these morning interviews so
delightful; though I believe we discussed nearly every-
thing under the sun with the most astonishing unanimity
of sentiment.
I DISCOVER THE BEAUTIES OF FRIENDSHIP 241
I was very careful to keep the knowledge of my increas-
ing intimacy from Jim Fellows. Early rising was not his
forte, and I, very improperly, congratulated myself on the
fewness of the worshipers at early service. By and by, I
grew so conscious that I got a way of stealing out at an
opposite door, appearing to walk off another way, and join-
ing Eva at the next corner lest haply my invariable con-
stancy should attract attention. She noticed all these
things with a droll, amused, little half-conscious look.
True daughter of Eve as she was, she had probably seen
many a shy fish before, swimming around her golden net
as artlessly as I was doing.
I soon became her obedient slave and servant, interpret-
ing all her motions and intimations with humble assiduity.
Of course, I presented myself duly with Jim in the Wednes-
day evening receptions, where, as the rooms were fiUed
with other company, we already began to practice an invol-
untary hypocrisy, keeping up our friendly intimacy by that
kind of intuitive and undemonstrative communication natu-
ral to those who know each other by sympathy, and learn
to understand each other without words.
I was a great deal in Ida's studio, probably much to the
satisfaction of Aunt Maria and Mrs. Van Arsdel while
Eva glanced and twinkled in and out like a firefly in a
meadow, taking my heart with her as she came and went,
yet awing me with a dutiful reticence, lest " people should
talk."
Ida was one of those calm, quiet, essentially self-poised
women, with whom it would be quite possible for a man to
have a very intimate friendship without its toning off into
anything warm, either on her part or on his. Everything
with her was so positive and definite, that there was no
possibility of going over the limits. I think that she
really had a very warm esteem for me; but she looked at
me and judged me solely in relation to Eva, and with a
242 MY WIFE AND I
quiet persistency favored the intimacy that she saw grow-
ing between us. Her plans of life were laid far ahead;
she was wedded to a purpose which she would not have
renounced for any man on earth; but Eva was the very
apple of her eye, and I think she had her own plans as
to the settling of her life's destiny; in short, Ida was
from the start the best friend I could have.
i
CHAPTER XXI
1 AM TNTBODUCED TO THE ILLUMINATI
A YOUNG man who commences life as a reformer, and a
leader in the party of progress, while saying the best and
most reasonable things in the world, and advocating what
appear to him the most needed reforms, often finds himself,
in consequence, in the condition of one who has pulled
the string of a very large shower-bath. He wanted cold
water, and he gets a deal more than he bargained for; in
fact, often catches his breath, and wonders when this sort
of thing is going to stop. My articles on the Modern
Woman, in the "Milky Way," had brought me into no-
tice in certain enthusiastic circles, and I soon found myself
deluged with letters, appeals, pamphlets, newspapers, all
calling for the most urgent and immediate attention, and
all charging me on my allegiance to "the cause," immedi-
ately, and without loss of time, to write articles for said
papers gratuitously, to circulate said pamphlets, to give
favorable notices of said books, and instantly to find lucra-
tive situations for hosts of distressed women who were tired
of the humdrum treadmill of home-life, and who wished
to have situations provided where there was no drudgery
and no labor, but very liberal compensation. The whole
large army of the incapables, the blind, the halt, the
lame, the weary, and the forlorn, all seemed inclined to
choose me as their captain, and to train under my banner.
Because I had got into a subordinate position on the
"Great Democracy," they seemed to consider that it was
toy immediate business to make the " Great Democracy "
serve their wants, or to perish in the attempt.
244 MY WIFE AND I
My friend, Ida Van Arsdel, was a serious, large-minded,
large-brained woman, who had laid a deep and comprehen-
sive plan of life, and was adhering to it with a patient and
silent perseverance. Still, she had no sympathy in that
class of society where her lot was cast. Her mother and
her Aunt Maria were women who lived and breathed
merely in the opinions of their set and circle, and were as
incapable of considering any higher ideal of life, or any
unworldly purpose, as two canary-birds. Mr. Van Arsdel,
a quiet, silent man, possessed a vein of good sense which
led him to appreciate his eldest daughter at her real worth ;
and he was not insensible to the pleasure of having one
feminine companion who, as he phrased it, "understood
business," and with whom he could talk and advise under-
standingly. But even he had no sympathy with those
larger views of the wants and needs of womanhood, in
view of which Ida was acting. It followed very naturally
that as Ida got no sympathy in her own circle, she was
led to seek it in the widening sphere of modern reformers
a circle in which so much that is fine and excellent and
practical is inevitably mixed with a great deal that is crude
and excessive.
At her request I accompanied her and Eva one evening
to a sort of New Dispensation salon, which was held weekly
at the house of Mrs. Stella Cerulean. Mrs. Stella Ceru-
lean was a brilliant woman beautiful in person, full of
genius, full of enthusiasm, full of self-confidence, the most
charming of talkers, and the most fascinating of women.
Her career from early life had been one of those dazzling
successes which always fall to the lot of beauty, seconded
by a certain amount of tact and genius. Of both these
gifts Mrs. Cerulean had just enough to bewilder the head
of any gentleman who made her acquaintance. She had
in her girlhood made the tour of Europe, shone as a star in
the courts of France and Bussia, and might be excused for
I AM INTRODUCED TO THE ILLUMINATI 245
a more than ordinary share of complacency in her successes.
In common with handsome women generally, she had, dur-
ing the greater part of her life, never heard anything but
flattery from gentlemen, and it always agreed with her
remarkably well. But Mrs. Cerulean was one of those
women with just intellect and genius enough to render
her impatient of the mere commonplace triumphs of beauty.
She felt the intoxicating power of the personal influence
which she possessed, and aspired to reign in the region of
the mind as well as to charm the senses. She felt herself
called to the modern work of society regeneration, and
went into it with all the enthusiasm of her nature, and
with all that certainty of success which comes from an utter
want of practical experience. Problems which old states-
men contemplated with perplexity, which had been the
despair of ages, she took up with a cheerful alacrity.
She had one simple remedy for the reconstruction of
society about whose immediate application she saw not the
slightest difficulty. It was simply and only to be done by
giving the affairs of the world into the hands of women,
forthwith. Those who only claim equality for women
were, in Mrs. Cerulean's view, far behind the age. Wo-
man was the superior sex. Had not every gentleman of
her acquaintance, since she could remember, told her this
with regard to herself ? Had they not always told her that
she could know everything without study, simply by the
divine intuitions of womanhood; that she could flash to
conclusions without reasoning, simply by the brilliancy of
her eyes; that her purity was incorruptible in its very
nature; that all her impulses were heavenly and God-
given ? Naturally enough, then, it was her deduction that
all that was wanting to heal the woes and wants of society
was that she and other such inspired beings should imme-
diately take to themselves their power, and reign.
Such is a general sketch of Mrs. Cerulean's view of t^e
246 MY WIFE AND I
proper method of introducing the millennium. Meanwhile,
she did her part in it hy holding salons once a week, in
which people entertaining similar views met for the pur-
pose, apparently, of a general generation of gas, without
any particular agreement as to the method in which it
should he applied. This was the company of people to
whom Eva rather pathetically alluded in one of her conver-
sations, once, as such nice people, who were so very puz-
zling to her, hecause no two of them ever seemed to think
alike on any subject, and all agreed in opening their eyes
very wide in astonishment if anybody quoted the Bible to
them as an authority in faith and practice.
Ida was much courted and petted by this circle. And
sensible, good girl as she was, she was not wholly without
pleasure in the admiration they showed for her. Then,
again, there were, every evening, ventilated in this com-
pany quantities of the most splendid and heroic ideas
possible to human beings. The whole set seemed to be
inspired with the spirit of martyrdom, without any very
precise idea of how to get martyred effectually. It was
only agreed that everything in the present state of society
was wrong, and was to be pulled down forthwith. But as
to what was to come after this demolition, there were as
many opinions in the circle as there were persons, and all
held with a wonderful degree of tenacity. A portion of
them were of opinion that a new dispensation fresh from
the heavenly realms was being inaugurated by means of
spiritualistic communications daily and hourly conveyed to
privileged individuals. It was, however, unfortunate that
these communications were, very many of them, ;n point-
blank opposition to each other; so that the introduction of
revelations from the invisible world seemed only likely to
make the confusion worse confounded. Then again, as to
all the existing relations of life, there was the same charm-
ing variety of opinion. But one thing seemed to be pretty
I AM INTRODUCED TO THE ILLUMINATI 247
generally conceded among the whole circle, that in the
good time coming nobody was ever to do anything that he
did not want to do, or feel at the moment just like doing.
The great object of existence apparently was to get rid of
everything that was disagreeable and painful. Thus, quite
a party of them maintained that all marriage relations ought
to drop from the moment that either party ceased to take
pleasure in them, without any regard to the interest of the
other party, or the children ; because the fundamental law
of existence was happiness and nothing could make peo-
ple happy but liberty to do just as they had a mind to.
I must confess that I found my evening at Mrs. Ceni
lean's salon a very agreeable one; the conversation of thor-
oughly emancipated people has a sparkling variety to it
which is exactly the thing to give one a lively, pleasant
evening. Everybody was full of enthusiasm, and in the
very best of spirits. And there appeared to be nothing
that anybody was afraid to say. Nobody was startled by
anything. Tliere was not a question, as it appeared, that
had been agitated since the creation of the world that was
not still open to discussion.
As we were walking home after spending an evening,
Ida asked me :
"Now, Mr. Henderson, what do, you think of it? "
"Well, Miss Ida," said I, "after all, I 'm a believer in
the old-fashioned Bible."
"What, really, Mr. Henderson?"
"Eeally and squarely. Miss Ida. And never more so
than when I associate with very clever people who have
given it up. There is, to my mind, a want of com-
mon sense about all theories of life that are not built on
that."
"Well," said Ida, "I have long since made up my mind
for my own part, that if the cause of woman is to be ad^*
vanced in this world, it is not so much by meeting togethel
248 MY WIFE AND I
and talking about it, as by each individual woman propos-
ing to herself some good work for the sex, and setting
about it patiently, and doing it quietly. That is rather
my idea; at the same time, I like to hear these people
talk, and they certainly are a great contrast to the vapid
people that are called good society. There is a freshness
and earnestness of mind about some of them that is really
very interesting; and I get a great many new ideas.''
"For my part," said Eva, "to be sure I have been a
sad idler, but if I were going to devote myself to any work
for women, it should be in the Church, and under the
guidance of the Church. I am sure there is something we
can do there. And then, one 's sure of not running into
all sorts of vagaries.''
"Now," said Ida, "all I want is that women should do
something; that the lives of girls, from the time they
leave school till the time they are married, should not be
such a perfect waste as they now are. I do not profess to
be certain about any of these theories that I hear; but one
thing I do know: we women wiU bear being made a great
deal more self-sustaining and self-supporting than we have
been. We can be more efficient in the world, and we
ought to be. I have chosen my way, and mean to keep to
it. And my idea is that a woman who really does accom-
plish a life^-work is just like one that cuts the first path
through a wood. She makes a way where others can
walk."
"That's you, Ida," said Eva; "but I am not strong
enough to cut first paths."
I felt a little nervous flutter of her hand on my arm as
she said this. It was in the dark, and involuntarily, I
suppose, my hand went upon hers, and before I thought of
it I felt the little warm thing in my own as if it had been
a young bird. It was one of those things that people some-
iimes^do before they know it. But I noticed that she did
I AM INTRODUCED TO THE ILLUMINATI 249
not withdraw her hand, and so I held it, querying in my
own mind whether this little arrangement was one of the
privileges of friendship. Before I quite resolved this ques-
tion we parted at the house door.
CHAPTEE XXn
I BECEIYE A MORAL SHOWER-BATH
A DAY or two after, as I was sitting in my room, busy
writing, I heard a light footstep on the stairs, and a voice
saying, "Oh yes! this is Mr. Henderson's room thank
you," and the next moment a jaunty, dashing young wo-
man, with bold blue eyes and curling brown hair, with a
little wicked-looking cap with nodding cock's-feathers set
askew on her head, came marching up and seated herself at
my writing-table. I gazed in blank amazement. The ap-
parition burst out laughing, and, seizing me frankly by the
hand, said :
"Look here, Hal! don't you know me? Well, my dear
fellow, if you don't, it 's time you did I I read your last
* thingumajig ' in the / Milky Way, ' and came round to
make your acquaintance."
I gazed in dumb amazement while she went on :
"My dear fellow, I have come to enlighten you," and
as she said this she drew somewhat near to me, and laid
her arm confidingly on my shoulder, and looked coaxingly
in my face. The look of amazement which I gave, under
these circumstances, seemed to cause her great amuse-
ment.
"Ha! ha! " she said, "did n't I tell 'em so? You ain't
half out of the shell yet. You ain't really hatched. You
go for the emancipation of woman ; but bless you, boy, you
have n't the least idea what it means not a bit of it,
sonny, have you now 1 Confess ! " she said, stroking my
shoulder caressingly.
I RECEIVE A MORAL SHOWER-BATH 251
"Really, madam I confess," I said hesitatingly, "I
have n't the honor"
"Not the honor of my acquaintance, you was going to
say; well, that 's exactly what you 're getting now. I read
your piece in the * Milky Way, ' and, said I, that boy 's in
heathen darkness yet, and I 'ni going round to enlighten
him. You mean well, Hal! but this is a great subject.
You have n't seen through it. Lord bless you, child ! you
ain't a woman, and I am that 's just the difference."
Kow, I ask any of my readers, what is a modest young
man, in this nineteenth century, having been brought up
to adore and reverence woman as a goddess^ to do, when
he finds himself vis-a-vis with her in such embarrassing
relations as mine were becoming? I had heard before of
Miss Audacia Dangyereyes as a somewhat noted character
in New York circles, but did not expect to be brought so
unceremoniously, and without the least preparation of mind,
into such very intimate relations with her.
"Now, look here, bub! " she said, "I 'm just a-going to
prove to you, in five minutes, that you 've been writing
about what you don't know anything about. You 've been
asserting, in your blind way, the rights of woman to lib-
erty and equality; the rights of women, in short, to do
anything that men do. Well, here comes a woman to your
room who takes her rights, practically, and does just what
a man would do. I claim my right to smoke if I please,
and to drink if I please ; and to come up into your room
and make you a call, and have a good time with you, if I
please, and tell you that I like your looks, as I do. Fur-
thermore, to invite you to come and call on me at my room.
Here 's my card. You may call me 'Dacia, if you like
I don't go on ceremony. Come round and take a smoke
with me this evening, won't you? I've got the nicest
little chamber that ever you saw. What rent do you pay
for yours 9 Say, will you come round V^ i
252 MY WIFE AND I
" Indeed thank you, miss "
"Call me 'Dacia for short. I don't stand on ceremony.
Just look on me as another fellow. And now confess that
you 've been tied and fettered by those vapid convention-
alities which bind down women till there is no strength in
'em. You visit in those false, artificial circles, where
women are slaves, kept like canary-birds in gilded cages.
And you are afraid of your own principles when you see
them carried out in a real free woman. Now, I 'm a wo-
man that not only dares say, but I dare do. Why has n't
a woman as much a right to go round and make herself
agreeable to men, as to sit still at home and wait for men
to come and make themselves agreeable to her? I know
you don't like this, I can see you don't, but it 's only be-
cause you are a slave to old prejudices. But I 'm going to
irnake you like me in spite of yourself. Come, now, be
consistent with your principles; allow me my equality as a
woman, a human being."
I was in such a state of blank amazement by this time as
seemed to deprive me of all power of self-possession. At
this moment the door opened, and Jim Fellows appeared.
A most ludicrous grimace passed over his face as he saw
the position, and he cut a silent pirouette in the air, behind
her. She turned her head, and he advanced.
" Fairest of the sex I (with some slight exceptions) to
what happy accident are we to attribute this meeting ? ''
" Hallo, Jim ! is this you 1 " she replied.
"Oh, certainly, it 'sme," said Jim, seating himself famil-
iarly. "How is the brightest star of womanhood the
Northern Light; the Aurora Borealis; the fairest of the
fair? Bless its little heart, has it got its rights yet? Did
it want to drink and smoke ? Come along with Jim, now,
and let 's have a social cocktail."
"Keep your distance, sir," said she, giving him a slight
box on his ear. "I prefer to do my own courting. I have
I RECEIVE A MORAL SHOWER-BATH 253
been trying to show your friend here how little he knows
of the true equality of women, and of the good time com-
ing, when we shall have our rights, and do just as we dam
please, as you do. I '11 bet now there ain't one of those
Van Arsdel girls that would dare to do as I 'm doing. But
we 're opening the way, sir, we 're opening the way. The
time will come when all women will be just as free to life,
liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, as men."
" Good heavens ! " said I under my breath.
"My beloved Audacia," said Jim, "allow me to remark
one little thing, and that is, that men also must be left free
to the pursuit of happiness, and also, as the Scripture says,
new wine must not be put into old bottles. Now, my
friend Hal begging his pardon is an old bottle, and I
think you have already put as much new wine into him as
his constitution will bear. And as he and I both have got
to make our living by scratching, and tempus fugit^ and
we 've got articles to write, and there is always, so to speak,
the Devil after us folks that write for the press, may I
humbly request that you will withdraw the confusing light
of your bright eyes from us for the present, and, in short,
take your divine self somewhere else 1 ''
As Jim spoke these words, he passed his arm round Miss
Audacia's waist, and drew her to the door of the apartment,
which he threw open, and handed her out, bowing with
great ceremony.
"Stop!'' she cried, "I ain't going to be put out that
way. I have n't done what I came for. You both of you
have got to subscribe for my paper, the * Emancipated
Woman. ' "
"Couldn't do it, divinest charmer," said Jim, "couldn't
do it; too poor; mill runs low; no water; modest merit
not rewarded. Wait till my ship comes in, and I '11 sub-
scribe for anything you like."
"Well, now, you don't get rid of me that way. I tell
254 MY WIFE AND I
you I came in to get a subscription, and I am going to stay
till I get one," said Miss Audacia. '^Corne, Hal," she
said, crossing once more to me, and sitting down by me
and taking my hand, *' write your name there, there's a
good fellow."
I wrote my name in desperation, while Jim stood by,
laughing.
"Jim," I said, "come, put yours down quick, and let's
have it over."
"Well, now," said she, "fork out the stamps five
dollars each."
We both obeyed mechanically.
"Well, well," said she good-naturedly, "that'll do for
this time, good-morning, " and she vanished from the apart-
ment with a jaunty toss of the head and a nod of the cock's-
feathers in her hat.
Jim closed the door smartly after her.
"Mercy upon us I Jim," said I, "who and what is this
creature 1 "
"Oh, one of the harbingeie of the new millennium,"
said Jim. "Won't it be jolly when all the girls are like
her? But we shall have to keep our doors locked then."
"But," said I, "is it possible, Jim, that this is a respec-
table woman ? "
"She's precisely what you see," said Jim; "whether
that 's respectable is a matter of opinion. There 's a wo-
man that 's undertaken, in good faith, to run and jostle in
all the ways that men run in. Her principle is, that what-
ever a young fellow in New York could do, she '11 do."
"Good heavens! " said I, "what would the Van Arsdels
think of us, if they should know that she had been in our
company ? "
"It's lucky that they don't and can't," said Jim.
" But you see what you get for belonging to the New Dis-
Iwlsation."
I KECEIVE A MORAL SHOWER-BATH 255
" Boys, what 's all this fuss f " said Bolton, coming in
at this moment.
"Oh, nothing, only 'Dacia Dangyereyes has been here,''
said Jim, " and poor Hal is ready to faint away and sink
through the floor. He isn't up to snuflf yet, for all he
writes such magnificent articles about the nineteenth cen-
tury. "
" Well, " said I, " it was woman as woman that I was
speaking of, and not this kind of creature. If I believed
that granting larger liberty and wider opportunities was
going to change the women we reverence to things like
these, you would never find me advocating it."
"Well, my dear Hal," said Bolton, "be comforted;
you 're not the first reformer that has had to cry out, * De-
liver me from my friends. ' Always, when the waters of
any noble, generous enthusiasm rise and overflow their
banks, there must come down the driftwood the wood,
hay, and stubble. Luther had more trouble with the
fanatics of his day, who ran his principles into the ground,
as they say, than he had with the Pope and the Emperor,
both together. As to this Miss Audacia, she is one of the
phenomenal creations of our times; this time, when every
kind of practical experiment in life has got to be tried, and
stand or fall on its own merits. So don't be ashamed of
having spoken the truth because crazy people and fools
caricature it. It is true, as you have said, that women
ought to be allowed a freer, stronger, and more generous
education and scope for their faculties. It is true that they
ought, everywhere, to have equal privileges with men; and
because some crack-brained women draw false inferences
from this, it is none the less true. For my part, I always
said that one must have a strong conviction for a cause, if
he could stand the things its friends say for it, or read a
weekly paper devoted to it. If I could have been made a
pro-slavery man, it would have been by reading anti-slavery
256 MY WIFE AND I
papers, and vice versa, I had to keep myself on a good
diet of pro-slavery papers, to keep my zeal up."
"But," said I anxiously to Jim, "do you suppose that
we 're going to he exposed to the visits of this young wo-
man?"
"Well," said Jim, "as you 've suhscrihed for her paper,
perhaps she '11 let us alone till she has some other point to
carry. "
" Subscribe ! " said I ; " I did it from compulsion, to get
her out of the office; I didn't think the situation respect-
able; and yet I don't want her paper, and I don't want my
name on her subscription list. What if the Van Arsdels
should find it outi People are apt enough to think that
our doctrines lead to all sorts of outre consequences; and if
Mrs. Wouvermans, their Aunt Maria, should once get hold
of this, and it should get all through the circle in which
they move, how disagreeable it would be."
"Oh, never fear," said Jim; "I guess we can manage to
keep our own secrets ; and as to any of them ever knowing,
or seeing, anything about that paper, it 's out of the ques-
tion. Bless you I they would n't touch it with a pair of
tongs I "
CHAPTER XXm
AtTKT MAftIA
Aunt Maria came into the parlor where Eva and Alice
were chatting over their emhroidery. A glance showed
that she had heen occupied in that sensihle and time-hon-
ored method of keeping up the social virtues, which is
called making calls. She was all plumed and rustling in
flowers and laces, and had on her calling manners. She
had evidently been smiling and bowing and inquiring after
people's healthy and saying pretty and obliging things, till
the very soul within her was quite dried up and Exhausted.
For it must be admitted that to be obliged to remember
and inquire for every uncle, aunt, and grandmother, every
baby and young master and miss, in a circle of one's three
hundred particular friends, is an exercise of Christian
benevolence very fatiguing. Aunt Maria, however, always
went through with it with exhaustive thoroughness, so that
everybody said. What a kind-hearted, pleasant woman that
Mrs. Wouvermans is.
"Well, there!" she said, throwing herself into an arm-
chair, " I ' ve nearly cleared my list, thank Heaven ! I think
Lent is a grand good season to get these matters off your
mind. You know Mr. Selwyn said last Sunday that it
was l^e time to bring ourselves up to the disagreeable
duties.'^
" How many have you made, Aunty ? " said Eva.
" Just three dozen, my dear. You see I chose a nice
day when a good many are sure to be out. That shortens
matters a good deal. Well, girls, I 've been to the 1-
258 MY WIFE AND I
mores*. You ought to see what a state they are in! In
all my experience I never saw people so perfectly tipped
over and beside themselves with delight. I 'm sure if I
were they I wouldn't show it quite so plain."
"I suppose,'' said Alice, "they are quite benignant and
patronizing to us now."
" Patronizing ! Well, I wish you could have seen Poll
Elmore and her airs! You would have thought her a
duchess from the Faubourg St. Germain, and no less ! She
was so very sweet and engaging ! Dear me, she patronized
me within an inch of my life ; and * How are your dear
girls ? ' she said. * All the world is expecting to hear some
news of Miss Eva; should we soon have an opportunity of
returning congratulations ? ' "
"Oh, pshaw, Aunt," said Eva uneasily, "what did you
say ? "
" Oh ! I told her that Eva was in no hurry, that she was
very reticent of her private affairs, and did not think it in
good taste to proclaim them. * Ah, then, there really is
something in it, * said she. * I was telling my girls per-
haps after all it is mere report ; people say so many things.
The thing was reported about Maria, ' she said, * long be-
fore there was any truth in it ; ' and then she went on to
tell me how much Maria had been admired, and how many
offers she had rejected, and among other things she said
that Mr. Sydney had been at her disposal, only she
could n't fancy him. * You know, ' she said with a senti-
mental air, ' that the heart is all in such cases. ' "
"How perfectly absurd of her," said Eva.
' " I know, " said Alice eagerly, " that Wat Sydney dees n't
like Maria Elmore. She was perfectly wild after him, and
used to behave so that it really disgusted him."
"Oh, well," said Eva, "all these things are excessively
disagreeable to me; it seems to me where such matters are
bMidled and talked about and bandied about, they become
AUNT MARIA 259
like shop- worn goods, utterly disgusting. Who wants every
fool and fop and every gossip who has nothing better to do
talking over what ought to be the most private and delicate
affairs of one's own heart! "
"Well, dear, you can't help it in society. Why, every
person where I have called inquired about your engage-
ment to Wat Sydney. You see you can*t keep a thing of
this sort private. Of course you can't. You are in the
world, and the world will have you do as others do. Of
course I didn't announce it, because I have no authority;
but the thing is just as much out as if I had. There was
old Mrs. Ellis, dear old soul, said to me, * Give my love
to dear Eva, and tell her I hope she '11 be happy. I sup-
pose, ' she added, * I may send congratulations, though it
isn't announced.' *0h,' said I, *Eva doesn't like to
have matters of this sort talked about. ' '^
" But Aunty, " said Eva, who had been coloring with
vexation, " this is all gratuitous you are all engaging and
marrying me in spite of my screams, as appears. I am not
engaged to Mr. Sydney, and never expect to be; he is gone
off on a long Southern tour, and I hope out of sight will
be out of mind, and people will stop talking."
"But, my dear Eva, really, now, you ought not to treat
a nice man like him in that way.''
" Treat him in what way 1 " said Eva.
" Why, keep him along in this undecided manner with-
out giving him a definite answer.''
"He might have had a definite answer any time in the
last three months if he had asked for it. It is n't my busi-
ness to speak till I 'm spoken to."
"You don't mean, Eva, that he has gone off without
saying anything definite bringing matters to a point ? "
"I do mean just that, Aunty, and what 's more I 'm glad
he 's gone, and I hope before he comes back he '11 see some-
body that he likes better, and then it '11 be all off; and,
260 MY WIFE AND I
Aunty, if anj one speaks to you about it you 'U oblige me
by saying decidedly there ia nothing in it.''
"Well, I sha'n't say there never has been anything in
it. I shall say you refused him."
"And why so? I am not anxious to have tha credit of
it, and besides I think it is indelicate when a man has paid
a lady the highest possible compliment he can pay, to
make a public parade of it. It 's sufficient to say there is
nothing in it and never will be; it^s nobody's business
how it happened."
"Oh, come, Eva, don't say there never will be any-
tiiing in it. That is a subject on which girls are licensed
to change their minds."
"For my part," said Alice, "I only wish it were L
I 'd have him in a minute. Aunty, did you see that nobby
phaeton he was driving the last day he was on the park;
those horses, and that white fur lap-robe, with the long
plufify hair like silver ? I must say, Eva, I think you are
a little goose."
"I've no objection to the park phaeton, or horses, or
lap-robe; but it isn't those I 'm to marry, you see."
"But, Eva," said Aunt Maria, "if you would n't fancy
such a match as Wat Sydney, who would you? he is a
man of correct and temperate habits, and that 's more than
you can say of half the men."
"But a woman doesn't necessarily want to make her
most intimate and personal friend of a man merely because
be doesn't drink," said Eva.
"But he 's good looking."
"So they say, but not to me, not my style. In short.
Aunty, I don't love him, and never should; and if I were
tied too close to him might end by hating him. As it is,
he and I are the best friends possible. I hope we always
shall stay so."
" Well, I should like to know who ever will suit you,
Eva," said Aunt Maria.
AUNT MARIA 261
'^Ohy he will came along, Aunty, never fear! I shall
know him when I see him, and I dare saj everybody will
wonder what in the world possessed me, bat I shall be
content. I know exactly what I want, I 'm like the old
party in the ' Ancient Mariner. ' I shall know when I see
him ' the man that must have me, ' and then I shall ' hold
him with my glittering eye. ' ''
''Well, Eva, you must remember one thing. There are
not many men able to keep you in the way you always
have lived."
"Then, when the right one comes I shall live as he is
able to keep me."
''Go to housekeeping in three rooms, perhaps. You
look like it."
"Yes; and do my own cooking. I'm rather fond of
cooking ; I have decided genius that way too. Ask Jane
down in the kitchen if I don't make splendid fritters.
The fact is, Aunty, I have so much superfluous activity
and energy that I should be quite thrown away on a rich
man. A poor country rector, very devout, with dark eyes
like Longfellow's Kavanagh, is rather my ideal. I would
get up his surplices myself, and make him such lovely fon-
tals and altar cloths I Why does n't somebody of that sort
Qome after me ? I 'm quite impatient to have a sphere
and show what I can do."
"Well," said Alice, "you don't catch me marrying a
poor man. Not L No home missionaries, nor poor rec-
tors, nor distressed artists need apply at this office."
"Now, girls," said Aunt Maria, "let me tell you it's
all very pretty at your time of life to dream about love in
a cottage and all that, but when you have seen all of life
that I have, you will know the worth of the solid; when
one has been used to a certain way of living, for example,
one can't change; and if you married the angel Crabriel
without money, ycu would soon repent it."
262 MY WIFE AND I
"WeU," said Eva, "I'd risk it if Gabriel would have
me, and I *d even try it with some man a little lower than
the angels; so prepare your mind to endure it. Aunty, for
one of these days everybody will be holding up their hands
and saying, *What, Eva Van Arsdel engaged to him!
Why, what could have possessed her 1 ' That 's just the
way I heard Lottie Simmons talking last week about Belle
St. John's engagement. She is going to marry a college
professor in New Haven on one of those very homoeopathic
doses of salary that people give to really ]tine men that
have talent and education, and she 's just as happy as she
can be about it, and the girls are all scraping their throats,
* oh-ing and ah-ing ' and wondering what could have led
her to it. No engagement ring to show ! private wedding I
and just going off together up to his mother's in Vermont
instead of making the bridal tour of all the watering-places I
It must be so charming, you see, to be exhibited as a new
bride, along with all the other new brides at Trenton and
Niagara and the White Mountains, so that everybody may
have a chance to compare your finery with everybody
else's, also to see how you conduct yourself in new circum-
stances. For my part, I shall be very glad if my poor rec-
tor can't afford it."
"By the bye, speaking of that girl," said Aunt Maria,
"what are you going to wear to the wedding? It's quite
time you were attending to that. I called in at Tulle-
gig's, and of course she was all in a whirl, but I put in
for you. * Now, Madame, ' said I, * you must leave a
place in your mind for my girls, ' and of course she went
on with her usual French rodomontade, but I assure you
you '11 have to look after her. TuUegig has no conscience,
and will put you off with anything she can make you take,
unless you give your mind to it and follow her up."
"Well, I'm sure. Aunty, I don't feel equal to getting
a new dress out of Tullegig, " said Eva, with a sigh, " and
AUNT MARIA 263
I have dresses enough, any one of which will do. I am
biases with dresses, and I think weddings are a drug. If
there 's anything that I think downright vulgar and dis-
agreeable, it 's this style of blaring, flaring, noisy, crowded,
disagreeable modern weddings. It is a crush of finery; a
smash of china; a confusion of voices; and everybody has
the headache after it; it 's a perfect infliction to think of
being obliged to go to another. For my part, I believe I
am going to leave all those cares to Alice; she is come out
now, and I am only Queen Dowager."
".Oh, pshaw, Eva, don't talk so," said Aunt Maria,
" and now I think of it you don't look well, you ought to
take a tonic in the spring. Let me see, Calisaya bark and
iron is just the thing. I '11 send you in a bottleful from
Jennings' as I go home, and you must take a tablespoonful
three times a day after eating, and be very particular not
to fatigue yourself."
" I think, " said Alice, " that Eva gets tired going to all
those early services."
" Oh, my dear child, yes ; how can you think of such a
thing 1 It 's very inconsiderate in Mr. Selwyn, I think,
to have so many services when he must know many wed-
dings and things are coming off just after Easter. People
will be all fagged out, just as Eva is. Now I believe in
the Church as much as anybody, but in our day I think
there is danger in running religion to extremes."
"Ah!" said Eva, "I suppose there is no danger of one
running to extremes in anything but religion in dress or
parties, for instance ? "
" But you know one has these things to attend to, my
dear; one must keep up a certain style; and, of course,
there is a proper medium that I hold to as much as any-
body. Nobody is more particular about religion in its
place than I am. I keep Sunday strictly ; very few people
more so. I never ride in the Park Sundays, nor write a
264 MY WIFE AND I
letter, though I have seen people who called themselves
religious that would. Ko. I believe in giving full obser-
vance to the Lord's day, but then I think one ought to
have the week clear for action. That belongs to us, as I
view it, and our old rector was very easy with us about all
the saints' days, and week-day services, and things in the
Prayer-Book. To be sure, there are Ash Wednesday and
Grood Friday. One, of course, should attend to these,
that is no more than is proper; but the way Mr. Selwyn
goes on I why, one would n't be able to think of much else
than religion if he had his way."
" What a dreadful state of society that would bring on I "
said Eva.
"But come, Aunty," said Alice, "don't talk theology;
tell us what discoveries you made at the Elmores'. I know
they showed you everything."
" Oh, of course they did. Well, there 's the wedding
veilt cost two thousand dollars; for my part, I thought it
looked ordinary after all ; it 's so thick and stiff with em-
broidery, you see no lightness to it."
"I would n't take it as a gift," said Eva. "I think such
expensive things are simply Tidgar."
"Go on. Aunty," said Alice, "what next?"
" Well, then the dress has a new style of trimming, and
really is very elegant. I must do it the justice to say that
it 's something quite recherche. And then they took me
upstairs to see the trousseau, and there was a perfect
bazaar! all her things laid out by dozens and tied up with
pink ribbons, you would have thought it got for the
Empress. Those Elmores are the most worldly family I
ever did hear of ; all for dash and show ! They seemed to
be perfectly transported with these things, and that
reminds me, Eva, I noticed last Sunday at church your
new poplin suit was made with quillings ; now they are not
going to wear quillings any more. I noticed none of those
AUNT MARIA 265
Paris dresses had them. You should have Jaoohs alter jours
at once, and substitute fringes; fringes are the style now.'^
"And, Aunty, what do you suppose would happen to
me if I should wear quillings when thet don't 1'^ said
Eva.
"Well, of course, you don't want to be odd, child.
There is a certain propriety in all these things. I will
speak to Jacobs about it, and send him up here. Shall
I?"
"Well, Aunty, anything to suit you. You may take
off quillings, or put on fringe, if you won't insist on mar-
rying me to anybody," said Eva; "only I do wish any one
fashion would last long enough to give one time to breathe
and turn round before it has to be altered; but the Bible
says the fashion of this world passeth quickly away, and
so I suppose one must put up with it."
" Eva, do you correspond with Mr. Sydney 1 " said Aunt
Maria after a moment's reflection.
"Correspond] No, to be sure I don't. What should
I do that for 1 "
"He writes to mamma, though," said Alice, laughing.
"It's his own affair if he does," said Eva. "I told
him, before he went, I never corresponded with gentlemen.
I believe that is the correct thing to say. I never mean
to, either, unless it 's with one whose letters are particularly
interesting to me."
" How do you like that young Henderson t "
"What, Ida's admirer]" said Eva, coloring. "Oh, we
think him nice enough. Don't we, Alice ? ^- rather jolly,
in fact."
" And does Ida continue gracious ? "
"Certainly. They are the best of friends," said Eva.
" The fact is, he is quite a flne fellow ; and he reads things
to Ida, and she advises him about his style, you know."
He and Jim Fellows always come together," said
((
266 MY WIFE AND I
Alice; "and I think they are both nice in fact, rather
better than the average. He is n't quite such a rattle- cap
as Jim, but one trusts him more."
"Well," said Eva, "I don't like a professed joker. A
man that never is in earnest ought to wear the cap and
bells, as the court fools used to do in old times."
"Oh, bless you, child," said Alice, "that's what Jim
is for; he always makes me laugh, and I like to laugh."
"Don't you think that Mr. Henderson would do nicely
for Ida ] " said Aunt Maria.
" Oh, as to that, " said Alice, " neither he nor Jim Fel-
lows are marrying men. You see, they have n't anything,
and of course they can't be thinking of such things."
"But," said Aunt Maria, "Ida is just the wife for a
poor man. She has a turn for economy, and does n't care
for dress and show; and could rub and scrub along, and
help to support the family. I really think she likes work
for the sake of it. I wish to mercy she could be engaged,
and get all these dreadful queer plans and notions out of
her head. I am always so puzzled what in the world to
tell people when they ask why she doesn't visit and go
into society."
"Why not tell the truth," said Eva, "that she prefers
to help papa in his business t "
"Because, love, that's so odd. People can't under-
stand it."
"They can't understand," said Eva, "that a woman may
be tired of leading a lazy life, and want to use her facul-
ties. Well, I 'm sure / can understand it. I 'd give all
the world to feel that I was of as much real use to any-
body as Ida is to papa; and I think papa likes it too.
Poor, dear old papa, with his lovely old white head, who
just toils and slaves for us. I wish I could help him, too."
" Well, dear, I can tell you how you can help him. "
"How?"
AUNT MARIA 267
"Marry Wat Sydney."
"Nonsense, Aunt, what has that to do with papat"
"It would have more to do than you think," said Aunt
Maria, shaking her head mysteriously.
CHAPTER XXIV
DISCUSSION OF THE WOMAN QUESTION FROM ALL
POINTS
The bold intrusion of Miss Audacia Dangyereyes into my
apartment had left a most disagreeable impression on my
mind. This was not lessened by the reception of her
paper, which came to hand in due course of next mail,
and which I found to be an exposition of all the wildest
principles of modern French communism. It consisted of
attacks directed about equally against Christianity, mar-
riage, the family state, and all human laws and standing
order, whatsoever. It was much the same kind of writing
with which the populace of France was indoctrinated and
leavened in the era preceding the first Revolution, and
which in time bore fruit in blood. In those days, as now,
such doctrines were toyed with in literary salons and aris-
tocratic circles, where their novelty formed an agreeable
stimulus in the vapid commonplace of fashionable life.
They were then, as now, embraced with enthusiasm by fair
illuminati, who fancied that they saw in them a dawn of
some millennial glory; and were awakened from their
dream, like Madame Roland, at the foot of the guillotine,
bowing their heads to death and crying, "0 Liberty, what
things are done in thy name ! "
The principal difference between the writers on the
" Emancipated Woman " and those of the French illumi-
nati was that the French prototypes were men and women
of elegance, culture, and education ; whereas their Ameri-
can imitators, though not wanting in a certain vigor and
THE WOMAN QUESTION 260
cleverness, were both coarse in expression, narrow in edu-
cation, and wholly devoid of common decency in their
manner of putting things. It was a paper that a man who
reverenced his mother and sisters could scarcely read alone
in his own apartments without blushing with indignation
and vexation.
Every holy secret of human nature, all those subjects of
which the grace and the power consist in their exquisite
delicacy and tender refinement, were here handled with
coarse fingers. Society assumed the aspect of a pack of
Iffeeding animals, and all its laws and institutions were to
return to the mere animal basis.
It was particularly annoying to me that this paper, with
all its coarseness and grossness, set itself up to be the head
leader of Woman's Bights ; and to give its harsh clamors
as the voice of woman. Neither was I at all satisfied with
the manner in which I had been dragooned into taking it,
and thus giving my name and money to its circulation. I
had actually been bullied into it; because, never having
contemplated the possibility of such an existence as a
female bully, I had marked out in my mind no suitable
course of ocmduct adequate to the treatment of one.
" What should I have done 1 " I said to myself. " What
is a man to do under such circumstances ? Shall he en-
gage in a personal scufilef Shall he himself vacate hii
apartment, or shall he call in a policeman ? '^
The question assumed importance in my eyes, because it
was quite possible that, having come once, she might come
again ; that the same course of conduct might be used to
enforce any kind of exaction which she should choose to
lay on me. But most of all was I sensitire lest by any
means some report of it might get to the Van Arsdels.
My trepidation may then be guessed on having the subject
at once proposed to me by Mr. Van Arsdel that evening aa
I waa sitting with him and Ida in her study.
270 MY WIFE AND I
"I want to know, Mr. Henderson," he said, "if you
are a subscriber for the 'Emancipated Woman,' the new
organ of the Woman's Rights party ? "
"Now, papa," said Ida, "that is a little unjust! It
only professes to be an organ of the party, but it is not
recognized by us."
" Have you seen the paper ? " said Mr. Van Arsdel to
me. Like a true Yankee I avoided the question by asking
another.
" Have you subscribed to it, Mr. Van Arsdel ? "
" Well, yes, " said he, laughing, " I confess I have ; and
a pretty mess I have made of it. It is not a paper that
any decent man ought to have in his house. But the
woman came herself into my counting-room and, actually,
fihe badgered me into it; I could n't get her out. I did n't
know what to do with her. I never had a woman go on
so with me before. I was flustered, and gave her my five
dollars to get rid of her. If she had been a man I 'd have
knocked her down."
"Oh, papa," said Ida, "I'll tell you what you should
have done ; you should have called me. She 'd have got
no money and no subscriptions out of me, nor you either
if I'd been there."
"Now, Mr. Henderson, misery loves company; has she
been to your room ? " said Mr. Van Arsdel.
"I confess she has," said I, "and that I have done just
what you did yielded at once. "
"Mr. Henderson, all this sort of proceeding is thor-
oughly vexatious and disagreeable," said Ida; "and all the
more so that it tends directly to injure all women who are
trying to be self-supporting and independent. It destroys
that delicacy and refinement of feeling which men, and
American men especially, cherish toward women, and will
make the paths of self-support terribly hard to those who
have to tread them. There really is not the slightest rea-
THE WOMAN QUESTION 271
son why a woman should cease to be a woman because she
chooses to be independent and pursue a self-supporting
career. And claiming a right to dispense with womanly
decorums and act like a man is just as ridiculous as it
would be for a man to claim the right to wear woman's
clothes. Even if we supposed that society were so altered
as to give to woman every legal and every social right that
man has ; and if all the customs of society should allow her
to do the utmost that she can for herself, in the way of
self-support, still, women will be relatively weaker than
men, and there will be the same propriety in their being
treated with consideration and delicacy and gentleness that
there now is. And the assumptions of these hoydens and
bullies have a tendency to destroy that feeling of chivalry
and delicacy on the part of men. It is especially annoying
and galling to me, because I do propose to myself a path
different from that in which young women in my position
generally have walked; and such reasoners as Aunt Maria
and all the ladies of her circle will not fail to confound
Miss Audacia's proceedings and opinions, and mine, as all
belonging to the same class. As to the opinions of the
paper, it is mainly by the half truths that are in it that it
does mischief. If there were not real evils to be corrected,
and real mistakes in society, this kind of thing would have
no power. As it is, I have no doubt that it will acquire
a certain popularity and do immense mischief. I think
the elements of mischief and confusion in our republic are
gathering as fast as they did in France before the Kevolu-
tion."
"And,'' said I, "after all, republics are on trial before
the world. Our experiment is not yet two hundred years
old, and we have all sorts of clouds and storms gathering
the labor question, the foreign immigration question,
the woman question, the monopoly and corporation ques-
tion, all have grave aspects."
272 MY WIFE AND I
"You see, Mr. Henderson/' said Ida, "as to this
woman question, the moderate party to which I belong is
just at that disadvantage that people always are when there
is a party on ahead of them who hold some of their princi-
ples and are carrying them to every ridiculous extreme.
They have to uphold a truth that is constantly being
brought into disrepute and made ridiculous by these ultra
advocates. For my part, all I can do is to go quietly on
with what I knew was right before. What is right u
right, and remains right no matter how much ultraists may
caricature it."
" Yes, my daughter, " said Mr. Van Arsdel, " but what
would become of our country if all the women could vote,
and people like Miss Audacia Dangyereyes should stump
the country as candidates for election ? "
" Well, I am sure, " said Ida, " we should have very dis- .
agreeable times, and a great deal to shock us."
"It is not merely that," said Mr. Van Arsdel; "the in-
fluence of such women on young meii would be demoraliz-
ing."
"When I think of such dangers," said Ida, "I am, on
the whole, very well pleased that there is no immediate
prospect of the suffrage being granted to women until a
generation with superior education and better balanced
minds and better habits of consecutive thought shall have
grown up among us. I think the gift of the ballot will
come at last as the result of a superior culture and educa-
tion. And I am in no hurry for it before."
"What is all this that you are talking about?" said
Eva, itho came into the room just at this moment. "Ma
and Aunt Maria are in such a state about that paper that
papa has just brought home! They say there are most
horrid things in it, Mr. Henderson; and they say that it
belongs to the party which you, and Ida, and all your pro-
gressive people are in."
THE WOMAN QUESTION 273
"It is an excrescence of the party," said I; "a diseased
growth; and neither Miss Ida nor I will accept of it as
any expression of our opinion, though it does hold some
things which we believe."
"Well," said Eva, "I am curious to see it, just because
they don't want I should. What can there be in it so
very bad 1 "
"You may as well keep out of it, chick," said her
father, caressing her. "And now, I'll tell you, Ida, just
what I think; you good women are not fit to govern the
world, because you do not know, and you oughtn't to
know, the wickedness that you have got to govern. We
men have to know all about the rogues, and the sharpers,
and the pickpockets, and the bullies; we have to grow
hard and sharp, and * cut our eye-teeth, ' as the saying is,
so that at last we come to not having much faith in any-
body. The rule is, pretty much, not to believe anybody
that you meet, and to take for granted that every man that
you have dealings with will cheat you if he can. That 's
bad enough, but when it comes to feeling that every
woman will cheat you if she can, when women cut their
eye-teeth, and get to be sharp, and hard, and tricky, as
men are, then I say. Look out for yourself, and deliver
me from having anything to do with them."
" Why, really ! " said Eva, " papa is getting to be quite
an orator. I never heard him talk so much before. Papa,
why don't you go on to the platform at the next Woman's
Eights Convention, and give them a good blast ? "
"Oh, I'll let them alone," said Mr. Van Arsdel; "I
don't want to be mixed up with them, and I don't want
my girls to be, either. Now, I do not object to what Ida
is doing, and going to do. I think there is real sense in
that, although mother and Aunt Maria feel so dreadfully
about it. I like to see a woman have pluck, and set her-
self to be good for something in the world. And I don't
274 MY WIFE AND I
see why there shouldn't be women doctors; it is just the
thing there ought to be. But I don't go for all this hur-
rah and hullaballoo, and pitching women head-first into
politics, and sending them to legislatures, and making them
candidates for Congress, and for the Presidency, and no-
body knows what else."
"Well," said I, "why not a woman President as well
as a woman Queen of England ? "
"Because," said he, "look at the difference. The
woman Queen in England comes to it quietly; she is born
to it, and there is no fuss about it. But whoever is set
up to be President of the United States is just set up to
have his character torn off from his back in shreds, and to
be mauled, pummeled, and covered with dirt by every
filthy paper all over the country. And no woman that
was not willing to be draggled through every kennel, and
slopped into every dirty pail of water, like an old mop,
would ever consent to run as a candidate. Why, it 's an
ordeal that kills a man. It killed General Harrison, and
killed old Zack. And what sort of a brazen tramp of a
woman would it be that could stand it, and come out of it
without being killed 1 Would it be any kind of a woman
that we should want to see at the head of our government?
I tell you, it 's quite another thing to be President of a
democratic republic from what it is to be hereditary
Queen."
"Good for you, papa!" said Eva, clapping her hands.
"Why, how you go on! I never did hear such eloquence.
No, Ida, set your mind at rest, you sha'n't be run for
President of the United States. You are a great deal too
good for that."
"Now," said Mr. Van Arsdel, "there's your friend,
Mrs. Cerulean, tackled me the other night, and made a
convert of me, she said. Bless me! she's a handsome
woman, and I like to hear her talk. And if we didn't
THE WOMAN QUESTION 275
live in the world we do, and things were n't in any respect
what they are, nothing would be nicer than to let her gov-
ern the world. But in the great rough round of business
she 's nothing but a pretty baby after all, nothing else
in the world. We let such women convert us, because we
like to have them around. It amuses us, and don't hurt
them. But you can't let your baby play with matches
and gunpowder, if it wants to ever so much. Women are
famous for setting things a-going that they don't know
anything about. And then, when the explosion comes,
they don't know what did it, and run screaming to the
men."
"As to Mrs. Cerulean," said Eva, "I never saw any-
body that had such a perfectly happy opinion of herself as
she has. She always thinks that she understands every-
thing by intuition. I believe in my heart that she 'd walk
into the engine-room of the largest steamship that ever was
navigated, and turn out the chief engineer and take his
place, if he 'd let her. She 'd navigate by woman's God-
given instincts, as she calls them."
"And so she 'd keep on till she 'd blown up the ship,"
said Mr. Van Arsdel.
"Well," said I, "one fact is to be admitted, that men,
having always governed the world, must by this time have
acquired a good deal of traditional knowledge of the science
of government, and of human nature, which women can't
learn by intuition in a minute."
"For my part," said Ida, "I never was disposed to in-
sist on the immediate granting of political rights to women.
I think that they are rights, and that it is very important
for the good of society that these rights should finally be
respected. But I am perfectly willing, for my part, to
wait and come to them in the way, and at the time, that
will be best for the general good. I would a great deal
rather come to them by gradual evolution than by destmo-
276 MY WIFE AND I
tive revolution. I do not want them to be forced upon
society, when there is so little preparation among women
that they will do themselves no credit by it. All history
shows that the most natural and undeniable human rights
may be granted and maintained in a way that will just
defeat themselves, and bring discredit on all the supporters
of them, just as was the case with the principles of demo-
cratic liberty in the first French Revolution. I do not
want the political rights of woman advocated in a manner
that will create similar disturbances, and bring a lasting
scandal on what really is the truth. I do not want women
to have the ballot till they will do themselves credit and
improve society by it. I like to have the subject pro-
posed, and- argued, and agitated, and kept up, in hopes
that a generation of women will be educated for it. And
I think it is a great deal better and safer, where it can be
done, to have people educated for the ballot, than to have
them educated hy the ballot."
'* Well, Ida, there 's more sense in you than in the most
of 'em," said Mr. Van Arsdel.
"Yes," said Ida, "I think that an immediate rush into
politics of such women as we have now, without experience
or knowledge of political economy of affairs, would be, as
Eva says, just like women's undertaking to manage the
machinery of a large steamer by feminine instincts. I
hope never to see women in public life till we have had a
generation of women who have some practical familiarity
with the great subjects which are to be considered, about
which now the best instructed women know comparatively
nothing. The question which mainly interests me at pre-
sent is a humanitarian one. It 's an absolute fact that a
great portion of womankind have their own living to get;
and they do it now, as a general rule, with many of the
laws and institutions of society against them. The reason
of this is, that all these laws and institutions have been
THE WOMAN QUESTION 277
made by men, without any consent or concurrence of theirs.
Kow, as women are different from men, and have altogether
a different class of feelings and wants and necessities, it
certainly is right and proper that they should have some
share in making the laws with which they are to be gov-
erned. It is true that the laws have been made by fathers
and brothers and husbands; but no man, however near,
ever comprehends fully the necessities and feelings of
women. And it seems to me that a State where all the
laws are made by men, without women, is just like a fam-
ily that is managed entirely by fathers and brothers, with-
out any concurrence of mothers and sisters. That 's my
testimony, and my view of the matter."
"I don't see," said Eva, "if women are to make the
laws in relation to their own interests, or to have a voice
in making them, why they need go into politics with men
in order to do it, or why they need cease to act like women.
If the thing has got to be done, I would have a parliament
of women meet by themselves, and deliberate and have a
voice in all that concerns the State. There, that's my
contribution to the programme."
"That's the way the Quakers manage their affairs in
their yearly meetings," said Ida. "I remember I was
visiting Aunt Dinah once, during a yearly meeting, and
learned all about it. I remember the sisters had a voice
in everything that was done. The Quaker women have
acquired in this way a great deal of facility in the manage-
ment of business, and a great knowledge of affairs. They
really seem to me superior to the men."
"I can account for that," said I. "A man among the
Quakers is restricted and held in, and has n't as much to
cultivate and develop him as ordinary men in the world;
whereas, woman, among the Quakers, has her sphere wid-
ened and developed."
At this moment our conversation was interrupted by the
278 MY WIFE AND I
entrance of Jim Fellows. He seemed quite out of breath
and excited, and had no sooner passed the compliments of
the evening than he began.
"Well," said he, "Hal, I have just come from the Po-
lice Court, where there 's a precious row. Our friend 'Dacia
Dangyereyes is up for blackmailing and swindling; and
there 's a terrible wash of dirty linen going on. I was just
in time to get the very earliest notes for our paper."
" Good I " said Mr. Van Arsdel. " I hope the creature
is caught at last."
"Never believe that," said Jim. "She has as many
lives as a cat. They never '11 get a hold on her. She '11
talk 'em all round."
" Disgusting ! " said Ida.
"Ah!" said Jim, "it's part of the world as it goes.
She '11 come off with flying colors, doubtless, and her
cock's-feathers will be flaunting all the merrier for it."
"How horribly disagreeable," said Eva, "to have such
women around. It makes one ashamed of one's sex."
"I think," said Ida, "there is not sufficient resemblance
to a real woman in her to make much trouble on her ac-
count. She 's an amphibious animal, belonging to a tran-
sition period of human society."
"Well," said Jim, "if you'll believe it, Mrs. Cerulean
and two or three of the ladies of her set are actually going
to invite 'Dacia to their salon, and patronize her."
" Impossible ! " said Ida, flushing crimson ; " it cannot
be!"
"Oh, you don't know Mrs. Cerulean," said Jim; " 'Dacia
called on her with her newspaper, and conducted herself
in a most sweet and winning manner, and cast herself at
her feet for patronage; and Mrs. Cerulean, regarding her
through those glory spectacles which she usually wears,
took her up immediately as a promising candidate for the
latter day. Mrs. Cerulean don't see anything in 'Dacia's
THE WOMAN QUESTION 279
paper that, properlj interpreted, need make any trouble;
because, you see, as she says, everything ought to he love^
everywhere, above and below, under and over, up and
down, top and side and bottom, ought to be love^ love.
And then when there 's general all - ovemess and all-
throughness, and an entire mixed-up-ativeness, then the
infinite will come down into the finite, and the finite will
overflow into the infinite, and, in short, Miss 'Dacia's
cock's-feathers will sail right straight up into heaven, and
we shall see her cheek by jowl with the angel Gabriel,
promenading the streets of the new Jerusalem. That 's
the programme. Meanwhile, 'Dacia 's delighted. She
had n't the remotest idea of being an angel, or anything of
the sort; but since good judges have told her she is, she
takes it all very contentedly."
"Oh," said Ida, "it really- can't be true, Mr. Fellows;
it really is impossible that such ladies as Mrs. Cerulean's
set ladies of family and position, ladies of real dignity
and delicacy are going to indorse the principles of that
paper ; principles which go to the immediate dissolution of
civilized society."
"That's just what they are doing," said Jim; "and
they are having a glorious high old time doing it too. Mrs.
Cerulean herself intends to write for the paper on the sub-
ject of fortification and twentification and unification, and
everything else that ends with ation. And it is thought
it will improve the paper to have some nice little hymns
inserted in it, to the tune of * I Want to be an Angel. * I
asked Mrs. Cerulean what if my friend 'Dacia should rip
an oath in the midst of one of her salons you know the
little wretch does swear like a pirate; and you ought to
see how serenely she looked over my head into the far dis-
tant future, and answered me so tenderly, as if I had been
a two hours* chicken peeping to her. * Oh, James, * says
she, ' there are many opinions yet to be expressed on the
280 MY WIFE AND I
subject of what is commonly called profanity. I have
arrived at the conclusion myself, that in impassioned na-
tures what is called profanity is only the state of prophetic
exaltation which naturally seeks vent in intensified lan-
guage. I should n't think the worse of this fine vigorous
creature if, in a moment's inspired frenzy, she should burst
the tame boundaries of ordinary language. It is true, the
vulgar might call it profane. It requires anointed eyes to
see such things truly. When we have risen to these
heights where we now stand, we behold all things purified.
There is around us a new heaven and a new earth. * And
so you see, 'Dacia Dangyereyes turns out a tip- top angel of
the New Dispensation."
"Well," said Ida, rising, with heightened color, "this,
of course, ends my intercourse with Mrs. Cerulean, if it be
true."
"But," said Eva, "how can they bear the scandal of
this disgraceful trial? This certainly will open their eyes."
"Oh," said Jim, "you will see, Mrs. Cerulean will ad-
here all the closer for this. It 's persecution, and virtue
in all ages has been persecuted ; therefore, all who are per-
secuted are virtuous. Don't you see the logical consis-
tency ? And then, don't the Bible say, * Blessed are ye
when men persecute you, and say all manner of i^vil against
you ' ? "
"It don't appear to me," said Ida, "that she can so far
go against all common sense."
" Common sense ! " said Jim ; " Mrs. Cerulean and her
clique have long since risen above anything like common
sense; all their sense is of the most uncommon kind, and
relates to a region somewhere up in the clouds, where
everything is made to match. They live in an imaginary
world, and reason with imaginary reasons, and see people
through imaginary spectacles, and have glorious good times
aU the while. All I wish is, that I could get up there
THE WOMAN QUESTION 281
and live; for you see I get into the state of prophetic ec-
stasy pretty often with this confounded hard grind below
here, and then, when I rip out a naughty word, nobody
sees the beauty of it. Mother looks glum. Sister Kell
says, ' Oh, Jim! ' and looks despairing."
"But the fact is," said Mr. Van Arsdel, "Mrs. Cerulean
is a respectable woman, of respectable family, and this girl
is a tramp; that 's what she is; and it is absolutely impos-
sible that Mrs. Cerulean can know what she is about."
"Well, I delicately suggested some such thing to Mrs.
Cerulean," said Jim; "but, bless me! the way she set me
down ! Says she, * Do you men ever inquire into the char-
acter of people that you unite with to carry your purposes]
You join with anybody that will help you, without regard
to antecedents ! ' "
"She donH speak the truth," said Mr. Van Arsdel.
"We men are very particular about the record of those we
join with to carry our purposes. You wouldn't find a
board of bankers taking a man that had a record for swin-
dling, or a man that edited a paper arguing against all rights
of property. Doctors won't admit a man among them who
has the record of a quack or a malpractitioner. Clergymen
won't admit a man among them who has a record of licen-
tiousness cr infidel sentiments. And if women will admit
women in utter disregard of their record of chastity or
their lax principles as to the family, they act on lower
principles than any body of men."
"Besides," said I, "that kind of tolerance cuts the very
ground from under the whole woman movement; for the
main argument for proposing it was to introduce into poli-
tics that superior delicacy and purity which women mani-
fest in family life. But if women are going to be less
careful about delicacy and decorum and family purity than
men are, the quagmire of politics, foul enough now, will
become putrid."
A
282 MY WIFE AND I
"Oh, come," said Eva, "the subject does get too dread-
ful; I can't bear to think of it, and I move that we have
a game of whist, and put an end to it. Come, now, do
let 's sit down sociably, and have something agreeable. "
We went out into the parlor and sat down to the whist-
table, Eva and Alice, with Jim Fellows and myself respec-
tively as partners, and indulged ourselves in one of those
agreeable chatty games which make the designation " whist ''
quite an amusing satire one of those games played with
that charming disregard of all rules which is so inspiring.
In the best of spirits we talked across the table to each
other, trumped our partners' queens, and did all sorts of
enormities in the excitement of the brilliant by- play of
conversation which we kept up all the while. It may be
a familiar experience to many, that one never thinks of
so many things to say, and so many fruitful topics for im-
mediate discussion, as when one professes to be playing
whist. But then, if a young gentleman wishes a good
opportunity to reconnoitre a certain face, no more advan-
tageous position can be given him than to have it vis-a-vis
at the whist-table.
"Now, Mr. Henderson," said Alice, "we are going to
make a good Churchman of you."
"I am happy to hear it," said I. "I am ready to be
made anything good of that you can mention."
" Well, " said Alice, " we are going to press you and Mr.
Fellows, here, into the service of the Church."
" Shall be perfectly enchanted ! " said Jim. " If the
Church only knew my energies, they would have tried to
get me long before."
"Then," said Eva, "you must go with us to-morrow
evening; for we are going to be up all night, about the
floral decorations of our church for Easter morning. Oh!
you have no idea what splendid things we are going to do.
We shall be at work hard, all day to-morrow, upon our
THE WOMAN QUESTION 283
wreaths and crosses ; and the things must all be put up late
at night so as to keep them from withering. Then, you
know, we must be out again to the sunrise service."
"Why," said I, "it is a regular piece of dissipation."
"Certainly, religious dissipation, you know," said
Alice.
"Well," said Eva, "I don't know why we should not
be up all night to dress the church, for once in our lives,
as well as to be up all night dancing the german. Ida
says it is wicked to do either. Ida makes a perfect hobby
of everybody's keeping their health."
"Yes, but," said I, "if people keep themselves, gener-
ally, in temperance and soberness, they can afford a great
strain, now and then, if it be for a good purpose."
"At any rate," said Eva, "you and Mr. Fellows come
round and take tea with us and help us carry our trophies
to the church."
CHAPTER XXV
COUSIN CAROLINE AGAIN
About this time I received the following letter from my
Cousin Caroline :
Deab Cousin, I have had no time to keep up corre-
spondence with anybody for the past year. The state of
my father's health has required my constant attention, day
and night, to a degree that has absorbed aU my power, and
left no time for writing. For the last six months father
has been perfectly helpless with the most distressing form
of chronic rheumatism. His sufferings have been pro-
tracted and intense, so that it has been wearing even to
witness them ; and the utmost that I could do seemed to
bring very little relief. And when, at last, death closed
the scene, it seemed to be in mercy, putting an end to
sufferings which were intolerable.
Eor a month after his death I was in a state of utter
prostration, both physical and mental, worn out with
watching and care. My poor father! he was himself to
the last, reticent, silent, undemonstrative, and uncommuni-
cative. It seemed to me that I would have given worlds
for one tender word from him. I felt a pity and a love
that I dared not show; his sufferings went to my very
heart; but he repelled every word of sympathy, and was
cold and silent to the last. Yet I believe that he really
loved me, and that far within this frozen circle of ice his
soul was a lonely prisoner, longing to express itself, and
unable; longing for the light and warmth of that love
COUSIN CAROLINE AGAIN 285
which never could touch him in its icy depths; and I am
quite sure, it is my comfort to know, that death has broken
the ice and melted the bands; and I believe that he has
entered the kingdom of heaven as a little child.
The hard skies of our Kew England, its rocky soil, its
severe necessities, make characters like his; and they in-
trench themselves in a similar religious faith which makes
them still harder. They live to aspire and to suffer, but
never to express themselves; and every soft and warm
heart that is connected with them pines and suffers and
dies like flowers that are thrown upon icebergs.
Well, all is now over, and I am free of the world. I
have, in the division of the property, a few acres of wood-
lot, and many acres of rough, stony land, and about a
hundred dollars of yearly income. I must do something,
therefore, for my own support. Ever since you left us I
have been reading and studying under the care of your
uncle, who, since your conversation with him, has been
very kind and thoughtful. But then, of course, my stud-
ies have been interrupted by some duties, and, during the
last year, suspended altogether by the necessity of giving
myself to the care of father.
Now, my desire is, if I could in any way earn the
means to go to France and perfect myself in medical stud-
ies. I am told that a medical education can be obtained
there by women cheaper than anywhere else; and I have
cast about in my own mind how I might earn money
enough to enable me to do it. Now I ask you, who are in
New York and on the press, who know me thoroughly,
and it also, could I, should I come to New York, gain any
situation as writer for the press, which would give me an
income for a year or two, by which I could make enough
to accomplish my purpose ? I should not wish to be always
a writer ; it would be too exhausting ; but if I could get
into a profession that I am well adapted for, I should ex-
pect to succeed in it.
286 BfT WIFE AND I
I have the ahility to live and make a respectahle appear-
ance upon a very little. I know enough, practically, of
the arts of woman-craft to clothe myself handsomely for a
small sum, and I am willing to live in cheap, ohscure
lodgings, and think I could hoard myself, also, for a very
moderate sum. I am willing to undergo privations, and
to encounter hard work to carry my purpose, and I write
to you, dear cousin, hecause I know you will speak to me
just as freely as though I were not a woman, and give me
your unbiased opinion as to whether or no I could do any-
thing in the line that I indicate. I know that you would
give me all the assistance in your power, and feel a perfect
reliance upon your friendship.
The letter here digressed into local details and family
incidents not necessary to be reproduced. I resolved to
lay it before Bolton. It seemed to me that his reception
of it would furnish some sort of clue to the mystery of his
former acquaintance with her. The entire silence that he
had always maintained with regard to his former knowledge
of her, while yet he secretly treasured her picture, seemed
to me to indicate that he might somehow have been con-
nected with that passage of her life referred to by my
mother when she said that Caroline's father had, at one
period of her life, crushed out an interest that was vital to
her.
"The sly old fox," said I to myself, "always draws me
on to tell him everything, while he keeps a close mouth,
and I learn nothing of him." Of course, I felt that to ask
any questions or seek to pry into a past which he evidently
was not disposed to talk about, would be an indelicate im-
pertinence. But my conscience and sense of honor were
quite appeased by this opportunity presented by Caroline's
letter. Bolton was older in the press than I and, with all
his reticence and modesty, had a wide circle of influence.
COUSIN CAROLINE AGAIN 287
He seemed contented to seek nothing for himself; but I
had had occasion to notice in my own experience that he
was not boasting idly when he said, on our first acquaint-
ance, that he had some influence in literary quarters. He
had already procured for me, from an influential magazine,
propositions for articles which were both flattering to my
pride and lucrative in the remuneration. In this way, the
prospect of my yearly income, which on the part of the
" Great Democracy " was so very inadequate, was enlarged
to a very respectable figure.
I resolved, therefore, to go up to Bolton's room and put
this letter into his hands. I knocked at the door, but no
one answering I opened it and went in. He was not there,
but an odd enough scene presented itself to me. The little
tow-headed, freckled boy, that I had formerly remarked as
an inmate of the apartment, was seated by the fire with a
girl, somewhat younger than himself, nursing between them
a large fat bundle of a baby.
"Hallo," said I, "what have we here? What are you
doing here 1 '' At this moment before the children could
answer I heard Bolton coming up the stairs. He en-
tered the room ; a bright color mounted to his cheeks as he
saw the group by the fire, and me.
"Hallo, Hal," he said, with a sort of conscious laugh.
" Hallo, Bolton ! " said I. " Have you got a foundling
hospital here 1 "
"Oh, well, well," said he; "never mind; let 'em stay
there. Do you want anything] There," said he, pulling
a package of buns out of his pocket, "eat those; and when
the baby gets asleep you can lay her on the bed in the
other room. And there, " to the boy, " you read this
story aloud to your sister when the baby is asleep. And
now, Hal, what can I do for you 1 Suppose I come down
into your room for a while and talk 1 "
He took my arm, and we went down the stairs together;
288 MY WIFE AND I
and when we got into my room he shut the door, and said,
" The fact is, Hal, I have to take care of that family
my washerwoman, you know. Poor Mrs. MoUoy, she has
a husband that about once a month makes a perfect devil
of himself, so that the children are obliged to run and hide
for fear of their lives. And then she has got the way of
sending them to me, and I have to go down and attend to
him."
"Bless me!" said I, "why will women live with such
brutes? Why don't you make her separate from him? "
Bolton seated himself at my table, and leaned back in
his chair, with a curious expression of countenance, very
sad, yet not without a touch of humor in it.
"Well, you see," he said, "the fact is, Hal, she loves
him."
"Well, she oughtn't to love him," said I.
"Maybe not; but she does," said he. "She loves that
poor Pat MoUoy so much that to be angry with him is just
like your right hand being angry with your left hand.
Suppose there 's a great boil on the left hand, what 's the
right to do about it but simply bear the suffering and wait
for it to get well? That, you see, is love; and because
of it, you can't get women away from their husbands.
What are you going to do about it ? "
"But," said I, "it is perfectly absurd for a woman to
cling to such a man."
"Well," said Bolton, "three weeks of the month Pat
Molloy is just as kind and tender a father and husband as
you will find, and then by the fourth week comes around
his drunken spell, and he 's a devil. Now she says, ' Sure
sir, it's the drink. It's not Pat at all, sir; he's not
himself, sir. ' And she waits till it 's over taking care
that he does n't kill the children. Now, shall I persuade
her to let him go to the devil ? Does not Jesus Christ say,
* Gather up the fragments that nothing be lost ' ? He said
COUSIN CAROUNE AGAIN 289
it about a basket of bread; wouldn't he say it still more
about the fragments of the human soul? If she leaves
Pat, where will he go to? First, to some harlot, then to
murder, and the gallows and that gets him out of the
way."
"Well," said I, "isn't he better out than in?"
" Who knows ? " said Bolton. " All I have to say is,
that poor Molly MoUoy, with her broad Irish brogue, and
her love that can't be tired, and can't give him up, and
that bears, and believes, and hopes, and endures, seems to
me a revelation of the Christ- like spirit a thousand times
more than if she was tramping to a Woman's Bights Con-
vention, and exposing her wrongs, and calling down justice
on his head."
"But," said I, "look at the children! Oughtn't she to
part with him on their account ? "
"Yes, look at the children," said he. "The little things
have learned already, from their mother, to care for each
other, and to care for their father. In their little childish
way, they love and bear with him just as she does. The
boy came to me this afternoon and said, ' Father 's got an-
other crazy spell.' Already he has a delicacy in his very
mode of speaking ; and he does n't say his father is drunk,
but that he is crazy y as he is. And then he and the little
girl are so fatherly and motherly with the baby. Now,
I say, all this growth of virtue around sin and sorrow is
something to be revered. The fact is," he added, "the
day for separating the tares from the wheat has n't come
yet. And it seems to me that the moral discipline of
bearing with evil, patiently, is a great deal better and
more ennobling than the most vigorous assertion of one's
personal rights. I can see a great deal of suffering in that
family from poor Pat's weakness and wickedness, but I
also see most noble virtues growing up, even in these chil-
dren, from the straits to which they are put. And as to
290 MY WIFE AND I
poor Pat himself, he comes out of his demon-baptism pen-
itent and humble, and more anxious to please than ever.
It is really affecting to see with what zeal he serves me,
when I have brought him through a ' drunk. ' And yet I
know that it will have to be gone over, and over, and over
again. Sometimes it seems to me he is like the earth after
a thunder-shower fresher and clearer than he was before.
And I am quite of Mrs. MoUoy's mind there is too
much good in Pat to have him swept off into the gutter for
the bad; and so, as God gives her grace to suffer, let her
suffer. And if I can bear one little end of her cross, I
will. If she does not save him in this life, she '11 save
him from sinking lower in demonism. She may only keep
his head above water till he gets past the gates of death,
and then, perhaps, in the next life, he will appear to be
saved by just that much which she has done in keeping
him up."
Bolton spoke with an intense earnestness, and a sad and
solemn tone, as if he were shaken and almost convulsed by
some deep, internal feeling. For some moments there was
a silence between us, the silence of a great unuttered
emotion. At last he drew a long breath, and said, " Well,
Hal, what was it you wanted to talk about ? "
"Oh," said I, "I have a letter from a friend of mine
that I wanted to show you, to see whether you could do
anything," and I gave him Caroline's letter.
He sat down under the gaslight to read it. The sight
of the handwriting seemed to affect him at once. His
large dark eyes flashed over the letter, and he turned it
quickly, and looked at the signature; a most unutterable
expression passed over his face, like that of a man who is
in danger of giving way to some violent emotion ; and then,
apparently by a great effort of self-constraint, he set him-
self carefully to reading the letter. He read it over two
or three times, folded it up, and handed it back to me
COUSIN CAROUNE AGAIN 291
without any remark, and then sat leaning forward on the
table with his face shaded with his hand.
"My cousin is a most uncommon character," I said;
"and, ^s you will observe by this letter, has a good deal
of ability as a writer."
"I am acquainted with her," he said briefly, making a
sudden movement with his hand.
" Indeed ? Where did ycfu know her ? "
"Years ago," he said briefly. "I taught the Academy
in her village, and she was one of my scholars. I know
the character of her mind."
There was a dry brevity in all this, of a man who is
afraid that he shall express more than he means to.
Said I, " I showed this letter to you because I thought
you had more influence in the press than I have; and if
you are acquainted with her, so much the better, as you
can judge whether she can gain any employment here
which would make it worth her while to come and try. I
have always had an impression that she had very fine men-
tal powers."
"There is no doubt about that," he said hurriedly.
"She is an exceptional woman."
He rose up, and took the letter from me. " If you will
allow me to retain this awhile," he said, "I will see what
I can do; but just now I have some writing to finish. I
will speak to you about it to-morrow."
That evening I introduced the subject to my friend, Ida
Van Arsdel, and gave her a sketch of Caroline's life his-
tory. She entered into it with the warmest interest, and
was enthusiastic in her desire that the plan might succeed.
"I hope that she will come to New York," she said,
"so that we can make her acquaintance. Don't, pray, fail
to let me know, Mr. Henderson, if she should be here,
that I may call on her."
CHAPTER XXVI
EASTEB LILIES
The next afternoon Jim and I kept our appointment
with the Van Arsdels. We found one of the parlors trans-
formed to a perfect bower of floral decorations. Stars and
wreaths and crosses and crowns were either just finished or
in process of rapid construction under fairy fingers. When
I came in, Eva and Alice were busy on a gigantic cross, to
be made entirely of lilies of the valley, of which some
bushels were lying around on the carpet. Ida had joined
the service, and was kneeling on the floor tying up the
flowers in bimches to offer them to Eva.
" You see, Mr. Henderson, the difference between mod-
em religion and the primitive Christians, '^ she said.
"Their cross was rough wood and hard nails; ours is lilies
and roses made up in fashionable drawing-rooms."
"I'm afraid," said Eva, "our crown may prove much
of the same material ! "
"I sometimes wonder," said Ida, "whether all the
money spent for flowers at Easter could not better be spent
in some mode of relieving the poor."
"Well," said Eva, "I am sorry to bring up such a par-
allel, but isn't that just the same kind of remark that
Judas made about the alabaster vase of ointment ? "
"Yes," said I; "what could be more apparently useless
than a mere perfume, losing itself in the air, and vanishing
entirely ? And yet the Saviour justified that lavish expen-
diture when it was the expression of a heart-feeling."
"But,'^ said Ida, "don't you think it very difl&cult to
EASTER LILIES 293
mark the line where these services and offerings to religious
worship become excessive 1 "
"Of course it is," said I; "but no more difficult on this
subject than any other."
" That 's the great trouble in this life, " said Eva. " The
line between right and wrong seems always so indefinite,
like the line between any two colors of the prism it is
hard to say just where one ends and another begins."
" It is the office of common sense, " I said, " to get the
exact right in all such matters there is a sort of instinct
in it."
"Well, all I have to say about it is," said Eva, "since
we do spend lavishly and without stint in our houses and
in our dress for adornment^ we ought to do at least as much
for our religion. I like to see the adornment of a church
generous, overflowing, as if we gave our very best. As to
these lilies, I ordered them of an honest gardener, and it
goes to help support a family that would be poor if it were
not for these flowers. It is better to support one or two
families honestly, by buying their flowers for churches,
than it is to give the money away. So I look on it."
"Oh, well," said Alice, "there is no end to anything.
Everything you do tends to something else; and every-
thing leads to something; and there is never any knowing
about anything; and so I think it is best just to have as
good a time as you can, and do everything that is agree-
able, and make everything just as pretty as it can be.
And I think it is fun to trim up the church for Easter.
There now ! And it don't do any harm. And I just like
to go to the sunrise service, if it does make one sleepy all
day. What do you say, Mr. Fellows? Do you think
you could go through with the whole of it ? "
" Miss Alice, if you only go you will find me inspired
with the spirit of a primitive Christian in this respect,"
said Jim. "I shall follow wherever you lead the way, if
294 MY WIFE AND I
it 's ever so late at night, or ever so early in the mom*
ing."
"And, Mr. Henderson," said she, "may we depend on
you, too 1 "
"By all means," said I, as I sat industriously gathering
up the lilies into bunches and tying them.
"Mr. Henderson is in a hopeful way," said Eva. "I
think we may have him in the true Church some of these
times."
"I am afraid," said Ida, "that Mr. Henderson, having
seen you only in Lent, won't be able to keep track of you
when the Easter rejoicings begin and the parties recom-
mence."
" Oh, dear me ! " said Eva, with a sort of shudder. " To
think of that horrid wedding ! "
"That 's just like Eva," said Alice. "She 's been, and
been, and been to these things till she 's tired out with
them; whereas, I am just come out, and I like them, and
want more of them. I don't think they are horrid at all.
I am perfectly delighted about that Elmore wedding. One
will see there all the new things, and all the stunning
things, and all the latest devices from Paris. I was in at
Tullegig's the other day, and you never saw such a sight
as her rooms are ! Somebody said it looked as if rainbows
had been broken to pieces and thrown all round. She
showed me all the different costumes that she was making
up for the various parties. You know there are to be
seven bridesmaids, and each of them is to wear a differ-
ent color. Madame thinks * C^est si gentil, ' Then, you
know, they are making such grand preparations up at that
chateau of theirs. The whole garden is to be roofed in
and made a ballroom of. I think it will be gorgeous. I
say, Mr. Fellows, if you and Mr. Henderson would like
it, I know I could manage cards for you."
Jim assented heartily for both of us; and I added that
EASTER LILIES 295
I should like to see the affair; for I had never seen enough
of that sort of thing to take away the novelty.
After tea we all sallied out to the church with our tro-
phies. We went in two carriages, for the better accommo-
dation of these, and had a busy time disembarking at the
church and carrying them in. Here we met a large com-
mittee of co-workers, and the scene of real business com-
menced. Jim and I worked heroically under the direction
of our fair superintendents. By midnight the church was
a bower of fragrance and beauty. The chancel seemed a
perfect bed of lilies, out of which rose the great white
cross, shedding perfume upon the air. The baptismal font
was covered with a closely woven mosaic of fragrant vio-
lets, and in each panel appeared an alternate red or white
cross formed of flowers. The font was filled with a tall
bouquet of white saint' s-lilies, such as gardeners force for
Easter.
Eva and I worked side by side this evening, and never
had I seemed to know her more intimately. The fact is,
among other dangerous situations to a young man's heart,
none may be mentioned more seductive than to be in a
church twining flowers and sorting crosses and emblems in
the still holy hours of the night. One's head gets, some-
how, bewildered; all worldly boundaries of cold prudence
fade away; and one seems to be lifted up to some other
kind of land where those that are congenial never part from
each other. So I felt when, our work being all done, I
retired with Eva to the shadow of a distant pew to survey
the whole result. We had turned on the gaslight to show
our "Work, and its beams, falling on thousands of these
white lily-bells and on all the sacred emblems, shed a sort
of chastened light. Again, somehow, as if it had been a
rose-leaf floating down from heaven, I found that little
hand in mine; and we spoke low to each other, in whis-
pers, of how good and how pleasant it was to be there, and
296 MY WIFE AND I
to unite in such service and work words that meant far
more than they seemed to say. Once, in the course of the
evening, I saw her little glove where it had fallen into a
nest of cast-off flowers, and, as no one was looking, I
seized upon it as a relic, and appropriated it to my own
sacred memories. Nor would I surrender it, though after-
ward I heard her making pathetic inquiries for it. Late
at night I went home to think and dream, and woke with
the first dim gray of morning, thinking of my appointment
to meet her at the church.
It is a charming thing to go out in the fresh calm morn-
ing before any one is stirring. The bells for early service
were dropping their notes here and there, down through
the air, as if angels were calling men to awake and remem-
ber that great event which happened so silently and so un-
regarded, many, many years ago. I thought as I walked
through the dim streets and saw here and there an early
worshiper, Prayer-Book in hand, stealing along, of the
lonely women who, years ago, in Jerusalem, sought the
sepulchre to see where they had laid Him.
Little twittering sparrows filled the ivy on the outside
of the church and made it vibrate with their chirpings.
There was the promise in the brightening skies of a glori-
ous sunrise. I stood waiting awhile, quifce alone, till one
by one the bands of youths and maidens came from differ-
ent directions.
I had called Jim as I went out, but he, preferring to
take the utmost latitude for sleep, looked at his watch and
told me he would take another half hour before he joined
us. Eva was there, however, among the very first. The
girls, she said, were coming. We went into the dim
church together and sat ourselves down in the shady soli-
tude of one of the slips, waiting for the morning light to
pour through the painted windows. We said nothing to
each other; but the silence was sociable and not blank.
EASTER LILIES 297
There are times in life when silence between two friends is
better than speech; for they know each other by intuition.
Gradually the church filled with worshipers; and as the
rising sun streanied through the painted windows and
touched all tlte lilies with brightness, a choir of children
in the organ-loft broke forth into carols like so many in-
visible birds. And then, the old chant :
" Christ, being raised from tlie dead, dieth no more,''
seemed to thrill every heart.
After the service came a general shaking of hands and
greetings from neighbors and friends, as everybody walked
round examining the decorations.
"Now, Mr. Henderson," said Eva, as she stood with
me surveying this scene, " is not a Church which preserves
all these historical memorials a most lovely onel Ought
we not thus to cherish the memory of that greatest event
that ever happened in this world 1 And how beautiful it
is to bring up children year after year by festivals like
these, to mark off their life in acts of remembrance."
"You speak truly," I said, sharing her enthusiasm. "I
could wish the Church of all good people had never ceased
to keep Easter; indeed, they who do disregard it seem to
me a cold minority out of the great fellowship. I think it
is fortunate that the Eomish and the Episcopal churches are
bringing us, descendants of the Puritans, back to those primi-
tive customs. I, for one, come back willingly and joyfully."
[Eva Van Arsdel to Isabel Convers.]
My DARLING Belle, I have been a naughty girl to let
your letter lie so long. But my darling, it is not true, as
you there suggest, that the bonds of sisterly affection,
which bound us in school, are growing weaker, and that I
no longer trust you as a confidential friend. Believe me,
the day will never come, dearest Belle, when t shall cease
to unfold to you every innermost feeling.
-I
298 MY WIFE AND I
And now to come to the point about "that Mr. Hender-
son." Indeed, my love, your cautions are greatly mis-
taken. It is true that, much to my surprise, he has taken
a fancy to visit quite intimately at our house, and has made
himself a general favorite in the family. Mamma, and
Aunt Maria, and all the girls like him so much. But,
then, you must know he is generally set down as Ida's
admirer. At all events, Ida and he are extremely good
friends; and when he calls here he generally spends the
largest part of the evening in her sanctum; and they have
most edifying conversations on all the approved modem
topics the Darwinian theory. Woman's Bights, and every-
thing else you can think of. One thing I admit is a little
peculiar he notices everything that / say in conversation
I must own. I never saw such an observing creature.
For example, the first evening he was at our house, I just
accidentally dropped before him the remark that I was
going to early morning services in Lent, and would you
believe it? the next morning he was there, too, and
walked home with me. I was the more astonished because
he does not belong to the Church so one would not ex-
pect it, you know. He is a member of the Bethany Church
himself, but he seems delighted with our services, and
talks about them beautifully as well as our rector could.
I really wish you could have heard him! He seems to
have such an earnest, thoughtful mind; and what I like
in him is, that he never flatters, and talks that matter-of-
course complimentary nonsense that some men think is the
thing to be talked to ladies; neither has he that way of
talking down to one that superior men sometimes have
when they are talking with us girls. I read somewhere
this sentiment that we may know the opinion people
have of us by the kind of conversation they address to us:
and if this is so I ought to be flattered by the way Mr.
Henderson talks to me; for I think he shows quite as
EASTER LILIES 299
much anxiety to find out my opinion on all subjects as he
does Ida's. You will, perhaps, think it rather peculiar if
I tell you that ever since that first morning he has beep as
constant at the morning services as I have, and always
walks home with me. In this way we really are getting
quite intimately acquainted. Now, Belle, don't put on
that knowing look of yours, and intimate that there is any-
thing particular in all this, for there is not. I do assure
you there is not a bit of nonsense in it. You would be
perfectly astonished to hear how gravely and philosophi-
cally we talk. We moralize and philosophize, and as Jim
Fellows would say, ^^come the high moral dodge" in a
way that would astonish you.
And yet, Belle, they wrong us who are called fashion-
able girls when they take for granted that we are not
capable of thinking seriously, and that we prefer those
whose conversation consists only of flattery and nonsense.
It is mainly because I feel that Mr. Henderson has deep,
serious purposes in life, and because he appreciates and
addresses himself to the deepest part of my nature, that his
friendship is so valuable to me. I say friendship ad-
visedly, dear Belle, because I insist upon it that there can
be friendship, pure and simple, between a gentleman and
a lady; in our case there is ^^only this and nothing more."
How very teasing and provoking it is that there cannot
be this friendship without observation and comment ! Now
I am very careful to avoid any outward appearance of spe-
cial intimacy that might make talk, and he appears to be
very careful also. After the first day at morning service
he did not join me immediately on going out of church,
but went out at another door and joined me at the next
comer. I was so thankful for it, for old Mrs. Eyelett was
there with her sharp eyes, and I know by experience that
though she is a pillar of the Church she finds abundance of
leisure from her devotions to watch all the lambs of the
300 MY WIFE AND I
flock; and I am one that everybody seems to keep specially
in mind as proper to be looked after. If I only speak to,
or look at, or walk with the same person more than once,
the airy tongues of rumor are busy engaging and marrying
me. Is n't it horrid 1 I would not have old Mrs. Eyelett
get anything of this sort into her head for the world; it 's
so disagreeable to have such a thing get to a gentleman's
hearing when he knows there is no truth in it; and the
world has condescended to interest itself so much in my
fortunes that it seems dangerous for anybody to be more
than civil without being set down as an aspirant.
The only comfort there is in being persistently reported
engaged to Mr. Sydney is that it serves to keep off other
reports, and I sometimes think of the old fable of the fox
who would not have the present swarm of flies driven off
lest there should come a new one in its place. How I
wish people would let one's private affairs alone! Here
I must break off, for there is company downstairs.
Wednesday Eve.
I have let this thing lie some days, dear Belle, because
there has been so much going and coming time has flitted
away. Mr. H. has been at our house a good deal. I have
made a discovery about him. He has a beautiful cousin
that he thinks everything of " Cousin Caroline " and
she is a very superior woman. So you see how silly all
your suggestions are. Belle. For aught I know he may
be engaged to this Cousin Caroline. I believe she is com-
ing to New York, and I am just wild to see her. You
know I want to see if I shall like her. She must be just
the thing for him ; and I hope I shall like her. Ida thinks
she shall. Aunt Maria, who wants to portion off the fate
of mortals, has made up her mind that Mr. H. must be an
admirer of Ida's; and, in short, that they are to be for each
EASTER LILIES 301
Ida looks down on all this sort of thing with her placid
superiority. She has a perfect contempt for it, so very
perfect that it is quiet. She does not even trouble herself
to express it. Ida likes Mr. H. very much, and has a
straightforward, open, honest friendship with him, and
does n't trouble her head a bit what people may say.
Saturday Morning.
We are all busy now about Easter decorations. We
have ordered no end of flowers, and are going into adorn-
ments on a great scale. We press all hands in that we
can get. Mr. Henderson and Jim Fellows are coming to-
night to tea to help us carry our things to church and get
them up.
Monday Morning.
I am so tired. We were up nearly all night Saturday,
and then at the sunrise service Easter morning, and ser-
vices all day. Beautiful ! Lovely as they could be ! But
if one has a good time in this world one must pay for it
and I am all tired out.
Mr. Henderson was with us through the whole afifair.
One thing seemed to me quite strange. I dropped my
glove among some flowers while I was busy putting up a
wreath of lilies, and I saw him through a bower of hem-
lock-trees walk up to the spot, and slyly confiscate the
article. In a moment I came back, and said, "I dropped
my glove here. Where can it be ? '' The wretched crea-
ture helped me search for it with every appearance of in-
terest, but never offered to restore the stolen goods. It
was all so quiet so private ! You know, gentlemen often
pretend, as a matter of gallantry, that they want your
glove, or a ribbon, or some such memento ; but this was all
so secret. He evidently thinks I don't know it; and,
Belle what should you think about it ?
Eva.
CHAPTER XXVII
ENCHANTMENT AND DISENCHANTMENT
During a month after Easter I was, so to speak, in a
state of mental somnambulism, seeing the visible things of
this mortal life through an enchanted medium, in which
old, prosaic, bustling New York, with its dry drudgeries
and uninteresting details, became suddenly vivified and
glorified; just as when some rosy sunset floods with light
the matter-of-fact architecture of Printing-House Square,
and etherealizes every line, and guides every detail, and
heightens every bit of color, till it all seems picturesque
and beautiful.
I did not know what was the matter with me, but I felt
somehow as if I had taken the elixir of life and was breath-
ing the air of an immortal youth. Whenever I sat down
to write I found my inspiration. I no longer felt myself
alone in my thoughts and speculations ; I wrote to another
mind, a mind that I felt would recognize mine ; and then
I carried what I had written, and read it to Ida Van Arsdel
for her criticisms. Ida was a capital critic, and had gra-
ciously expressed her willingness and desire to aid me in
this way, to any extent. But was it Ida who was my in-
spiration 1
Sitting by, bent over her embroidery, or coming in acci-
dentally and sitting down to listen, was Eva; full of
thought, full of inquiry; sometimes gay and airy, some-
times captious and controversial always suggestive and
inspiring. From these readings grew talks protracted and
confidential, on all manner of subjects; and each talk was
ENCHANTMENT AND DISENCHANTMENT 303
the happy parent of more talks, till it seemed that there
was growing up an endless series of occasions for our hav-
ing long and exciting interviews; for what was said yes-
terday, in the reflections and fancies of the night following,
immediately blossomed out into queries and consequences
and inferences on both sides, which it was immediately and
pressingly necessary that we should meet to compare and
adjust. Now, when two people are in this state of mmd,
it is surprising what a number of providential incidents'are
always bringing them together. It was perfectly astonish-
ing to us both to find how many purely accidental inter-
views we had. If I went out for a walk, I was sure, first
or last, to meet her. To be sure, I took to walking very
much in streets and squares where I had observed she
might be expected to appear; but that did not make the
matter seem to me the less unpremeditated.
I had been in the habit of taking a daily constitutional
stroll in Central Park, and the Van Arsdels were in the
habit of driving there at orthodox fashionable hours. In
time, it seemed to happen that this afternoon stroll of mine
always brought forth the happy fruit of a pleasant inter-
view. There was no labyrinth or bower or summer-house,
no dingle or bosky dell, so retired that I did not find it
occasionally haunted by the presence of this dryad. True
she was not there alone sometimes with Ida, sometimes
with Alice, or with a lively bevy of friends; but it made
no difference with whom so long as she was there.
The many sins of omission and commission of which the
City Fathers of New York are accused are, I think, won-:
derfuUy redeemed and covered by the beauties of the pro-
vision for humanity which they have made in Central Park.
Having seen every park in the world, I am not ashamed
to glorify our own, as providing as much beauty and cheap
pleasure as can anywhere be found under the sun.
Especially ought all lovers par excellence to crown the
304 MY WIFE AND I
projectors and executors of this Park with unfading wreaths
of olive and myrtle. It is so evidently adapted to all the
purposes of falling in love and keeping in love that the
only wonder is that any one can remain a bachelor in pre-
sence of such advantages and privileges ! There is all the
peacefulness, all the seclusion, all the innocent wildness
of a country Arcadia, given for the price of a five cents'
ride in the cars to any citizen who chooses to be made
moral and innocent.
The Central Park is an immortal poem, forever address-
ing itself to the eye and ear in the whirl and bubble of
that hot and bewildered city. It is a Wordsworth immor-
talized and made permanent, preaching to the citizens.
" One impulse from a vernal mood
May teach you more of man
Of moral evil, and of good
Than all the sages can/*
Certainly during this one season of my life I did full
justice to the beauties of Central Park. There was not a
nook or corner where wild flowers unfolded, where white-
stemmed birches leaned over still waters, or ivies clambered
over grottoed rocks, which I did not explore ; and when in
the winding walks of "the E-amble^' I caught distant sight
of a white drapery, or heard through budding thickets the
silvery sounds of laughing and talking, I knew I was com-
ing on one of those pleasant surprises for which the Park
grounds are so nicely arranged.
Sometimes Eva would come with a carriage full of chil-
dren, and with the gay little fairies would pass a sunny
afternoon, swinging them, watching them riding in the
little goat-carriages, or otherwise presiding over their gaye-
ties. We had, under these circumstances, all the advantage
of a tete-a-tete without any of the responsibility of seeking
or prolonging it. In fact, the presence of others was a
salvo to my conscience, and to public appearance, for, look-
ENCHANTMENT AND DISENCHANTMENT 305
ing on Eva as engaged to another, I was very careful not
to go over a certain line of appearances in my relations to
her. My reason told me that I was upon dangerous
ground for my own peace, but I quieted reason, as young
men in my circumstances generally do, by the best of argu-
ments.
I said to myself that, "No matter if she were engaged,
why shouldn't I worship at her shrine, and cherish her
image as Dante did that of Beatrice, and Tasso that of
Eleanora d' Este ? '^ and so on.
"To be sure," I reflected, "this thing can never come to
anything; of course she never can be anything to you more
than a star in the heavens. But," I said in reply, "she is
mine to worship and adore with the worship that we give
to all beautiful things. She is mine as are fair flowers,
and the blue skies, and the bright sunshine, which cheer
and inspire."
I was conscious that I had in my own most sacred recep-
tacle at home a little fairy glove that she had dropped, to
which I had no claim; but I said to myself, "When a
leaf falls from the rose, who shall say that I shall not
gather it up ? " So, too, I had one of those wonderful, use-
less little bits of fairy gossamer, which Eve's daughters call
a "pocket-handkerchief." I had yet so little sense of sin
that I stole that too, kept the precious theft folded in my
Prayer-Book, and thought she would never know it. I be-
gan to imderstand the efficacy that is ascribed to holy relics,
for it seemed to me that if ever any deadly trouble or trial
should come upon me, I would lay these little things upon
my heart, and they would comfort me.
And yet, all this while, I solemnly told myself I was
not in love, oh, no, not in the least. This was friend-
ship the very condensed, distilled essence of friendship,
that and nothing more. To be sure, it was friendship set
to a heroic key friendship of a rare quality. I longed
306 BfY WIFE AND I
to do something for her, and often thought how glad I
would be to give my life for her. Having a very active
imagination, sometimes as I lay awake at 'night I perpe-
trated all sorts of confusions in the city of New York, for
the sole purpose of giving myself an opportunity to do
something for her. I set fire to the Van Arsdel mansion
several times, in different ways, and, rushing in, bore her
through the flames. I inaugurated a horrible plot against
the life of her father, and rushing in at the critical mo-
ment, delivered the old gentleman that I might revel in
her delight. I became suddenly a millionaire by the death
of a supposititious uncle in the East Indies, and immedi-
ately proceeded to lay all my treasures at her feet.
As for Mr. Wat Sydney, it is incredible the resignation
with which I saw him shipwrecked, upset in stages,
crushed in railroad accidents, while I appeared on the scene
as the consoling friend; not that I had, of course, any pur-
pose of causing such catastrophes, but there was a degree
of resignation attending the view of them that was sooth-
ing. I had in my heart a perfect certainty that Sydney
was unworthy of her, but of course racks and thumbscrews
should not draw from me the slightest intimation of the
kind in her presence.
So matters went on for some weeks. But sometimes it
happens, when a young fellow has long wandered in a beau-
tiful dream of this kind, a sudden and harsh light of reality
and of common-sense, e very-day life is thrown upon him
in an unforeseen moment; and this moment at last arrived
for me.
One evening, when I dropped in for a call at the Van
Arsdel mansion, the young ladies were all out at a concert,
but Mrs. Van Arsdel was at home, and for some reason
unusually bland and motherly.
"My dear Mr. Henderson, '^ she said, "it is rather hard
on you to be obliged to accept an old woman like me as
ENCHANTMENT AND DISENCHANTMENT 307
a substitute for youth and beauty; but really, I am not
sorry, on the whole, that the girls are out, for I would like
a little chance of having a free, confidential talk with you.
Your relations with us have been so intimate and kindly,
I feel, you know, quite as if you were one of us."
I replied, of course, that " I was extremely flattered and
gratified by her kindness," and assured her with eflEusion,
and, if I mistake not, with tears in my eyes, that "she had
made me forget that I was a stranger in New York, and
that I should always cherish the most undying recollection
of the kindness that I had received in her family and of
the pleasant hours I had spent there."
"Ah, yes, indeed," she said, "Mr. Henderson, it is
pleasant to me to think that you feel so. I like to give
young men a home feeling. But after all," she continued,
" one feels a little pensive once in a while, in thinking that
one cannot always keep the home circle unbroken. Indeed,
I never could see how some mothers could seem to rejoice
as they do in the engagement of their daughters. There
is Mrs. Elmore, now, her feelings are perfectly inexplicable
to me."
I assured her that I was quite of her way of thinking,
and agreed with her perfectly.
"Now," she said, "as the time comes on when I begin
to think of parting with Eva, though to the very best man
in the world, do you know, Mr. Henderson, it really makes
me feel sad 1 "
I began at this moment to find the drift of the conversa-
tion becoming very embarrassing and disagreeable to me,
but I mustered my energies to keep up my share in it with
a becoming degree of interest.
"I am to understand, then," said I, forcing a smile,
"that Miss Eva's engagement with Mr. Sydney is a settled
fact?"
**Well, virtually so," she replied. "Eva is averse to
808 MY WIFE AND I
the publicity of public announcements; but you know
bow it is, Mr. Henderson, there are relations which amount
to the same thing as an engagement. '' Here Mrs. Van
Arsdel leaned back on the sofa and drew a letter from her
pocket, while the words of my part of the conversation did
not seem to be forthcoming. I sat in embarrassed silence.
"The fact is, Mr. Henderson,^' she said, settling the
diamonds and emeralds on her white, shapely fingers, "I
have received a letter to-day from Mr. Sydney, he is a
noble fellow, '^ she added, with empressement
I secretly wished the noble fellow at Kamtschatka, but
I said, in sympathetic tones, " Ah, indeed ? '^ as if waiting
for the farther communication which I perceived she was
determined to bestow on me.
"Yes," she said, "he is coming to New York in a short
time, and then, I suppose, there is no doubt that all will
be finally arranged. I confess to you I have the weakness
to feel a little depressed about it. Did you ever read Jean
Ingelow's * Songs of Seven, ' Mr. Henderson ? I think she
touches so beautifully on the trials of mothers in giving
up their daughters."
I said, "I only trust that Mr. Sydney is in some degree
worthy of Miss Van Arsdel; though," I added with
warmth, "no man can be wholly so."
"Eva is a good girl," said Mrs. Van Arsdel, "and I
must confess that the parting from her will be the greatest
trial of my life. But I thought I would let you know how
matters stood, because of the very great confidence which
we feel in you."
I found presence of mind to acknowledge politely my
sense of the honor conferred. Mrs. Van Arsdel continued
playing prettily with her rings.
"One thing more perhaps I ought to say, Mr. Hender-
son : while your intimacy in our family is and has been quite
what I desire, yet you know people are so absurd, and will
ENCHANTMENT AND DISENCHANTMENT 809
say such absurd things, that it might not be out of the way
to suggest a little caution; you know one wouldn't want
to give rise to any reports that might be unpleasant any-
thing, you know, that might reach Mr. Sydney's ear
you understand me.''
" My dear Mrs. Van Arsdel, is it possible that anything
has been said ? "
"Now, now, don't agitate yourself, Mr. Henderson; I
know what you are going to say no, nothing of the kind.
But you know that we elderly people, who know the world
and just what stupid and unreasonable things people are
always saying, sometimes have to give you young folks
just the slightest little caution. Your conduct in this
family has been all that is honorable, and gentlemanly,
and unexceptionable, Mr. Henderson, and such as would
lead us to repose the most perfect confidence in you. In
fact, I beg you to consider this commimication with regard
to Eva's connection with Mr. Sydney as quite in confi-
dence."
"I certainly shall do so," said I, rising to take my
leave with much the same sort of eagerness with which
one rises from a dentist's chair, after having his nerves
picked at. As at this moment the voices of the returning
party broke up our interview, I immediately arose, and
excusing myself with the plea of an article to finish, left
the house and walked home in a state of mind as disagree-
able as my worst enemy could have wished. Like all deli-
cate advisers who are extremely fearful of hurting your
feelings, Mrs. Van Arsdel had told me nothing definite,
and yet had said enough to make me supremely uncomfort-
able. What did she mean, and how much did she mean ?
Had there been reports? Was this to be received as an
intimation from Eva herself ? Had she discovered the state
of my feelings, and was she, through her mother, warning
me of my danger t
310 MY WIFE AND I
All my little romance seemed disenchanted. These illu-
sions of love are like the legends of hidden treasures guarded
by watchful spirits which disappear from you if you speak
a word; or like an enchanting dream, which vanishes if you
start and open your eyes. I tossed to and fro restlessly all
night, and resolved to do precisely the most irrational
thing that I could have done under the circumstances, and
that was to give up going to the Van Arsdel house, and to
see Eva no more.
The next morning, however, showed me that I could not
make so striking a change in my habits without subjecting
myself to Jim Fellows 's remarks and inquiry. I resolved
on a course of gradual emancipation and detachment.
[Eva Van Arsdel to Isabel Con vers.]
My dearest Belle, Since I wrote to you last there
have been the strangest changes. I scarcely know what to
think. You remember I told you all about Easter Eve,
and a certain person's appearance, and about the stolen
glove and all that. Your theory of accounting for all this
was precisely mine; in fact, I could think of no other.
And, Belle, if I could only see you I could tell you of a
thousand little things that make me certain that he cares
for me more than in the way of mere friendship. I
thought I could not be mistaken in that. There has been
scarcely a day since our acquaintance began when I have
not in some way seen him or heard from him ; you know
all those early services, when he was as constant as the
morning, and always walked home with me; then, he and
Jim Fellows always spend at least one evening in a week
at our house, and there are no end of accidental meetings.
For example, when we take our afternoon drives at Central
Park we are sure to see them sitting on the benches watch-
ing us go by, and it came to be quite a regular thing when
we stopped the carriage at the terrace and got out to walk
ENCHANTMENT AND DISENCHANTMENT 311
to find them there, and then Alice would go off with Jim
Fellows, and Mr. H. and I would stroll up and down
among the lilac hedges and in all those lovely little nooks
and dells that are so charming. I 'm quite sure I never
explored the treasures of the Park as I have this spring.
We have rambled everywhere up hill and down dale
it certainly is the loveliest and most complete imitation of
wild nature that ever art perfected. One could fancy one's
self deep in the country in some parts of it; far from all
the rush and whirl and frivolity of this great, hot, dizzy
New York. You may imagine that with all this we have
had opportunity to become very intimate. He has told me
all about himself, all the history of his life, all about his
mother, and his home; it seems hardly possible that one
friend could speak more unreservedly to another, and I, dear
Belle, have found myself speaking with equal frankness to
him. We know each other so perfectly that there has for
a long time seemed to be only a thin impalpable cobweb
barrier between us; but you know. Belle, that airy, filmy
barrier is something that one would not by a look or a
word disturb. For weeks I have felt every day that surely
the next time we meet all this must come to a crisis.
That he would say in words what he says in looks in
involuntary actions .what, in fact, I am perfectly sure of.
Till he speaks I must be guarded. I must hold myself
back from showing him the kindly interest I really feel.
For I am proud, as you know. Belle, and have always
held the liberty of my heart as a sacred treasure. I have
always felt a secret triumph in the consciousness that I did
not care for anybody, and that my happiness was wholly in
my own hands, and I mean to keep it so. Our friendship
is a pleasant thing enough, but I am not going to let it
become too necessary, you understand. It isn't that I
care so very much, but my curiosity is really excited to
know just what the real state of the case is; one wants to
312 MY WIFE AND I
investigate interesting phenomena, you know. When I
saw that little glove movement on Easter Eve I eonfess I
thought the game all in my own hands, and that I could
quietly wait to say " checkmate " in due form and due time ;
but, after all, nothing came of it; that is, nothing decisive;
and I confess I did nH know what to think. Sometimes I
have fancied some obstacle or entanglement or commitment
with some other woman this Cousin Caroline perhaps
but he talks about her to me in the most open and com-
posed manner. Sometimes I fancy he has heard the report
of my engagement to Sydney. If he has, why does n't he
ask me about it? I have no objection to telling him, but
I certainly shall not open the subject myself. Perhaps,
as Ida thinks, he is proud and poor, and not willing to be
a suitor to a rich young good-for-nothing. Well, that
can't be helped, he must be a suitor if he wins me, for I
sha'n't be; he must ask me, for I certainly sha'n't ask
him, that's settled. If he would "ask me pretty," now,
who knows what nice things he might hear? I would tell
him, perhaps, how much more one true noble heart is
worth in my eyes than all that Wat Sydney has to give.
Sometimes I am quite provoked with him that he should
look so much, and yet say no more, and I feel a naughty,
wicked inclination to flirt with somebody else just to make
him open those grands yeux of his a little wider and to a
little better purpose. Sometimes I begin to feel a trifle
vindictive and as if I should like to give him a touch of
the claw. The claw, my dear, the little pearly claw that
we women keep in reserve in the patte de velours, our
only and most sacred weapon of defense.
The other night, at Mrs. Cerulean 's salon, she was hold-
ing forth with great effect on woman's right to court men
as natural, and indefeasible and I told her that I con-
sidered our right to be courted far more precious and invio-
lable. Of course it is so. The party that makes the pro-
ENCHANTMENT AND DISENCHANTMENT 318
posals is the party that must take the risk of refusal, and
who would wish to do that ? It puts me out of all patience
just to think of it. If there is anything that vexes me it
is that a man should ever feel sure that a woman's heart
is at his disposal hefore he has asked for it prettily and
properly in all due form, and, my dear, I have the fear of
this before my eyes, even in our most intimate moments.
He shall not feel too sure of me.
Wednesday Evening.
My dear Belle, I can't think what in the world is up
now; but something or other has happened to a certain
person that has changed all our relations. For more than
a week I have scarcely seen him. He called with Jim
Fellows on the usual evening, but did not go into Ida's
room, and hardly came near me, and seemed all in a flutter
to leave all the time. He was at the great Elmore wed-
ding, and so was I, but we scarcely spoke all the evening.
I could see him following all my motions and watching me
at a distance, but as sure as I came into a room he seemed
in a perfect flutter to get out of it, and yet no sooner had
he done so than he secured some position where he could
observe me at a distance. I was provoked enough, and I
thought if my lord wanted to observe, I 'd give him some-
thing to see, so I flirted with Jerrold Livingstone, whom
. I don't care a copper about, within an inch of his life, and
I made a special effort to be vastly agreeable to all the
danglers and mustaches that I usually take delight in
snubbing, and I could see that he looked quite wretched,
which was a comfort but yet he wouldn't come near me
till just as I was going to leave, when he came to beg I
would stay longer and declared that he had n't seen any-
thing of me. It was a little too much! I assumed an
innocent air and surveyed him de haut en has and said,
"Why, dear me, Mr. Henderson, possible that you 've been
here all this time ? Where have you kept yourself t " and
314 MY WIFE AND I
then I handed my bouquet to Livingstone and swept by
in triumph; his last look after me as I went downstairs
was tragical, you may believe. Well, I can't make him
out, but I don't care. I won't care. He was free to
come. He shall be free to go; but isn't it vexatious that
in cases of this kind one cannot put an end to the tragedy
by a simple common-sense question ?
One does n't care so very much, you know, what is the
matter with these creatures, only one is curious to know
what upon earth makes them act so. A man sets up a
friendship with you, and then looks and acts as if he adored
you, as if he worshiped the ground you tread on, and then
is off at a tangent with a tragedy air, and .you are not
allowed to say, " My dear sir, why do you behave so ? why
do you make such a precious goose of yourself ? "
The fact is, these friendships of women with men are all
fol-de-rol. The creatures always have an advantage over
you. They can make every advance and come nearer and
nearer and really make themselves quite agreeable, not to
say necessary, and then suddenly change the whole footing
and one cannot even ask why. One cannot say, as to an-
other woman, " What is the matter ? what has altered your
manner?" She cannot even show that she notices the
change, without loss of self-respect. A woman in friend-
ship with a man is made heartless by this very necessity,
she must always hold herself ready to change hands and
make her chass^ to right or left with all suitable indifference
whenever her partner is ready for another move in the
cotillion.
Well, so be it. I fancy I can do this as well as another.
I never shall inquire into his motives. I 'm sorry for him,
too, for he looked quite haggard and unhappy. -Well,
it 's his own fault ; for if he would only be open with me
he 'd find it to his advantage perhaps.
You are quite mistaken, dear, in what you have heard
ENCHANTMENT AND DISENCHANTMENT 315
about his belonging to that radical party of strange crea-
tures who rant and rage about progress in our times.
Like all generous, magnanimous men, who are conscious of
strength, he sympathizes with the weak, and is a champion
of woman wherever she is wronged; and certainly in many
respects, *we must all admit women are wronged by the
laws and customs of society. But no man could be nicer
in his sense of feminine delicacy and more averse to asso-
ciating with bold and unfeminine women than he. I must
defend him there. I am sure that nothing could be more
distasteful to him than the language and conduct of many
of these dreadful female reformers of our day. If I am,
out of sorts with him I must at least do him this justice.
You inquire about Alice and Jim Fellows; my dear,
there can be nothing there. They are perfectly well
matched; a pair of flirts, and neither trusts the other an
inch farther than they can see. Alice has one of those
characters that lie in layers like the geologic strata that our
old professor used to show us. The top layer is all show,
and display, and ambition; dig down below that and you
find a warm volcanic soil where noble plants might cast
root. But at present she is all in the upper stratum. She
must have her run of flirting and fashion and adventure,
and just now a splendid marriage is her ideal, but she is
capable of a great deal in the depths of her nature. All I
hope is she will not marry till she has got down into it,
but she is starting under full sail now, coquetting to right
and left, making great slaughter.
She looked magnificently at the wedding and quite out-
shone me. She has that superb Spanish style of beauty
which promises to wear well and bloom out into more
splendor as time goes on, and she has a good heart with
all her nonsense.
Well, dear, what a long letter ! and must I add to it the
account of the wedding glories lists of silver and gold
316 MY WIPE AND I
tea-sets, and sets of peark and diamonds? My dear, only
fancy Tiffany's counters transferred bodily, with cards from
A., B., and C, presenting this and that; fancy also the
young men of your acquaintance silly-drunk, or stupid-
drunk in the latter part of the night in the supper-room;
fancy, if you can, the bridegroom carried upstairs, because
he couldn't go up on his own feet I this is a wedding!
Never mind ! the bride had three or four sets of diamond
shoe-buckles, and rubies and emeralds in the profusion of
the "Arabian Nights. '^ Well, it will be long before I care
for such a wedding! I am sick of splendors, sated with
knickknacks, my doll is stuffed with sawdust, etc., etc.,
but I shall ever be your loving Eva.
P. 8. My dear a case of conscience ! Would it be
a sin to flirt a little with Sydney, just enough to aggravate
somebody else? Sydney's, you mind, is not a deep heart-
case. He only wants me because I am hard to catch, and
have been the fashion. I '11 warrant him against breaking
his heart for anybody. However, I don't believe I will
flirt after all 1 '11 try some other square of the chess-
board.
The confidential conversation held with me by Mrs. Van
Arsdel had all the effect on my mental castle-building that
a sudden blow had on Alnaschar's basket of glassware in
the Arabian tales.
Nobody is conscious how far he has been in dreamland
till he is awakened. I was now fully aroused to the fact
that I was in love with Eva Van Arsdel, to all intents and
purposes, so much in love as made the nourishing and cher-
ishing of an intimate friendship an impossibility, and only
a specious cloak for a sort of moral dishonesty. Now I
might have known this fact in the beginning, and I scolded
and lectured myself for my own folly in not confessing it
to myself before. I had been received by the family as a
ENCHANTMENT AND DISENCHANTMENT 817
friend. I had been trusted with their chief treasure, with
the understanding that it was to belong not to me but an-
other, and there was a species of moral indelicacy to my
mind in having suffered myself to become fascinated by
her as I now felt that I was. But I did not feel adequate
to congratulating her as the betrothed bride of another
man; nay, more, when I looked back on the kind of inti-
mate and confidential relations that had been growing up
between us, I could not but feel that it was not safe for me
to continue them. Two natures cannot exactly accord, can-
not keep time and tune together, without being conscious
of the fact and without becoming necessary to each other;
and such relations in their very nature tend to grow absorb-
ing and exclusive. It was plain to me that if Eva were
to marry Wat Sydney I could not with honor and safety
continue the kind of intimacy we had been so thoughtlessly
and so delightfully enjoying for the past few weeks.
But how to break it off without an explanation, and how
make that explanation 1 There is a certain responsibility
resting on a man of conscience and honor about accepting
all that nearness of access and that closeness of intimacy
which the ignorant innocence of young girls often invites.
From his very nature, from his education, from his posi-
tion in society, a young man knows more of what the full
significance and requirements of marriage are to be than
a young woman can, and he must know the danger of ab-
sorbing and exclusive intimacy with other than a husband.
The instincts of every man teach that marriage must be
engrossing and monopolizing, that it implies a forsaking of
all others, and a keeping unto one only; and how could
that be when every taste and feeling, every idiosyncrasy
and individual peculiarity, made the society of some other
person more agreeable?
Without undue personal vanity, a man will surely know
when there is a Bpedal congeniality of nature between him-
818 MY WIFE AND I
self and a certain woman, and he is bound in conscience
and honor to look ahead in all his intimacies and see what
must be the inevitable result of them according to the laws
of the human mind. Because I had neglected this caution,
because I had yielded myself blindly to the delicious en-
chantment of a new enthusiasm, I had now come to a place
where I knew neither how to advance nor recede.
I could not drop this intimacy, so dangerous to my peace
and honor, without risk of offending; to explain was, in
fact, to solicit. I might confess all, cast myself at her feet
but supposing she should incline to mercy and with
a woman's uncalculating disinterestedness accept my love
in place of wealth and station, what should I then do 1
Had I been possessed of a fortune even half equal to Mr.
Sydney's; had I, in fact, any settled and assured position
to offer, I would have avowed my love boldly and suffered
her to decide. But I had no advantage to stand on. I was
poor, and had nothing to give but myself; and what man is
vain enough to think that he is in himself enough to make
up for all that may be wanting in externals ? Besides this,
Eva was the daughter of a rich family, and an offer of
marriage from me must have appeared to all the world the
interested proposal of a fortune-hunter. Of what avail
would it be under such circumstances to plead that I loved
her for herself alone 1 I could fancy the shout of incredu-
lous laughter with which the suggestion would be received
in the gay world.
" So very thoughtful of the fair!
It showed a true fraternal care.
Five thousand guineas in her purse
The fellow might have fancied worse."
Now, if there was anything that my pride revolted from
as an impossibility, it was coming as a poor suitor to a
great rich family. Were I even sure that Eva loved me,
how could I do that? Would not all the world say that
to make use of my access in the family to draw her down
ENCHANTMENT AND DISENCHANTMENT 319
from a splendid position in life to poverty and obscurity
was on my part a dishonorable act ? Could I trust myself
enough to feel that it was justice to her ?
The struggle that a young man has to engage in to se-
cure a self-supporting position is of a kind to make him
keenly alive to material values. Dr. TVankliri said, "If
you would learn the value of money, try to borrow some.'^
I would say rather, Try to earn some, and to live only on
what you earn. My own hard experience on this subject
led me to reflect very seriously on the responsibility which
a man incurs in inducing a woman of refinement and cul-
ture to look to him as her provider.
In our advanced state of society there are a thousand
absolute wants directly created by culture and refinement;
and whatever may be said about the primary importance of
personal affection and sympathy as the foundation of a
happy marriage, it is undoubtedly true that a certain
amount of pecuniary ease and security is necessary as a
background on which to develop agreeable qualities. A
man and woman much driven, careworn, and overtaxed
often have little that is agreeable to show to each other. I
queried with myself then, whether, as Eva's true friend,
I should not wish that she might marry a respectable man,
devoted to her, who could keep her in all that elegance and
luxury she was so fitted to adorn and enjoy; and whether,
if I could do it, I ought to try to put myself in his place
in her mind.
A man who detects himself in an unfortunate passion
has always the refuge of his life object. To the true man,
the thing that he hopes to do always offers some compensa-
tion for the thing he ceases to enjoy. It was fortunate,
therefore, for me, that just in this crisis of my life my
friendship with Bolton opened before me the prospect of
a permanent establishment in connection with the literary
press of the times.
CHAPTER XXVm
A NEW OPENINO
"Henderson," said Bolton to me, one day, "how long
are you engaged on the * Democracy ' 1 "
" Only for this year, " said I.
"Because," said he, "I have something to propose to
you which I hope may prove a better thing. Hestermann
& Go. sent for me yesterday in secret session. The head
manager of their whole set of magazines and papers has re-
signed, and is going to travel in Europe, and they want
me to take the place."
"Good! I am heartily glad of it," said I. "I always
felt that you were not in the position that you ought to
have. You will accept, of course."
"Whether I accept or not depends on you," he replied.
"I cannot understand," said I.
"In short, then," said he, "the responsibility is a heavy
one, and I cannot undertake it without a partner whom I
can trust as myself I mean," he added, "whom I can
trust more than myself."
"You are a thousand times too good," said I. "I
should like nothing better than such a partnership, but I
feel oppressed by your good opinion. Are you sure that
I am the one for you 1 "
"I think I am," said he, "and it is a case where I am
the best judge; and it offers to you just what you want
a stable position, independence to express yourself, and
a good income. Hestermann & Co. are rich, and wise
enough to know that liberality is the best policy."
A NEW OPENING 321
"But," said I, "their offers are made to you, and not
to me."
"Well, of course, their acquaintance with me is of old
standing; but I have spoken to them of you, and I am to
bring you round to talk with them to-morrow; but, after
all, the whole power of arranging is left with me. They
put a certain sum at my disposal, and I do what I please
with it. In short," he said, smiling, "I hold the living,
and you are my curate. Well," he added, "of course you
need time to think matters over; here is paper on which
I have made a little memorandum of an arrangement be-
tween us ; take it and dream on it, and let me know to-
morrow what you think of it. "
I went to my room and unfolded the agreement, and
found the terms liberal beyond all my expectations. In
fact, the income of the principal was awarded to me, and
that of the subordinate to Bolton.
I took the paper the next evening to Bolton's room.
"Look here, Bolton," said I, "these terms are simply ab-
surd."
"How so?" he said, lifting his eyes tranquilly from
his book.. "What 's the matter with them? "
"Why, you give me all the income."
"Wait till you see how I '11 work you," he said, smil-
ing. "I '11 get it out of you; you see if I don't."
"But you leave yourself nothing."
"I have as much as I would have, and that's enough.
I 'm a literary monk, you know, with no family but Puss
and Stumpy, poor fellow, and I need the less."
Stumpy upon this pricked up his ragged ears with an
expression of lively satisfaction, sat back on his haunches,
and rapped the floor with his forlorn bit of a tail.
"Poor Stumpy," said Bolton, "you don't know that you
are the homeliest dog in New York, do you? Well, as
far as you go, you are perfect goodness, Stumpy, though
you are no beauty."
322 MY WIFE AND I
Upon this high praise Stumpy seemed so elated that he
stood on his hind paws and rested his rough fore feet on
Bolton's knee, and looked up with eyes of admiration.
"Man is the dog's God," said Bolton. "I can't con-
ceive how any man can he rude to his dog. A dog," he
added, fondling his ragged cur, "why, he's nothing but
organized love love on four feet, encased in fur, and
looking piteously out at the eyes love that would die for
you, yet cannot speak that 's the touching part. Stumpy
longs to speak; his poor dog's breast heaves with some-
thing he longs to tell me and can't. Don't it. Stumpy 1 "
As if he understood his master. Stumpy wheezed a dole-
ful whine, and actual tears stood in his eyes.
"Well," said Bolton, "Stumpy has beautiful eyes; no-
body shall deny that there, there! poor fellow, maybe
on the other shore your rough bark will develop into
speech; let 's hope so. I confess I 'm of the poor Indian's
mind, and hope to meet my dog in the hereafter. Why
should so much love go out in nothing? Yes, Stumpy,
we'll meet in the resurrection, won't wel" Stumpy
barked aloud with the greatest animation.
"Bolton, you ought to be a family man," said I. "Why
do you take it for granted that you are to be a literary
monk, and spend your love on dogs and cats 1 "
" You may get married, Hal, and I '11 adopt your chil-
dren," said Bolton; "that 's one reason why I want to es-
tablish you. You see, one 's dogs will die, and it breaks
one's heart. If you had a boy, now, I 'd invest in him."
"And why can't you invest in a boy of your own?"
"Oh, I 'm a predestined old bachelor."
"No such thing," I persisted hardily. "Why do you
immure yourself in a den? Why won't you go out into
society? Here, ever since I 've known you, you have been
in this one cave a New York hermit ; yet if you would
once begin to go into society, you 'd like it."
A NSW OPENING 328
"You think I haven't tried it; you forget that I am
some years older than you are/' said Bolton.
"You are a good-looking young fellow yet," said I,
"and ought to make the most of yourself. Why should
you turn all the advantages into my hands, and keep so
little for yourself ? "
"It suits me," said Bolton; "I am lazy I mean to
get the work out of you."
"That 's all hum," said I; "you know well enough that
you are not lazy; you take delight in work for work's
sake. "
"One reasod I am glad of this position," he said, "is
that it gives me a chance to manage matters a little as I
want them. For instance, there's Jim Fellows I want
to make something more than a mad Bohemian of that boy.
Jim is one of the wild growths of our New York life ; he
is a creature of the impulses and the senses, and will be
for good or evil according as others use him."
"He 's capital company," said I, "but he doesn't seem
to me to have a serious thought on any subject."
"And yet," said Bolton, "such is our day and time,
that Jim is more likely than you or I to get along in the
world. His cap and bells win favor everywhere, and the
laugh he raises gives him the privilege of saying anything
he pleases. For my part, I could n't live without Jim. I
have a weakness for him. Nothing is so precious to me
as a laugh, and, wet or dry, I can always get that out of
Jim. He '11 work in admirably with us."
"One thing must be said for Jim," said I, "with all his
keenness he 's kind hearted. He never is witty at the
expense of real trouble. As he says, he goes for the under
dog in the fight always, and his cheery, frisky, hit-or-miss
morality does many a kind turn for the unfortunate, while
he is always ready to help the poor."
"Jim is not of the sort that is going to do the world's
324 MY WIFE AND I
thinking for them," said Bolton; "neither will he ever be
one of the noble army of martyrs for principle. He is like
a lively, sympathetic horse that will keep the step of the
team he is harnessed in, and in the department of lively
nonsense he 'd do us yeoman service. Nowadays people
must have truth whipped up to a white froth or they won't
touch it. Jim is a capital egg-beater.''
"Yes," said I; "he 's like the horse that had the go in
him ; he '11 run any team that he 's harnessed in, and if
you hold the reins he won't run off the course."
" Then again, " said Bolton, " there 's your cousin ; there
is the editorship of our weekly journal will be just the
place for her. You can write and offer it to her."
"Pardon me," said I maliciously, "since you are ac-
quainted with the lady, why not write and offer it yourself ?
It would be a good chance to renew your acquaintance."
Bolton's countenance changed, and he remained a mo-
ment silent.
"Henderson," he said, "there are very painful circum-
stances connected with my acquaintance with your cousin.
I never wish to meet her, or renew my acquaintance with
her. Some time I will tell you why," he added.
The next evening I found on my table the following let-
ter from Bolton :
Dear Henderson, You need feel no hesitancy about
accepting in full every advantage in the position I propose
to you, since you may find it weighted with disadvantages
and incumbrances you do not dream of. In short, I shall
ask of you services for which no money can pay, and till
I knew you there was no man in the world of whom I had
dared to ask them. I want a friend, courageous, calm,
and true, capable of thinking broadly and justly, one su-
perior to ordinary prejudices, who may be to me another,
and in some hours a stronger self.
A NEW OPENING 325
I can fancy your surprise at this language, and yet I
have not read you aright if you are not the one of a thou-
sand on whom I may rest this hope.
You often rally me on my lack of enterprise and ambi-
tion, on my hermit habits. The truth is, Henderson, I
am a strained and unseaworthy craft, for whom the harbor
and shore are the safest quarters. I have lost trust in
myself, and dare not put out to sea without feeling the
strong hand of a friend with me.
I suppose no young fellow ever entered the course of life
with more self-confidence. I had splendid health, high
spirits, great power of application, and great social powers.
I lived freely and carelessly on the abundance of my phy-
sical resources. I could ride,, and row, and wrestle with
the best. I could lead in all social gayeties, yet keep the
head of my class, as I did the first two years of my college
life. It seems hardly fair to us human beings that we
should be so buoyed up with ignorant hope and confidence
in the beginning of our life, and that we should be left in
our ignorance to make mistakes which no after-years can
retrieve. I thought I was perfectly sure of myself; I
thought my health and strength were inexhaustible, and
that I could carry weights that no man else could. The
drain of my wide-awake exhausting life upon my nervous
system I made up by the insidious use of stimulants. I
was like a man habitually overdrawing his capital, and
ignorant to what extent. In my third college year this
began to tell perceptibly on my nerves. I was losing self-
control, losing my way in life; I was excitable, irritable,
impatient of guidance or reproof, and at times horribly
depressed. I sought refuge from this depression in social
exhilaration, and having lost control of myself became a
marked man among the college authorities; in short, I was
overtaken in a convivial row, brought under college disci-
pline, and suspended.
326 MY WIFE AND I
It was at this time that I went into your neighborhood
to study and teach. I found no difficulty in getting the
highest recommendations as to scholarship from some of the
college officers who were for giving me a chance to recover
myself; and for the rest I was thoroughly sobered and
determined on a new course. Here commenced my ac-
quaintance with your cousin, and there followed a few
months remembered ever since as the purest happiness of
my life. I loved her with all there was in me, heart,
soul, mind, and strength, with a love which can never
die. She also loved me, more perhaps than she dared to
say, for she was young, hardly come to full consciousness
of herself. She was then scarcely sixteen, ignorant of her
own nature, ignorant of life, and almost frightened at the
intensity of the feeling which she excited in me, yet she
loved me. But before we could arrive at anything like a
calm understanding her father came between us. He was
a trustee of the Academy, and a dispute arose between him
and me in which he treated me with an overbearing haugh-
tiness which aroused the spirit of opposition in me. I was
in the right and knew I was, and I defended my course
before the other trustees in a manner which won them over
to my way of thinking a victory which he never forgave.
Previously to this encounter I had been in the habit of
visiting in his family quite intimately. Caroline and I
enjoyed that kind of unwatched freedom which the customs
of New England allow to young people. I always attended
her home from the singing-school andithe weekly lectures,
and the evening after my encounter with the trustees I did
the same. At the door of his house he met us, and as
Caroline passed in he stopped me, and briefly saying that
my visits there would no longer be permitted, closed the
door in my face. I tried to obtain an interview soon after,
when he sternly upbraided me as one that had stolen into
the village and won their confidence on false pretenses.
A NEW OPENING 327
adding that if he and the trustees had known the full his-
tory of my college life I should never have been permitted
to teach in their village or have access to their families.
It was in vain to attempt a defense to a man determined to
take the very worst view of facts which I did not pretend
to deny. I knew that I had been irreproachable as to my
record in the school, that I had been faithful in my duties,
that the majority of parents and pupils were on my side;
but I could not deny the harsh facts which he had been
enabled to obtain from some secret enemy, and which he
thought justified him in saying that he would rather see
his daughter in her grave than to see her my wife. The
next day Caroline did not appear in school. Her father,
with prompt energy, took her immediately to an academy
fifty miles away.
I did not attempt to follow her or write to her; a pro-
found sense of discouragement came over me, and I looked
on my acquaintance with her with a sort of remorse. The
truth bitterly told by an enemy with a vivid power of state-
ment is a tonic oftentimes too strong for one's power of
endurance. I never reflected so seriously on the responsi-
bility which a man assumes in awakening the slumbering
feelings of a woman and fixing them on himself. Under
the reproaches of Caroline's father I could but regard this
as a wrong I had done, and which could be expiated only
by leaving her to peace in forgetfulness. I resolved that
I would never let her hear from me again till I had fully
proved myself to be possessed of such powers of self-control
as would warrant me in offering to be the guardian of her
happiness.
But when I set myself to the work, I found what many
another does, that I had reckoned without my host. The
man who has begun to live and work by artificial stimu-
lant never knows where he stands, and can never count
upon himself with any certainty. ' He lets into his castle
328 MY WIFE AND I
a servant who becomes the most tyrannical of masters. He
may resolve to turn him out, but will find himself reduced
to the condition in which he can neither do with nor with-
out him. In short, the use of stimulant to the brain-
power brings on a disease, in whose paroxysms a man is no
more his own master than in the ravings of fever, a disease
that few have the knowledge to understand, and for whose
manifestations the world has no pity.
I cannot tell you the dire despair that came upon me,
when after repeated falls, bringing remorse and self-up-
braiding to me, and drawing upon me the severest re-
proaches of my friends, the idea at last flashed upon me
that I had indeed become the victim of a sort of periodical
insanity in which the power of the will was overwhelmed
by a wild unreasoning impulse. I remember when a boy
reading an account of a bridal party sailing gayly on the
coast of Norway who were insidiously drawn into the resist-
less outer whirl of the great Maelstrom. The horror of the
situation was the moment when the shipmaster learned that
the ship no longer obeyed the rudder ; the cruelty of it
was the gradual manner in which the resistless doom came
upon them. The sun still shone, the sky was still blue.
The shore, with its green trees and free birds and bloom-
ing flowers, was near and visible as they went round and
round in dizzy whirls, past the church with its peaceful
spire, past the home cottages, past the dwellings of friends
and neighbors, past parents, brothers, and sisters who stood
on the shore warning and shrieking and entreating; help-
less, hopeless, with bitterness in their souls, with all that
made life lovely so near in sight, and yet cut off from it
by the swirl of that tremendous fate !
There have been just such hours to me, in which I have
seen the hopes of manhood, the love of woman, the posses-
sion of a home, the opportunities for acquisition of name,
and position, and property, all within sight, within grasp.
A NEW OPENING 329
yet all made impossible by my knowledge and conscious-
ness of the deadly drift and suction of that invisible whirl-
pool
The more of manliness there yet is left in man in these
circumstances, the more torture. The more sense of honor,
love of reputation, love of friends, conscience in duty, the
more anguish. I read once a frightful story of a woman
whose right hand was changed to a serpent, which at inter-
vals was roused to fiendish activity and demanded of her
the blood of her nearest and dearest friends. The hideous
curse was inappeasable, and the doomed victim spellbound,
powerless to resist. Even so the man who has lost the
control of his will is driven to torture those he loves, while
Jie shivers with horror and anguish at the sight.
I have seen the time when I gave earnest thanks that no
woman loved me, that I had no power to poison the life of
a wife with the fear, and terror, and lingering agony of
watching the slow fulfillment of such a doom.
It is enough to say that with every advantage of
friends, patronage, position I lost all.
The world is exigeant. It demands above everything
that every man shall keep step. He who cannot falls to
the rear, and is gradually left behind as the army moves on.
The only profession left to me was one which could avail
itself of my lucid intervals. The power of clothing thought
with language is in our day growing to be a species of tal-
ent for which men are willing to pay, and I have been
able by this to make myself a name and a place in the
world; and what is more, I hope to do some good in it.
I have reflected upon my own temptation, endeavoring
to divest myself of the horror with which my sense of the
suffering and disappointment I have caused my friends in-
spires me. I have settled in my own mind the limits of
human responsibility on this subject, and have come to the
conclusion that it is to be regarded precisely as Mary Lamb
830 MY WIFE AND I
and Charles Lamb regarded the incursion of the mania
which destroyed the peace of their life. A man who un-
dertakes to comprehend and cure himself has to fight his
way back alone. Nobody understands, nobody sympathizes
with him, nobody helps him not because the world is
unfeeling, but because it is ignorant of the laws which
govern this species of insanity.
It took me, therefore, a great while to form my system
of self-cure. I still hope for this. /, the sane and sound,
I hope to provide for the insane and unsound intervals of
my life. And my theory is, briefly, a total and eternal
relinquishment of the poisonous influence, so that nature
may have power to organize new and healthy brain-matter,
and to remove that which is diseased. Kature will do this,
in the end, for she is ever merciful; there is always "for-
giveness with her, that she may be feared." Since you
have known me, you have seen that I live the life of an
anchorite that my hours are regular, that I avoid excit-
ing society, that I labor with uniformity, and that I never
touch any stimulating drink. It is a peculiarity of cases
like mine that for lengths of time the morbid disease leaves
us, and we feel the utmost aversion to anything of the
kind. But there is always a danger lying behind this sub-
tle calm. Three or four drops of alcohol, such as form the
basis of a tincture which a doctor will order without scru-
ple, will bring back the madness. One five-minutes* inad-
vertence will upset the painful work of years, and carry
one away as with a flood. When I did not know this, I
was constantly falling. Society through all its parts is
full of traps and pitfalls for such as I, and the only refuge
is in flight.
It has been part of my rule of life to avoid all responsi-
bilities that might involve others in my liability to failure.
It is now a very long time since I have felt any abnormal
symptoms, and if I had not so often been thrown down
A NEW OPENING 881
after such a period of apparent calm, I might fancy my
dangers over, and myself a sound man.
The younger Hestermann was a classmate and chum of
mine in college, and one whose friendship for me has held
on through thick and thin. He has a trust in me that
imposes on me a painful sense of responsihility. I would
not fail him for a thousand worlds, yet if one of my hours
of darkness should come I should fail ignominiously.
Only one motive determined me to take their offer it
gave me a chance to provide for you and for Caroline. I
dare do it only through trusting you for a friendship he-
yond that of the common ; in short, for a brotherly kind-
ness such as Charles Lamb showed to Mary, his sister. If
the curse returns upon me, you must not let me ruin my-
self and you ; you must take me to an asylum till I recover.
In asking this of you, I am glad to be able to offer what
will be to you an independent position, and give you that
home and fireside which I may not dare to hope for my-
self.
In the end, I expect to conquer, either here or hereafter.
I believe in the Fatherhood of Grod, and that He has a
purpose even in letting us blindly stumble through life as
we do; and through all my weakness and un worthiness I
still hold his hand. . I know that the whole temptation is
one of brain and nerves, and when He chooses He can re-
lease me. The poor brain will be cold and still for good
and all some day, and I shall be free and able to see, I
trust, why I have been suffered thus to struggle. After
all, immortality opens a large hope, that may overpay the
most unspeakable bitterness of life.
Meanwhile, you can see why I do not wish to be brought
into personal relations with the only woman I have ever
loved, or ever can love, and whose happiness I fear to put
in peril. It is an unspeakable delight and relief to have
this power of doing for her, but she must not know of it.
832 MY WIFE AND I
Also, let me tell you that you are to me more transparent
than you think. It requires only the penetration of friend-
ship to see that you are in love, and that you hesitate and
hang hack hecause of an imwillingness to match your for-
tunes with hers.
Let me suggest, do you not owe it as a matter of justice,
after so much intimacy as has existed, to give her the
opportunity to choose hetween a man and circumstances?
If the arrangement hetween us goes into effect, you will
have a definite position and a settled income. Go to her
like a man and lay it before her, and if she is worthy of
you she will come to you.
" He either fears his fate too much,
Or his deserts are small,
That dares not put it to the touch
To gain or lose it all."
Grod, grant you a home and fireside, Harry, and I will be
the indulgent uncle in the chimney-corner.
Yours ever, Bolton.
CHAPTER XXIX
PERTURBATIONS
Scene. Ida's Study Ida busy making notes from a book. Eva sitting
by, embroidering.
Eva: "Heigho! how stupid things are. I am tired
of everything. I am tired of shopping tired of parties
tired of New York where the same thing keeps hap-
pening over and over. I wish I was a .man. I 'd just
take my carpet-bag and go to Europe. Come now, Ida,
pray stop that, and talk to me, do ! '^
Ida (putting down her book and pen): "Well and
what about ? "
" Oh, you know ! this inextricable puzzle what does
ail a certain person? Kow he didn't come at all last
night, and when I asked Jim Fellows where his friend was
(one must pass the compliment of inquiring, you know),
he said, ' Henderson had grown dumpy lately, ' and he
couldn't get him out anywhere."
"Well, Eva, I'm sure I can't throw any light on the
subject. I know no more than you."
"Now, Ida, let me tell you, this afternoon when we
stopped in the Park, I went into that great rustic arbor on
the top of the hill there, and just as we came in on one
side I saw him in all haste hurrying out on the other, as if
he were afraid to meet me."
" How very odd ! "
"Odd! Well, I should think it was; but what was
worse, he went and stationed himself on a bench under a
tree where he could hear and see us, and there my lord sat
perhaps he thought I did n't see him, but I did.
834 MT WIFE AND I
"Lillie and Belle Forrester and Wat Jerrold were with
me, and we were having such a laugh! I don't know
when I have had such a frolic, and how silly it was of him
to sit there glowering like an owl in an ivy bush, when he
might have come out and joined us, and had a good time !
I 'm quite out of patience with the creature, it 's so vexa-
tious to have him act so I "
"It is vexatious, darling, but then as you can't do any-
thing about it, why think of it ? ''
"Because I can't help it. Can you have a real friend-
ship for a person and enjoy his society, and not care in the
least whether you have it or nott Of course you can't.
We were friends quite good friends, and I 'm not
ashamed to say I miss him very much, and then to have
such an unaccountable mystery about it. I should think
you 'd miss him, too."
"I do somewhat," said Ida, "but then you see I have
so much more to think of. I have my regular work every
day for papa, and I have my plan of study, and to say the
truth, so far as I am concerned, though I liked Mr. Hen-
derson very much, yet I don't miss him."
"Well, Ida, now I want to ask you, didn't you think
he acted as if "
"As if he were in love with you, you would say."
"Well yes."
"He certainly did, if I am any judge of symptoms; but
then, dear, men are often in love with women they don't
mean to marry."
"Who wants to marry him, I should like to know?
I 'm not thinking of that."
"Well, then, Eva, perhaps he has discovered that he
wants to marry you ; and, perhaps, for some reason he regards
that as impossible, and so is going to try to keep away."
"How perfectly hateful and stupid of him! I 'd rather
never have seen him. "
PEBTUBBATIONS B35
'' A man generally has this advantage over a woman in
a matter of this sort, that he has an object in life which is
more to him than anything else, and he can fill his whole
mind with that.'^
"Well, Ida, that 's all very true, but what object in life
can a girl have who lives as we do; who has everything
she can want without an effort I for instance 1 "
"But I have an object.^'
" Yes, I know you have, but I am different from you.
It would be as impossible for me to do as you do as for a
fish to walk upright on dry land."
"Well, Eva, this objectless, rootless, floating kind of
life that you and almost all girls lead is at the bottom of
nearly all your troubles. Literally and truly you have
nothing in the world to do but to amuse yourselves; the
consequence is that you soon get tired of almost every kind
of amusement, and so every friendship and flirtation assumes
a disproportioned interest in your minds. There is real
danger now that you may think too much of Mr. "
"Oh, stuff and nonsense, Ida! I worCt^ so there! I'll
put him out of my head forthwith and bolt the door.
Give me a good stiff dose of reading, Ida; one of your
dullest scientific books, and get me to write you an analysis
of it as we did at school. Here, let me see, * Descent of
Man.' Come, now, I '11 sit down and go at it."
Eva sits down with book, pencil, and paper, and turns
over the leaves. " Let 's try how it looks. * Sexual Selec-
tion ' ! Oh, horrid ! * Her Ape-like Proportions ' I I
should be ashamed to talk so about my ancestors. Apes!
of all things why not some more respectable animal 1
lions or horses, for example. You remember Swift's story
about the houyhnhnms. Is n't this a dreadfully dull book,
Ida?"
"No, I don't find it so. I am deeply interested in it,
though I admit it is pretty heavy,"
886 MY WIFE AND I
"But, then, Ida, you see it goes against the Bible,
does n't it ? ''
"Not necessarily as I see."
"Why, yes; to be sure. I haven't read it; but Mr.
Henderson gave me the clearest kind of a sketch of the
argument, and that is the way it impressed me. That to
be sure is among the things I principally value him for;
he is my milk-skimmer; he gets all the cream that rises on
a book anf presents it to me in a portable form. I remem-
ber one of the very last really comfortable long talks we
had; it was on this subject, and I told him that it seemed
to me that the modern theory and the Bible were point-
blank opposites. Instead of men being a fallen race, they
are a rising race, and never so high as now; and then,
what becomes of the Garden of Eden, and St. Paul? Now,
for my part, I told Mr. Henderson I was n't going to give
up all the splendid poetry of Milton and the Bible, just
because Mr. Darwin took it into his head that it was not im-
probable that my seventy-fifth millionth grandfather might
have been a big baboon with green nose and pointed ears ! "
"My dear Eva, you have capital reasons for believing
and not believing. You believe what seems most agree-
able and poetic."
"Exactly, Ida; and in those far-off regions, sixteen
million billion ages ago, why should n't I ? Kobody knows
what happened there; nobody has been there to see what
made the first particle of jelly take to living, and turn into
a germ cell, and then go working on like yeast, till it
worked out into all the things we see. I think it a good
deal easier to believe the Garden of Eden story, especially
as that is pretty and poetical, and is in the dear old Book
that is so sweet and comfortable to us; but then Mr. Hen-
derson insists that even if we do hold the Evolution theory,
the old Book will be no less true. I never saw a man of
so much thought who had so much reverence."
PERTURBATIONS 337
"I thought you were going to study Darwin and not
think of him," said Ida.
"Well, somehow, almost everything puts me in mind
of him, hecause we have had such long talks about every-
thing ; and, Ida, to tell the truth, I do believe I am intel-
lectually lazy. I don't like rough hard work, I like pol-
ishing and furbishing. Now, I want a man to go through
all this rough, hard, stupid, disagreeable labyrinth of sci-
entific terms, and pick out the meaning and put it into
a few, plain words, and then I take it and brighten it up
and put on the rainbows. Look here, now, think of my
having to scrabble through a bog like this in the * Origin
of Species : '
" ' In Carthamus and some other compositsB the central
achenes alone are furnished with a pappus ; and in Hyoseris
the same head yields achenes of three different forms. In
certain UmbellifersB the exterior seeds, according to Tanch,
are orthospermous, and the central one coelospermous, and
this difference has been considered by De Candolle as of'
the highest systematic importance in the family. '
"Now all this is just as unintelligible to me as if it were
written in Choctaw. I don't know enough to know what
it means, and I 'm afraid I don't care enough to know. I
want to know the upshot of the whole in good plain Eng-
lish, and then see whether I can believe it or not; and
isn't it a shame that things are so that one cannot have a
sensible man to be one's guide, philosopher, and friend
without this everlasting marriage question coming up 1 If
a woman makes an effort to get or keep a valuable friend,
she is supposed to be intriguing and making unfeminine
efforts for a husband. Now this poor man is perfectly
wretched about something for I can see he has really
gone off shockingly, and looks thin and haggard, and I
can't just write him a note and ask him to come and finish
his r^umd of Darwin for me without going over thei boun*
838 MY WIFE AND I
daries; and the worst of it is, it is / who set these limits
I myself who am a world too proud to say the first word
or give the slightest indication that his absence is n't quite
as agreeable as his presence."
" Well, Eva, I can write a note and request him to call
and see me," said Ida, "and if you like, I wilL I have
no sort of fear what he will think of me."
"I would not have you for the world. It would look
like an advance on our part no indeed. These creatures
are so conceited, if they once find out that you can't do
without them "
" I never observed any signs of conceit in Mr. Hender-
son. "
"Well, I have made it an object to keep him a little
humble, so far as his sex will permit, you see. But seri-
ously, Ida, is not it curious about this marriage matter?
Everybody says it 's what we are made for, all the novels
end with it, all the poems are about it, you are hearing
about it in one way or other all the time; and yet all this
while you are supposed not to care anything about it one
way or the other. If a man be ever so agreeable to you,
and do ever so much to make you like him, you must pre-
tend that you are quite indifferent to him, and don't care
whether he comes or goes, until such time as he chooses
to launch the tremendous question at you."
"Well," said Ida, "I admit that there is just this ab-
surdity in our life; but I avoid it all by firmly laying a
plan of my own, and having a business of my own. To
me marriage would be an interruption; it would require
a breaking up and reconstruction of my whole plan, and of
course I really think nothing about it."
" But are you firmly resolved never to marry ? "
"No; but never, unless I find some one more to me
than all on which I have set my heart. I do not need it
for my happiness. I am sufficient to myself; and besides
PERTURBATIONS 339
I have an object I hope to attain, and that is to open a
way by which many other women shall secure independence
and comfort and ease.''
"Deary me, Ida, I wish I were like you: but I 'm not.
It seems to me that the only way to give most girls any
concentration or object is to marry them. Then, some-
how, things seem to arrange themselves, and, at all events,
the world stops talking about you, and wondering what
you are going to do; they get you oflF their minds. That
I do believe was the reason why at one time I came so
near drifting into that affair with Wat Sydney. Aunt
Maria was so vigorous with me and talked in such a com-
manding manner, and with so many ' of courses, ' that I
really began to think I was one of the * of courses ' myself;
but my acquaintance with Mr. Henderson has shown me
that it would be intolerable to live with a man that you
could nH talk with about everything that comes into your
head; and now I can't talk with him, and I won't marry
Wat Sydney ; and so what is to be done ? Shall I go to
Stewart's and buy me a new suit of Willow Green, or gird
up the loins of my mind and go through Darwin like a
man, and look out all the terms in the dictionary and come
out the other side a strong-minded female? or shall I go
and join the Sisters of St. John, and wear a great white
cape and gray gown, and have all the world say I did it
because I could n't get Wat Sydney (for that 's exactly
what they would say), or what shall I do ? The trouble is,
mamma and Aunt Maria with their expectations. It 's
much as mamma can do to survive your course, and if I
take to having a * purpose ' too, I don't know but mamma
would commit suicide, poor dear woman."
(Enter Alice with empressement.)
"Girls, what do you think? Wat Sydney come back
and going to give a great croquet party out at Clairmont,
and of course we are all invited with notes in the most re-
340 MY WIFE AND I
splendent style, with crest and coat-of-arms, and everything
perfectly ^mag ' / There 's to be a steamboat with a band
of music to take the guests up, and no end of splendid do-
ings; marquees and tents and illuminations and fireworks,
and to return by moonlight after all 's over; is n't it lovely ?
I do think Wat Sydney 's perfectly splendid ! and it 's all
on your account, Eva, I know it is."
"Pooh, nonsense, you absurd child, I don't believe it.
I dare say it 's a party just to proclaim that he is engaged
to somebody else.''
"Do you know,'' added Alice, "I met Jim Fellows, and
he says everybody is wild about this party just stark,
tearing wild about it for it isn't going to be a crush
something very select."
" Is Jim going ? "
"Yes, he showed me his ticket and Henderson's, and he
declared he was going to take ' Hal, ' as he called him, spite
of his screams ; he said that he had been writing and study-
ing and moping himself to death, and that he should drag
him out by the hair of the head. Gome, Eva, let's go
down to Tullegig's and have a ' kank ' about costumes. I
have n't a thing fit to wear, nor you either."
CHAPTEE XXX
THE FATES
Bolton's letter excited in my mind a tumult of feeling.
From the beginning of my acquaintance I had regarded
him with daily increasing admiration. Young men like a
species of mental fealty a friendship that seems to draw
them upward and give them an ideal of something above
themselves. Bolton's ripe, elegant scholarship, his rare,
critical taste, his calm insight into men and things, and the
depth of his moral judgment, had inspired me with admira-
tion, and his kindness for me with gratitude. It had al-
ways been an additional source of interest that there was
something veiled about him something that I could not
exactly make out. This letter, so dignified in its melan-
choly frankness, seemed to let me into the secret of his life.
It showed me the reason of that sort of sad and weary tol-
erance with which he seemed to regard life and its instincts,
so different from the fiery, forward-looking hope of youth.
He had impressed me from the first as one who had made
up his mind to endure all things and hope for nothing.
To keep watch every moment, to do the duty of the hour
thoroughly, bravely, faithfully, as a sentinel paces through
wind, rain, and cold neither asking why, nor uttering
complaints such seemed to be Bolton's theory of life.
The infirmity which he laid open to my view was one,
to be sure, attributable in the first place to the thoughtless
wrong-doing of confident youth. Yet, in its beginning,
how little there was in it that looked like the deep and ter-
rible tragedy to which it was leading ! Out of every ten
342 MY WIFE AND I
young men who begin the use of stimulants as a social ex-
hilaration, there are perhaps five in whose breast lies coiled
up and sleeping this serpent, destined in after-years to be
the deadly tyrant of their life this curse, unappeasable by
tears or prayers or agonies with whom the struggle is like
that of Laoco5n with the hideous Python. Yet songs and
garlands and poetry encircle the wine-cup, and ridicule and
contumely are reserved for him who fears to touch it.
There was about this letter such a patient dignity, such
an evident bracing of the whole man to meet in the bravest
manner the hard truth of the situation, and such a disinter-
ested care for others, as were to me inexpressibly touching.
I could not help feeling that he judged and sentenced him-
self too severely, and that this was a case where a noble
woman might fitly co-work with a man, and by doubling
his nature give it double power of resistance and victory.
I went hastily up to his room with the letter in my
hand after reading it. It was in the dusk of the evening
twilight, but I could see him sitting there gazing out of the
window at the fading sky ; yet it was too dark for either
of us to see the face of the other. There are some con-
versations that can only be held in darkness the visiUe
presence of the bodily form is an impediment in dark-
ness spirit speaks directly to spirit.
"Bolton," I said, "I am yours to every intent and pur-
pose, yours for life and death."
"And after," he said in a deep undertone, grasping my
hand. " I knew you would be, Harry. "
"But, Bolton, you judge yourself too severely. Why
should you put from yourself the joys that other men, not
half so good as you, claim eagerly ? If I were a woman
like Caroline, I can feel that I would rather share life with
you, in all your dangers and liabilities, than with many
another."
He thought a moment, and then said slowly, "It is well
THE FATES 848
for Caroline that she has not this feeling ; she probably has
by this time forgotten me, and I would not for the world
take the responsibility of trying to call back the feeling she
once had."
At this moment my thoughts went back over many
scenes, and the real meaning of all Caroline's life came to
me. I appreciated the hardness of that lot of women which
condemns them to be tied to one spot and one course of
employment, when needing to fly from the atmosphere of
an unhappy experience. I thought of the blank stillness
of the little mountain town where her life had been passed,
of her restlessness and impatience, of that longing to fly to
new scenes and employments that she had expressed to me
on the eve of my starting for Europe ; yet she had tdld me
her story, leaving out the one vital spot in it. I remem-
bered her saying that she had never seen the man with
whom she would think of marriage without a shudder.
Was it because she had forgotten ? Or was it that woman
never even to herself admits that thought in connection
with one who seems to have forgotten her? Or had her
father so harshly painted the picture of her lover that she
had been led to believe him utterly vile and unprincipled?
Perhaps his proud silence had been interpreted by her as
the silence of indifference; perhaps she looked back on
their acquaintance with indignation that she should have
been employed merely to diversify the leisure of a rusti-
cated student and abandoned character. Whatever the ex-
perience might be, Caroline had carried it through silently.
Her gay, indifferent, brilliant manner of treating any ap-
proach to matters of the heart, as if they were the very last
subjects in which she could be supposed to have any ex-
perience or interest, had been a complete blind to me, nor
could I, through this dazzling atmosphere, form the least
conjecture as to how the land actually lay.
In my former letters to her I had dw6lt a good dcial on
344 MY WIFE AND I
Bolton, and mentioned the little fact of finding her photo-
graph in his room. In reply, in a postscript at the end of
a letter ahout everything else, there was a brief notice.
"The Mr. Bolton you speak of taught the Academy in our
place while you were away at college and of course I was
one of his scholars but I have never seen or heard of him
since. I was very young then, and it seems like something
in a preexistent state to be reminded of him. I believed
him very clever, then, but was not old enough to form
much of an opinion." I thought of all this as I sat
silently in the dark with Bolton.
"Are you sure," I said, "that you consult for Caroline's
best happiness in doing as you have done ? "
There was a long pause, and at last he said with a deep-
drawn breath:
"Yes. I am sure, the less I am to her the better."
" But may not your silence and apparent neglect and in-
difference have given pain ? "
" Probably ; but they helped her to cease caring for me ;
it was necessary that she should."
"Bolton, you are morbid in your estimate of yourself."
" You do not know all, Hal ; nor what nor where I have
been. I have been swept far out to sea, plunged under
deep waters, all the waves and billows have been over me."
" Yet now, Bolton, surely you are on firm land. Ko man
is more established, more reliable, more useful."
"Yet," he said with a kind of shudder, "all this I might
lose in a moment. The other day when I dined with Hes-
termann, the good fellow had his wines in all frank fellow-
ship and pressed them on me, and the very smell distracted
me. I looked at the little glass in which he poured some
particularly fine sherry, and held to me to taste, and thought
it was like so much heart's blood. If I had taken one
taste, just one, I should have been utterly worthless and
unreliable for weeks. Yet Hestermann could not under-
THE FATES 845
stand this; nobody can, except one who has been through
my bitter experience. One sip would flash to the brain like
fire, and then, all fear, all care, all conscience would be
gone, and not one glass, but a dozen would be inevitable,
and then you might have to look for me in some of those
dens to which the possessed of the devil flee when the flt
is on them, and where they rave and tear and cut them-
selves with stones till the madness is worn out. This has
happened to me over and over, after long periods of self-
denial and self-control and illusive hope. It seems to me
that my experience is like that of a man whom some cruel
fiend condemns to go through all the agonies of drowning
over and over again the dark plunge, the mad struggle,
the suflFocation, the horror, the agony, the clutch at the
shore, the weary clamber up steep rocks, the sense of relief,
recovery, and hope, only to be wrenched oflF and thrown
back to struggle, and strangle, and sink again."
He spoke with such a deep intensity of voice that I drew
in my breath, and a silence as of the grave fell between us.
" Harry, " he said, after a pause, " you know we read in
the Greek tragedies of men and women whom the gods
have smitten with unnatural and guilty purposes, in which
they were irresistibly impelled toward what they abomi-
nated and shuddered at! Is it not strange that the Greek
fable should have a real counterpart in the midst of our
modern life ? That young men in all the inexperience and
thoughtlessness of youth should be beguiled into just such a
fatality ; that there should be a possibility that they could
be blighted by just such a doom, and yet that song, and
poetry, and social illusion, and society customs should all be
thrown around courses which excite and develop this fatal-
ity ! What opera is complete without its drinking chorus ?
I remember when it used to be my forte to sing drinking
songs; so the world goes! Men triumph and rejoice going
to a doom to which death is a trifle. If I had fallen dead,
346 MY WIFE AND I
the first glass of wine I tasted, it would have been thought
a horrible thing; but it would have been better for my
mother, better for me, than to have lived as I did.''
"Oh, no, no, Bolton! donH say so; you become morbid
in dwelling on this subject."
"No, Hal. I only know more of it than you. This
curse has made life an unspeakable burden, a doom instead
of a privilege. It has disappointed my friends, and sub-
jected me to such humiliations and agonies that death seems
to me a refuge ; and yet it was all in its beginning mere
thoughtlessness and ignorance. I was lost before I knew
it."
"But you are not lost, and you shall not be!" I ex-
claimed. " You are good for more than most men now, and
you will come through this."
"Never! to be just as others are. I shall be a vessel
with a crack in it, always."
"Well, a vase of fine porcelain with a crack in it is
better than earthenware without," I said.
"If I had not disappointed myself and my friends so
often," said Bolton, "I might look on myself as sound and
sane. But the mere sight and smell of the wine at Hester-
mann's dinner gave me a giddy sensation that alarmed me ;
it showed that I was not yet out of danger, and it made
me resolve to strengthen myself by making you my keeper.
You have the advantage of perfectly healthy nerves that
have come to manhood without the strain of any false
stimulus, and you can be strong for both of us."
" Grod grant it ! " said I earnestly.
"But I warn you that, if the curse comes upon me, you
are not to trust me. I am a Christian and a man of honor
in my sane moments, but let me tell you, one glass of wine
would make me a liar on this subject. I should lie, and
intrigue, and deceive the very elect, to get at the miserable
completion of the aroused fury, and there are times when
THE FATES 347
I am SO excited that I fear I may take that first irrevocable
step ; it is a horror, a nightmare, a temptation of the Devili
for that there is a devil, men with my experience know ;
but there is a kind of safety in having a friend of a steady
pulse with me who knows all. The mere fact that you do
know helps hold me firm/^
"Bolton,'' said I, "the situation you offer to Caroline
in the care of the ' Ladies' Cabinet ' will of course oblige
her to come to New York. Shall you meet her and renew
your acquaintance ? "
"I do not desire to," he said.
There was a slight hesitancy and faltering of his voice
as he spoke.
" Yet it can hardly be possible that you will not meet;
you will have arrangements to make with her."
"That is one of the uses, among others, of having you.
All that relates to her affairs will pass through you; and
now, let us talk of the magazine and its programme for the
season. What is the reason, Hal, that you waste your
forces in short sketches? Why do you not boldly dash
out into a serial story ? Come, now, I am resolved among
other things on a serial story by Harry Henderson."
"And I will recommend a taking title," cried Jim Fel-
lows, who came in as we were talking, and stood behind
my chair. " Let us have
HENDERSON'S HORROR; OR, THE MYSTERY OF
THE BLOODY LATCH-KEY.
There 's a title to take with the reflecting public ! The
readers of serials are generally girls from twelve to twenty,
and they read them with their back hair down, lounging on
the bed, just before a nap after dinner, and there must be
enough blood and thunder, and murder and adultery and
mystery in them to keep the dear creatures reading at lea^t
half an hour."
348 MY WIFE AND I
"I think serial stories are about played out in our day,**
said I.
"Not a bit of it. There 's sister Nell, don't read any-
thing else. She is regularly running on five serial stories,
and among them all they keep her nicely a-going; and she
tells me that the case is the same with all the girls in her
set. The knowledge of the world and of human nature
that the pretty creatures get in this way is something
quite astounding. Nell is at present deeply interested in
a fair lady who connives with her chambermaid to pass off
her illegitimate child upon her husband as his own; and
we have lying and false swearing I say nothing of all
other kinds of interesting things on every page. Of course
this is written as a moral lesson, and interspersed with
pious reflections to teach girls as how they had n't oughter
do so and so. All this, you see, has a refining effect upon
the rising generation. '^
"But, really, Bolton, don't you think that it is treating
our modern society as children, to fall in with this extreme
fashion of story-telling? It seems so childish to need
pictures and stories for everything. Is n't your magazine
strong enough to lead and form public taste instead of fol-
lowing it ? ''
"Well, if I owned my magazine I would try it," said
Bolton. "But, you see, the Hestermanns, while they give
me carte blanche as to means to run it, expect of course
that it is to be run in the approved popular grooves that
the dear thoughtless ten million prefer. The people who
lounge on beds after dinner are our audience, and there
must be nothing wiser nor stronger than they can appre-
hend between sleeping and waking. We talk to a hlasi^
hurried, unreflecting, indolent generation, who want emo-
tion and don't care for reason. Something sharp and
spicy, something pungent and stinging no matter what
or whence. And now as they want this sort of thing,
THE FATES 349
why not give it to them ? Are there no other condiments
for seasoning stories besides intrigues, lies, murders, and
adulteries ? And if the young and unreflecting will read
stories, shouldn't some of the thoughtful and reflecting
make stories for them to read ? "
"Of course they should, Q. E. D.," said Jim Fellows,
touching the gas with a match, and sending a flare of light
upon our conference. "But come, now, behold the last
novelty of the season, '^ said he, tossing two cards of invi-
tation. " This is for us, as sons of the press and record-
ing angels, to be present at Wat Sydney's grand blow-out
next Tuesday. All the rank and fashion are to go. It is
to be very select, and there are people who would give
their eye-teeth for these cards, and can't get 'em. How
do ye say. Old Man of the Mountain, will you go ? "
"No," said Bolton; "not my line.''
"Well, at all events, Hal has got to go. I promised
the fair Alice that I 'd bring him if I had to take him by
the hair.''
I had a great mind to decline. I thought in my heart
it was not at all the wisest thing for me to go; but then,
Amare et sapere vix Deo I had never seen Sydney,
and I had a restless desire to see him and Eva together
and I thought of forty good reasons why I should ga
CHAPTER XXXI
THE GAME OF CBOQUET
Now I advise all serious, sensible individuals who never
intend to do anything that is not exactly most reasonable
and most prudent, and who always do exactly as they in-
tend, not to follow my steps on the present occasion, for
I am going to do exactly what is not to be recommended
to young gentlemen in my situation, and certainly what is
not at all prudent. For if a young man finds himself,
without recall, hopelessly in love with one whose smiles
are all for another, his best way is to keep out of her soci-
ety, and in a course of engrossing business that will leave
him as little time to think of her as possible.
I had every advantage for pursuing this course, for I
had a press of writing upon me, finishing up a batch of
literary job-work which I wished to get fairly out of the
way so that I might give my whole energies to Bolton in
our new enterprise. In fact, to go off philandering to a
croquet party up the North River was a sheer piece of
childish folly, and the only earthly reason I could really
give for it was the presence of a woman there that I had re-
solved to avoid. In fact, I felt that the thing was so alto-
gether silly that I pretended to myself that I was impreg-
nably resolved against it, and sat myself down in Bolton's
room making abstracts from some of his books, knowing all
the while that Jim would seek me out there and have his
moral fish-hook fast in my coat-collar, as in truth he did.
"Come, come, Hal,'' he said, bursting in, "I promised
the divinest of her sex to bring you along."
THE GAME OF CROQUET 351
"Oh, nonsense, Jim! it's out of the question," said I.
"I 've got to get this article done."
"Oh, you be hanged with your article! Come along!
What 's the use of a fellow's shutting himself up with
books ? I tell you, Hal, if you 're going to write for folks
you must see folks and folks must see you, and you must
be around and into and a part of all that's going on.
Come on! Why, you don't know the honor done you.
It 's a tip- top select party, and all the handsomest girls
and all the nobby fellows will be there, and no end of fun.
Sydney's place alone is worth going to see. It 's the crack
place on the river; and then they say the engagement is
going to be declared, and everybody is wild to know
whether it is or is n't to be, and the girls are furbishing up
fancy suits to croquet in. Miss Alice treated me to a
glimpse of hers as I met her on Tullegig's steps, and it 's
calculated to drive a fellow crazy, and so come now," said
Jim, pulling away my papers and laying hold of me, " let 's
go out and get some gloves and proceed to make ourselves
up. We have the press to represent, and we must be
nobby, so hang expense ! here 's for Jouvin's best, and let
to-morrow take care of itself."
Now, seconding all these temptations was that perverse
inclination that makes every man want to see a little more
and taste a little more of what he has had too much already.
Moreover I wanted to see Eva and Wat Sydney together.
I wanted to be certain and satisfy myself with my own
eyes not only that they were engaged, but that she was in
love with him. If she be, said I to myself, she is cer-
tainly an exquisite coquette and a dangerous woman for me
to keep up an acquaintance with.
In thinking over as I had done since Mrs. Van Arsdel's
motherly conversation all our intercourse and acquaintance
with each other, her conduct sometimes seemed to me to
be that of a veritable "Lady Clara Yere de Yere," bent m
352 MY WIFE AND I
amusing herself, and diversifying the tedium of fashionable
life by exciting feelings which she had no thought of re-
turning. When I took this view of matters I felt angry
and contemptuous, and resolved to show the fair lady that
I could be as indifferent as she. Sometimes I made myself
supremely wretched by supposing that it was by her desire
that Mrs. Van Arsdel had held the conversation with me,
and that it was a sort of intimation that she had perceived
my feelings, and resolved to put a decided check upon
them. But of course nothing so straightforward and sen-
sible as going to her for an explanation of all this was to
be thought of. In fact, our intercourse with one another
ever since the memorable occasion I refer to had been daily
lessening, and now was generally limited to passing the
most ordinary commonplaces with each other. She had
grown cold and dry, almost haughty, and I was conscious
of a most unnatural rigidity and constraint. It seemed to
me sometimes astonishing when I looked back a little, to
reflect how perfectly easy and free and unconstrained we
always had been up to a certain point, to find that now we
met with so little enjoyment, talked and said so little to
any purpose. It was as if some evil enchanter had touched
us with his wand, stiffening every nerve of pleasure. To
look forward to meeting her in society was no longer, as it
had been, to look forward to delightful hours ; and yet for
the life of me I could not help going where this most unsat-
isfactory, tantalizing intercourse was all I had to hope for.
But to-day, I said to myself, I would grasp the thorns
of the situation so firmly as to break them down and take
a firm hold on reality. If, indeed, her engagement were
to-day to be declared, I would face the music like a man,
walk up to her and present my congratulations in due form,
and then the acquaintance would make a gallant finale in
the glare of wedding lamps and the fanfaronade of wedding
festivities, and away to fresh fields and pastures new.
THE GAME OF CROQUET 353
In short, whatever a man is secretly inclined to do there
are always a hundred sensible incontrovertible reasons to
be found for doing, and so I found myself one of the gay
and festive throng on board the steamer. A party of well-
dressed people floating up the North Eiver of a bright
spring day is about as ideal a picture of travel as can be
desired. In point of natural scenery the Ehine is nothing
compared with the Hudson, and our American steamboats
certainly are as far ahead of any that ever appeared on the
Ehine as Aladdin's palace is ahead of an ordinary dwelling.
The most superb boat on the river had been retained for
the occasion, and a band of music added liveliness to the
scene as we moved off from the wharf in triumph, as gay,
glittering, festive a company as heart could wish.
Wat Sydney as host and entertainer was everywhere
present, making himself agreeable by the most devoted
attentions to the comfort of the bright band of tropical
birds, fluttering in silks and feathers and ribbons, whom
he had charge of for the day. I was presented to him by
Jim Fellows, and had an opportunity to see that apart from
his immense wealth he had no very striking personal points
to distinguish him from a hundred other young men about
him. His dress was scrupulously adjusted, with a care
and nicety which showed that he was by no means without
consideration of the personal impression he made. Every
article was the choicest and best that the most orthodox
fashionable emporiums pronounced the latest thing, or as
Jim Fellows phrased it, decidedly "nobby.'' He was of
a medium height, with very light hair and eyes, and the
thin complexion which usually attends that style, and
which, under the kind of exposure incident to a man's life,
generally tends to too much redness of face.
Altogether, my first running commentary on the man as
I shook hands with him was, that if Eva were in love with
him it was not for his beauty; yet I could see glances
354 MY WIFE AND I
falling on him on all sides from undeniably handsome eyes
that would have excused any man for having a favorable
conceit of his own personal presence.
Mr. Sydney was well accustomed to being the cynosure
of female eyes, and walked the deck with the assured step
of a man certain of pleasing. A rich, good-humored young
man who manifests himself daily in splendid turnouts, who
rains down flowers and confectionery among his feminine
acquaintances, and sends diamonds and pearls as philopena
presents, certainly does not need a romantic style of beauty
or any particular degree of mental culture to make his soci-
ety more than acceptable. Prudent mammas were gener-
ally of opinion that the height of felicity for a daughter
would be the position that should enable her to be the
mistress and dictatrix of his ample fortune. Mr. Sydney
was perfectly well aware of this state of things. He was
a man a little hlase with the kind attentions of matrons,
and tolerably secure of the good-will of very charming
young ladies. He had the prestige of success, and had
generally carried his points in the world of men and things.
Miss Eva Van Arsdel had been the first young lady who
had given him the novel sensation of a repulse, and thence-
forth became an object of absorbing interest in his eyes.
Under the careless good-humor of his general appearance
Sydney had a constitutional pertinacity, a persistence in
his own way that had been a source of many of his brilliant
successes in business. He was one of those whom obstacles
and difficulties only stimulate, and whose tenacity of pur-
pose increases with resistance. He was cautious, sagacious,
ready to wait and watch and renew the attack at intervals,
but never to give up. To succeed was a tribute to his own
self-esteem, and whatever was difficult of attainment was
the more valuable.
A little observation during the course of the first houi
convinced me that there was as yet no announcement of an
THE 6A1CE OF CROQUET 355
engagement. Mrs. Van Arsdel and Aunt Maria Wouyer-
mans, to be sure, were on most balmy and confidential
terms with Mr. Sydney, addressing him with every appear-
ance of mysterious intimacy, and quite willing to produce
the impression that the whole f^te was in some manner a
tribute to the family, but these appearances were not car-
ried out by any cooperative movements on the part of Eva
herself. She appeared radiant in a fanciful blue croquet
suit which threw out to advantage the golden shade of her
hair and the pink sea-shell delicacy of her cheek, and aa
usual she had her court around her and was managing her
circle with the address of a practiced habitude of society.
** Favors to none, to all she smiles extends,
Oft she rejects, but never once offends.
Bright as the sun, her beams the gazers strike,
And like the sun, they smile on all alike.''
Unlike many of her sex, Eva had the faculty of carrying
the full cup of bellehood without spilling an unseemly
drop, and ias she was one of those who seem to have quite
as much gift in charming her feminine as her masculine
acquaintances, she generally sat surrounded by an admiring
body-guard of girls who laughed at her jests and echoed
her bon mots and kept up a sort of radiant atmosphere of
life and motion and gayety around her. Her constitutional
good-nature, her readiness to admire other people, and to
help each in due season to some small portion of the ap*
plause and admiration which are lying about loose for gen-
eral circulation in society, all contributed to her popularity.
As I approached the circle they were discussing with great
animation the preliminaries of a match game of croquet
that was proposed to be played at Clairmont to-day.
"Oh, here comes Mr. Henderson! let's ask him,'' she
said, as I approached the circle.
" Don't you think it will be a nice thing 1 " she said.
"Mr. Sydney has arranged that after playing the first
856 MT WIFE AND I
games as a trial the four best players shall be elected to
play a match game, two on each side.''
"I think it will vary the usual monotony of croquet,"
said I.
"Hear him," she said gayly, "talk of the usual monot-
ony of croquet! For my part, I think there is a constant
variety to it, no two games are ever alike."
"To me," I said, "it seems that after a certain amount
of practice the result is likely to be the same thing, game
after game."
"Girls," she said, "I perceive that Mr. Henderson is
used to carrying all before him. He is probably a cham-
pion player who will walk through all the wickets as a
matter of course."
"Not at all," I said. "On the contrary, I shouldn't
wonder if I should * booby ' hopelessly at the very first
wicket."
"And none the worse for that," said Sydney. "I've
boobied three times running, in the first of a game, and yet
beaten; it gets one's blood up, and one will beat."
"For my part," said Miss Alice, "the more my blood
is up the less I can do ; if I get excited I lose my aim, my
hand trembles, and I miss the very simplest move."
"I think there is nothing varies so much as one's luck
in croquet," said Eva. "Sometimes for weeks together I
am sure to hit every aim and to carry every wicket, and
then all of a sudden, without rhyme or reason, I make the
most absurd failures, and generally when I pique myself
on success."
" I think. Miss Eva, I remember you as the best player
in Newport last summer," said Mr. Sydney.
"And likely as not I shall fail ingloriously to-day," said
she.
"Well, we shall all have a time for bringing our hands
in," said Mr. Sydney. "I have arranged four croquet
THE GAME OF CROQUET 857
grounds, and the fifth one is laid out for the trial game
with longer intervals and special difficulties in the arrange-
ment, to make it as exciting as possihle. The victorious
side is to have a prize.''
"Oh, how splendid! What is the prize to be?" was
the general exclamation.
" Behold, then ! " said Mr. Sydney, drawing from his
pocket a velvet case which when opened displayed a tiny
croquet mallet wrought in gold and set as a lady's pin.
Depending from it by four gold chains were four little balls
of emerald, ruby, amethyst, and topaz.
"How perfectly lovely! how divine! how beautiful!"
were the sounds that arose from the brilliant little circle
that were in a moment precipitated upon the treasure.
"You will really set them all by the ears, Mr. Sydney,"
said Mrs. Van Arsdel. "Croquet of itself is exciting
enough; one is apt to lose one's temper."
"You ought to see mamma and Mrs. Van Duzen and
Aunt Maria play," said Eva, "if you want to see an edify-
ing game ; it 's too funny. They are all so polite and so
dreadfully courtly and grieved to do anything disagreeable
to each other, and you know croquet is such a perfectly
selfish, savage, unchristian game; so when poor Mrs. Van
Duzen is told that she ought to croquet mamma's ball away
from the wicket, the dear lady is quite ready to cry, and
declares that it would be such a pity to disappoint her, that
she croquets her through her wicket, and looks round apolo-
gizing for her virtues with such a pitiful face ! ' Indeed,
my dear, I could n't help it! ' "
"Well," said Mrs. Van Arsdel, "I really think it is
too bad when a poor body has been battering and laboring
at a difficult wicket to be croqueted back a dozen times."
"It 's meant for the culture of Christian patience,
mamma," said Eva. "Croquet is the game of life, you
see. "
358 MT WIFE AND I
'^ Certainly," said Mr. Sydney, rubbing his hands, ''and
it teaches you just how to manage, use your friends to help
yourself along, and then croquet them into good positions;
use yoiv enemies as long as you want them, and then send
them to "
" The Devil, " said Jim Fellows, who never hesitated to
fill up an emphatic blank in the conversation.
"I didn't say that," said Mr. Sydney.
" But you meant it, all the same ; and that 's the long
and the short of the philosophy of the game of life," said
Jim.
"And," said I, "one may read all sorts of life histories
in the game. Some go on with a steady aim and true
stroke, and make wickets, and hit balls, yet are croqueted
back ingloriously or hopelessly wired and lose the game,
while others blunder advantageously and are croqueted
along by skillful partners into all the best places."
"There are few of us girls that make our own wickets
in life," said Eva. "We are all croqueted along by papas
and mammas."
"And many a man is croqueted along by a smart wife,"
said Sydney.
"But more women by smart husbands," said Mrs. Van
Arsdel.
On that there was a general exclamation, and the con-
versation forthwith whisked into one of those animated
whirlwinds that always arise when the comparative merits
of the sexes are moved. There was a flutter of ribbons and
a rustle of fans and a laughing cross-fire of sharp sayings,
till the whole was broken up by the announcement that we
were di*awing near the landing.
CHAPTER XXXn
THE MATCH GAME
The lawn at Clairmont made a brilliant spectacle, all
laid out with different croquet sets. The turf was like
velvet, and adjoining every ground was a pretty tent, with
seats and every commodious provision for repairing at once
any temporary derangement of the feminine toilette. The
fluttering of gay flags and pennons from these various tents
gave an airy and breezy look to the scene, and immediately
we formed ourselves into sets, and the games began. It
had been arranged that the preliminary playing should take
place immediately, and the match game be reserved till
after lunch. The various fancy costumes of the players,
lit up by the bright sunshine, and contrasted with the
emerald green of the lawn, formed a brilliant and animated
picture, watched with interest by groups of non-combatants
from rustic seats under the trees. Of course everybody
was a little nervous in the trial games, and there was the
usual amount of ill luck, and of " ohs and ahs '' of success
or failure. I made myself a " booby '' twice, in that unac-
countable way that seems like fatality. Then suddenly,
favored of the fates, made two wickets at once, seized an
antagonist's ball, and went with it at one heat through the
side wicket, the middle and other side wicket up to the
stake and down again, through the middle wicket to the
stake again, and then struck back a glorious rover to join
my partner. It was one of those prodigiously lucky runs,
when one's ball goes exactly where it is intended, and stops
exactly in the right place, and though it was mostly owing
360 MY WIFE AND I
to good luck, with the usual prestige of success I was cov-
ered with glory and congratulations, and my partner, Miss
Sophie Elmore, herself a champion at croquet, was pleased
to express most unbounded admiration, especially as our
side came out decidedly victorious.
Miss Sophie, a neat little vigorous brunette, in a ravish-
ing fancy croquet suit, entered into the game with all that
whole-hearted ardor which makes women such terrible com-
batants.
** Oh, I do hope that we shall be in at that final match
game ! '' she said, with a charming abandon of manner.
"I should so like to beat Eva Van Arsdel. Those Van
Arsdels always expect to carry all before them, and it
rather provokes me, I confess. Now, with you to help
me, Mr. Henderson, I am sure we could beat.''
"Don't put too much faith in my accidental run of
luck," I said. " * One swallow does not make a summer. ' "
"Oh, I 'm quite sure by the way you managed your game
that it wasn't luck. But you see I want to try with Eva
Van Arsdel again, for she and I were held to be the best
players at Newport last summer, and she beat in the last
* rubber ' we played. It was so provoking just one slip
of the mallet that ruined me ! You know, sometimes, how
your mallet will turn in your hands. She made just such
a slip and took the stroke over again. Now that is what
I never will do, you see," etc., etc.
In short, .1 could see that for pretty Miss Sophie, at
present, croquet was, to all intents and purposes, the whole
game of life, that every spangle and every hairpin about
her was vital with excitement to win.
After lunch came the ballot for the combatants who were
to play the deciding game, and the parties elected were:
Miss Sophie Elmore, Miss Eva Van Arsdel, Mr. Sydney,
and myself.
"Miss Van Arsdel," said Mr. Sydney, "you must be my
THE MATCH GAME 361
captain. After the feats that you and Mr. Henderson
have been performing it would be impossible to allow you
both on one side."
" I think just as likely as not you will be worsted for
your pains," said Eva. "I know Sophie of old for a ter-
rible antagonist, and when she pulls on her croquet gloves
like that, it means war to the knife, and no quarter. So,
my dear, begin the tournament."
The wickets were arranged at extra distances upon this
trial ground, and it was hardly prudent to attempt making
two wickets at once, but Miss Sophie played in the adven-
turous style, and sent her ball with a vigorous tap not only
through both the first wickets, but so far ahead that it was
entangled in the wires of the middle wicket, in a way that
made it impossible to give it a fair stroke.
" Now, how vexatious ! " she cried.
"I have two extra strokes for my two wickets, but I
shall make nothing by it." In fact. Miss Sophie, with
two nervous hits, succeeded only in placing her ball exactly
where with fair luck the next player must be sure to get it.
Eva now came through the first two wickets, one at a
time, and with a well-directed tap took possession of Miss
Sophie, who groaned audibly, "Oh, now she's got me!
well, there *s no saying now where she '11 stop."
In fact, Miss Eva performed very skillfully the rdle of
the "cat who doth play, and after slay." She was per-
fect mistress of the tactics of split-shots, which sent her
antagonist's ball one side the wicket and hers the other,
and all the other mysteries of the craft, and she used them
well, till she had been up and hit the stake and come down
to the middle wicket, when her luck failed.
Then came my turn, and I came through the first two
wickets, struck her ball and used it for the next two wick-
ets, till I came near my partner, when with a prosperous
split-shot I sent her off to distant regions, struck my part-
362 MY WIFE AND I
ner's ball, put it through its wicket, and came and sta-
tioned myself within its reach for future use.
Then came Mr. Sydney with a vigorous succession of
hits, and knocked us apart; sent one to one side of the
ground, and one to the other, and went gallantly up to his
partner. By this time our blood was thoroughly up, and
the game became, as Eva prophesied, "war to the knife. ^'
Mohawk Indians could not have been more merciless in
purposes of utter mischief to each other than we, and for
a while it seemed as if nothing was done but to attack
each other's balls, and send them as far as possible to the
uttermost part of the grounds. As each had about equal
skill in making long shots the reunion, however, was con-
stantly effected, and thus each in turn was beaten back
from the wickets, till it seemed for a while ^hat the game
would make no progress.
At last, however, one slip of our antagonists threw the
power into our hands, and Miss Sophie used it to take herself
and me up through three wickets to the stake, and thence
down again till the intricate middle wicket stopped our course.
A burst of cheering greeted her success, and the dark
little lady seemed to glow like a coal of fire. I was n't sure
that sparks did not snap from her eyes as she ended her
performance with a croquet that sent Eva's ball spinning
to the most inaccessible distance.
A well-pointed shot from Wat Sydney again turned the
. tide of battle, and routed the victors, while he went to the
rescue of the banished princess, and took her back to posi-
tion.
Every turn of the tide and every good shot were hailed
with cheers, and the excitement became intense. There
were points in the battle as hard to carry as the Malakoff,
and we did nothing but fight, without advancing a step.
It seemed for a while that none of us would ever so far get
the advantage of another as to pass that downward middle
THE MATCH GAME 363
wicket Every successive step was won by battles. The
ladies were so excited that they seemed two flames of fire.
Every nerve in them was alive, and we men felt ourselves
only clumsy instruments of their enkindled ardor. We
were ordered about, commanded, rebuked, encouraged, and
cheered on to the fray with a pungency and vigor of deci-
sion that made us quite secondary characters in the scene.
At last a fortunate stroke gave Miss Sophie the command
of the game, and she dashed through the middle wicket,
sent Eva's ball to farthest regions up, and Mr. Sydney's
down to the stake, took mine with her in her victorious
race through wicket after wicket, quite through to the
stake, and then leaving me for a moment she croqueted
Sydney's ball against the stake, and put it out. A general
cheer and shouts of " Victory " arose.
"We 've got it! We 're quite sure to go out the next
move ! ^^ she said, in triumph, as she left her ball by my
side. "She never can hit at that distance.''
"I can try, though," said Eva, walking across the
ground, and taking her place by her ball, pale and resolved,
with a concentrated calmness. She sighted the balls delib-
erately, poised her mallet, took aim, and gave a well-con-
sidered stroke. Like a straight-aimed arrow the ball flew
across the green, through the final wicket, and struck
Sophie's ball!
A general cheering arose, and the victorious markswoman
walked deliberately down to finish her work. One stroka
put Sophie out of the combat, the next struck upon me,
and then from me up to the head of the last two wickets
that yet remained to be made. She came through these
with one straight stroke, and hit me again.
"Now for it,'' she said, setting her red-booted foot firmly
on the ball, and with one virulent tap, away flew my ball
to the other end of the ground, while almost immediately
hers hit the stake and the victory was won.
364 MY WIFE AND I
A general shout, and three cheers, and all the spectators
started from their seats like a troop of gay tropical birds,
and came flocking around the victors.
I knelt down, and laid my mallet at her feet. " Beauti-
ful princess!" said I, "behold your enemies, conquered,
await your sentence."
''Arise, Sir Knight," she said, laughing; "I sentence
you to write a ballad describing this battle. Gome, So-
phie," she added, turning gayly to the brunette, "let's
shake hands on it. . You shall have your revenge of me at
Newport this summer," and the two rival fair ones shook
hands in all apparent amity.
Wat Sydney now advancing presented the prize with a
gallant bow, and Eva accepted it graciously, and fastened
the blue scarf that floated over her shoulder with it, and
then the whole party adjourned to another portion of the
lawn, which had been arranged for dancing; the music
struck up, and soon we were all joining in the dance with
a general hilarity.
And so ended the day at Glairmont, and we came home
under a broad full moon, to the sound of music on the
waters.
CHAPTER XXXni
LETTER FBOM EVA VAN ABSDEL
My dearest Belle, Since I last wrote you wondrous
things have taken place, and of course I must keep you
au courant.
In the first place Mr. Sydney came hack to our horizon
like a comet in a hlaze of glory. The first harhinger of
his return was not himself in propria, hut card& for a cro-
quet f^te up at Glairmont got up with the last degree of
elegance.
Mr. Sydney, it appears, understands the effect of a
gilded frame to set off a picture, and so resolved to mani-
fest himself to us in all his surroundings at Clairmont.
The party was to be very select and recherche, and of
course everybody was just wild to go, and the Elmores in
particular were on the qui vive to know if we had invita-
tions before them. Sophie Elmore called down for nothing
but to see. We had all the satisfaction there was to be
got in showing her our cards and letting her know that
they had come two days sooner than theirs. Aunt Maria
contrived to give them to understand that Mr. Sydney gave
the entertainment mostly on my account, which I think
was assuming quite too much in the case. I am positively
tired of these mean little rivalries and these races that are
run between families.
It is thought that Sophie Elmore is quite fascinated by
Mr. Sydney. Sophie is a nice, spirited girl, with a good,
generous heart as I believe, and it 's a thousand pities she
should n't have him if she cares for him.
866 Bnr WIFE AND I
But, to my story. You may imagine the fuss at Tulle-
gig's. Of course, we belong to the class who live in the
enjoyment of "nothing to wear," and the first result of a
projected entertainment is to throw us all on our knees
before TuUegig, who queens it over us accordingly.
I was just dying to find out if a certain person was to
be there. Of late our intercourse has been so very stately
and diplomatic that it really becomes exciting. He has
avoided every appearance of intimacy, every approach to
our old confidential standing, and yet apparently for the
life of him cannot keep from taking views of me at safe
distance; so, as I said, it was something to see if he would
be there.
As to Glairmont, I think in the course of my life I have
seen fine grounds, fine houses, fine furniture, and fine f^tes
before. Nevertheless, I must do Sydney the justice to say
that he gave a most charming and beautiful entertainment,
where everything was just as lovely as could be. We went
up on a splendid boat to the sound of music. We had a
magnificent lunch under the trees, and there were arrange-
ments for four games to go on at once, which made a gay
and animated tableau. All the girls wore the prettiest cos-
tumes you can imagine, each one seeming prettier than the
other; and when they were all moving about in the game
it made a bright, cheerful effect. Mr. Henderson was
there and distinguished himself to such a degree that he
was appointed one of the four who were to play a match
game, in conclusion, for a prize. Curiously enough he
played with Sophie against Sydney and myself. How we
did fight ! Sophie is one of those girls that feel everything
to the tips of their fingers, and I am another, and if we
did n't make those men bestir themselves ! I fancy they
found women rulers were of a kind to keep men pretty
busy.
I can imagine the excitement we women would make of
LETTER FROM EVA VAN ARSDEL 867
an election if we should ever get into politics. Would we
not croquet our adversaries' balls, and make stunning split-
shots in parties, and wire ourselves artfully behind wickets,
and do all sorts of perplexing things? I confess if the
excitement should get to be half as great as in playing
croquet, I should tremble to think of it.
Well, it was some excitement at all events to play against
each other, he and I. Did n't I seek out his ball, did n't
I pursue it, beat it back from wickets, come on it with
most surprising and unexpected shots? Sophie fought
with desperation on the other side, and at last they seemed
to have carried the day, there was but one stroke wanting
to put them out ; they had killed Sydney at the stake and
banished me to the farthest extremity of the ground.
Mamma always said I had the genius for emergencies, and
if you '11 believe me I struck quite across the ground and
hit Sophie's ball and sent it out, and then I took his back
to make my two last wickets with, and finally with an im-
posing coup de theatre I croqueted him to the other end
of the ground, and went out amid thunders of applause.
He took it with great presence of mind, knelt down and
laid the mallet handsomely at my feet, and professed to
deliver himself captive, and I imposed it on him as a task
to write a ballad descriptive of the encounter. So he was
shut up for about half an hour in the library, and came out
with a very fine and funny ballad in Chevy Chace measure
describing our exploits, which was read under the trees,
and cheered and encored in the liveliest manner possible.
On the whole, Mr. Henderson may be said to have had
quite a society success yesterday, as I heard him very much
admired, and the Elmores overwhelmed him with pressing
invitations to call, to come to their soir^s, etc., etc. You
see, these Elmores have everything money can buy, and so
they are distracted to be literary, or at least to have literary
people in their train, and they have always been wanting
368 MY WIFE AND I
to get Henderson and Jim Fellows to their receptions. So
I heard Mrs. Elmore overwhelming him with compliments
on his poem in a way that quite amused me, for I knew
enough of him to know exactly how all this seemed to him.
He is of all persons one of the most difficult to flatter, and
has the keenest sense of the ridiculous; and Mrs. Elmore's
style is as if one should empty a bushel basket of peaches
or grapes on your head instead of passing the fruit dish.
But I am so busy traducing my neighbors that I forgot
to say I won the croquet prize, which was duly presented.
It was a gold croquet mallet set as a pin with four balls of
emerald, amethyst, ruby, and topaz depending from it. It
had quite an Etruscan effect and was very pretty, but when
I saw how much Sophie really took the defeat to heart my
soul was moved for her, and I made a peace-offering by
getting her to accept it. It was not easy at first, but I
made a point of it and insisted upon it with all my logic,
telling her that in point of skill she had really won the
game, that my last stroke was only a lucky accident, and
you know I can generally talk people into almost anything
I set my heart on, and so as Sophie was flattered by my
estimate of her skill, and as the bauble is a pretty one I
prevailed on her to take it. I am tired and sick of this
fuss between the Elmores and us, and don't mean to have
more of it, for Sophie really is a nice girl, and not a bit
more spoiled than any of the rest of us, notwithstanding
all the nonsense of her family, and she and I have agreed
to be fast friends for the future whatever may come.
I had one other motive in this move. I never have
accepted jewelry from Sydney, and I was quite willing to
be rid of this. If I could only croquet his heart down to
Sophie to use, it might be a nice thing. I fancy she would
like it.
I managed my cards quite adroitly all day to avoid a
tete-a-tete interview with Sydney. I was careful always
LETTER FROM EVA VAN ARSDEL 369
to be in the centre of a group of two or three, and when
he asked me to walk through the conservatories with him
I said, " Gome, Susan and Jane/' and took them along.
As to somebody else, he made no attempt of the kind,
though I could see that he saw me wherever I went. Do
these creatures suppose we don't see their eyes, and fancy
that they conceal their feelings? I am perfectly certain
that whatever the matter is, he thinks as much of me as
ever he did.
Well, it was moonlight and music all the way home,
the band playing the most heart-breaking, entrancing har-
monies from Beethoven and melodies from Schubert, and
then Wat Sydney annoyed me beyond measure by keeping
up a distracting chit-chat when I wanted to be quiet and
listen. He cares nothing for music, and people who don't
are like flies, they have no mercy and never will leave
you a quiet moment. The other one went off by himself^
gazed at the moon and heard the music all in the most
proper and romantic style, and looked like a handsome
tenor at an opera.
So far, my dear, the history of our affairs. But some-
thing more surprising than ever you heard has just hap-
pened, and I must hasten to jot it down.
Yesterday afternoon, being worried and wearied with the
day before, I left your letter, as you see, and teased Ida
to go out driving with me in the Park. She had promised
Ef&e St. Clere to sketch some patterns of arbors and gar-
den seats that are there, for her new place at Fern Valley,
and I had resolved on a lonely ramble to clear my heart
and brain. Moreover, the last time I was there I saw
from one of the bridges a very pretty cascade falling into
a charming little wooded lake in the distance. I resolved
to go in search of this same cascade which is deep in a
shady labyrinth of paths
370 MY WIFE AND I
Well, it was a most lovely perfect day, and we left our
carriage at the terrace and started off for our ramble, Ida
with her sketch-book in hand. She was very soon hard
at work at a rustic summer-house, while I plunged into a
woody tangle of paths guided only by the distant sound of
the cascades. It was toward evening and the paths seemed
quite solitary, for I met not a creature. I might really
have thought I was among the ferns and white birches up
in Conway, or anywhere in the mountains, it was so per-
fectly mossy and wild and solitary. A flock of wild geese
seemed to be making an odd sort of outlandish noise, far
in a deep, dark tangle of bushes, and it appeared to me to
produce the impression of utter solitude more than any-
thing else. Evidently it was a sort of wild lair seldom
invaded. I still heard the noise of the cascade through a
thicket of leaves, but could not get a sight of it. Some-
times it seemed near and sometimes far off, but at last I
thought I hit upon a winding path that seemed to promise
to take me to it. It wound round a declivity, and I could
tell by the sound I was approaching the water. I was
quite animated, and ran forward till a sudden turn brought
me to the head of the cascade where there was a railing
and one seat, and as I came running down I saw suddenly
a man with a book in his hand sitting on this seat, and it
was Mr. Henderson.
He rose up when he saw me and looked pale, but an
expression of perfectly rapturous delight passed over his
face as I checked myself astonished.
"Miss Van Arsdel!" he said. "To what happy fate
do I owe this good fortune ? "
I recovered myself and said that "I was not aware of
any particular good fortune in the case."
^*Not to you, perhaps, '^ he said, "but to me. I have
seen nothing of you for so long, " he added rather piteously.
"There has been nothing that I am aware of to prevent
LETTER FROM EVA VAN ARSDEL 871
your seeing me," I said. "If Mr. Henderson chooses to
make himself strange to his friends it is his own affair."
He looked confused and murmured something 'about "many
engagements and business."
"Mr. Henderson, you will excuse me," said I, resolved
not to have this sort of thing go on any longer. "You
have always been treated at our house as an intimate and
valued friend; of late you seem to prefer to act like a cere-
monious stranger."
"Indeed, you mistake me entirely. Miss Van Arsdel,"
he said eagerly. "You must know my feelings; you
must appreciate my reasons; you see why I cannot and
ought not."
"I am quite in the dark as to both," I said. "I cannot
see any reason why we should not be on the old footing,
I am sure. You have acted of late as if you were afraid
to meet me; it is all perfectly unaccountable to me. Why
should you do so 1 What reason can there be ? "
"Because," he said, with a sort of desperation, "because
I love you. Miss Van Arsdel. Because I always shall love
you too well to associate with you as the wife or betrothed
bride of another man."
"There is no occasion you should, Mr. Henderson. I
am not, so far as I understand, either wife or betrothed to
any man," I said.
He looked perfectly thunderstruck.
"Yet I heard it from the best authority."
"Erom what authority?" said I, "for I deny it."
"Your mother."
"My mother?" I was thunderstruck in my turn; here
it was, to be sure. Poor mammal I saw through the
whole mystery.
"Your mother told me," he went on, "that there was a
tacit engagement which was to be declared on Mr. Sydney's
return, and cautioned me against an undue intimacy."
372 MY WIFE AND I
''My mother," I said, "has done her utmost to per-
suade me to this engagement. I refused Mr. Sydney out
and out in the beginning. She persuaded me to allow him
to continue his attentions in hope of changing my mind,
but it never has changed."
He grew agitated and spoke very quickly.
" Oh, tell me. Miss Van Arsdel, if I may hope for suc-
cess in making the same effort ? "
"I shouldn't be surprised if you might," said I.
There followed a sort of electric flash and a confusion of
wild words after this really, my dear, I cannot remember
half what he said only the next I knew, somehow, we
were walking arm in arm together.
What a talk we had, and what a walk up and down
those tangled alleys ! going over everything and explaining
everything. It was a bright long twilight, and the great
silver moon rose upon us while yet we were talking. After
a while I heard Ida calling up and down the paths for me.
She came up and met us with her sketch-book under her
arm.
"Ida, we 're engaged, Harry and I," I said.
"So I thought," she said, looking at us kindly and
stretching out both hands*
I took one and he the other.
" Do you think I have any chance with your parents ? "
asked Harry.
"I think," said Ida, "that you will find trouble at first,
but you may rely on Eva, she will never change; but we
must go home."
"Yes," said I, "il would not do to introduce the matter
by getting up a domestic alarm and sending a party to drag
the lake for us ; we must drive home in a peaceable, orderly
manner," and so, it being agreed among us that I should
try my diplomatic powers on mamma first, and Harry
should speak to papa afterward, we drove home.
LETTER FROM EVA VAN ARSDEL 873
Well, now, Belle, it is all over the mystery, I mean;
and the struggle with the powers, that bids to begin. How
odd it is that marriage, whioh is a thing of all others most
personal and individual, is a thing where all your friends
want you to act to please them!
Mamma probably in her day felt toward papa just as I
feel, but I am sure she will be drowned in despair that I
cannot see Wat Sydney with her eyes, and that I do choose
to see Harry with mine. But it is n't mamma that is to
live with him, it is I ; it is my fearful venture for life,
not hers. I am to give the right to have and to hold
me till life's end. When I think of that I wonder I am
not afraid to risk it with any man, but with him I am not.
I know him 90 intimately and trust him so entirely.
What a laugh I gave him last night, telling him how
foolishly he had acted; he likes to have me take him off,
and seemed perfectly astonished that I had had the per-
spicacity to read his feelings. These men, my dear, have
a kind of innocent stupidity in matters of this kind that is
refreshing !
Well, if I am not mistaken, there was one blissful in-
dividual sent home in Kew York last night, notwithstand-
ing the terrors of the " stem parents " that are yet to be
encountered.
How I do chatter on! Well, my dear Belle, you see I
have kept my word. I always told you that I would let
you know when I was engaged, the very first of any one,
and now here it is. You may make the most of it and
tell whom you please, for I shall never change. I am as
firm as Ben Lomond,
Ever your loving Eta.
CHAPTER XXXIV
DOMESTIC CONSULTATIONS
On the afternoon after the croquet party Annt Maria
Wouvermans and Mrs. Van Arsdel, withdrawn to the most
confidential recess of the house, held mysterious council.
"Well, Nelly,'' said Aunt Maria, "how did you think
things looked yesterday ? "
" I thought a crisis was impending, hut after all nothing
came. But you see, Maria," said Mrs. Van Arsdel, "that
girl! she is the most peculiar creature. She wouldn't give
him the least chance ; she just held herself away from him.
Two or three times I tried to arrange that they should be
alone together, hut she would n't. She would keep Susan
and Jane Seaton at her elbow as if they had been glued to
her."
" It was so provoking, " said Aunt Maria, " because all
the Elmores were there watching and whispering. Those
Elmores are in such an elated state on account of the wed-
ding in their family. You 'd really think it was a royal
marriage at the very least; and they whisper about and
talk as if we had been trying to catch Sydney and could n't;
that 's what provokes me ! They were all on tiptoe watching
every turn, and I did long to be able to come down on
them with an announcement! What ails Eva? Of course
she must mean to have him ; no girl at her age would be
fool enough to refuse such an offer; you see she's three-
and-twenty."
" Well, if you '11 believe me, Eva actually went and gave
that croquet pin Sydney gave her to Sophie Elmore! I
DOMESTIC CONSULTATIONS 375
overheard her urging it on her, and he overheard it too,
and I know he didn't like it; it was so very marked a
thing, you see ! "
"Eva gave that pin to Sophie Elmore! The girl is
crazy. She is too provoking for anything! I can't think
what it is, Nelly, makes your girls so singular."
Mrs. Wouvermans, it will appear, was one of that very
common class of good people who improve every opportu-
nity to show how very senseless their neighbors are com-
pared with themselves. The sole and only reason, as
might be gathered from her remarks, why ^ything dis-
agreeable happened to anybody was because they did not
do, or had not done, just as she should have done in their
circumstances.
Kow Mrs. Van Arsdel, though conceding in general that
sister Maria was stronger and brighter than herself, was
somewhat rebellious under the process of having it insisted
in detail that every unfortunate turn of affairs was her
fault, and so she answered with some spirit :
"I don't see that my girls are any more singular than
other people's. Very few mothers have brought up nicer
girls than mine. Everybody says so."
"And I say, Nelly, they are peculiar," insisted Mrs.
Wouvermans. "There 's Ida going off at her tangent! and
Miss Eva! Well! one thing, it isn't my fault. I've
done the very best I could in instructing them ! It must
come from the Van Arsdel side of the house. I 'm sure in
our family girls never made so much trouble. We all grew
up sensible, and took the very best offer we had, and were
married and went about our duties without any fuss.
Though, of course, we never had a chance like this."
"Now, I shouldn't wonder in the least," said Mrs. Van
Arsdel, "if Sydney should fly off to Sophie Elmore. It 's
evident that she is perfectly infatuated with him! and you
know men's hearts are caught on the rebound very often."
376 MY WIFE AND I
"Oh yes," said Aunt Maria, "I shouldn't wonder, just
as Jerrold Macy flew off to Blanche Sinclair, when Edith
Enderly coquetted so with him. He never would have
gone to Blanche in the world if Edith had not thrown him
off. Edith was sorry enough afterward when it was too
late to help it."
"I declare," said Mrs. Van Arsdel, "one never knows
what trouble is till one has girls at the marrying age ! "
"It's all your own fault," said Aunt Maria, "you in-
dulge them too much. Eor my part," she continued, "I
like the French way of arranging these things. It ought
not to be left to the choice of a young silly girl. The
parents ought to arrange for her, and then the thing is set-
tled without any trouble. Of course people of experience
in mature life can choose better for a girl than she can
choose for herself I Our girls in America have too much
liberty. If I had daughters to bring up I should bring
them up so that they would never think of disputing what
I told them."
"So you are always saying, Maria," said Mrs. Van
Arsde}; "it 's quite safe to say what you '11 do when you
have n't any, but it 's very provoking to me. I only wish
you had Ida and Eva to manage."
"I only wish I had!" said Aunt Maria. "I should
have had them both well married by this time. There
shouldn't be any of this kind of nonsense that you allow.
I 'd set down my foot. I would n't have it. My daugh-
ters should obey me. You let them make a perfect nose-
of-wax of you. They treat you in any way they please."
"You always think so much of yourself, Maria, and
whatever happens you turn round and blame me. I wish
to mercy you 'd had children, and then you 'd see! People
who have n't are always delighted with themselves and
always criticising people who have. If you had a family
of children to manage they 'd soon bring you down."
DOMESTIC CONSULTATIONS 377
"Well, Nelly, you *11 just see, you '11 have a lot of old
maids on your hands, that 's all,'^ said Aunt Maria. "Ida
is a gone case now, and Eva is on the certain road. Girls
that are so difficult and romantic and can't tell their own
mind are sure to make old maids at last. There was Ellen
Gilliflower, and Jane Seabright, they might both have had
houses and horses and carriages of their own if they had
taken offers when they could get them,''
"You know poor Jane lost her lover."
"To be sure. Well, he was dead, wasn't he? and she
couldn't marry him, but was that any reason why she
never should marry anybody? There was John Smithson
would have put her at the head of one of the best establish-
ments about New York, and she might have had her own
coup^ and horses just as Mrs. Smithson does now. It 's
all this ridiculous idea about loving. Why, girls can love
anybody they 've a mind to, and if I had a daughter she
should,''
"Oh! I don't know, Maria," said Mrs. Van Arsdel.
"I think it is a pretty serious thing to force a daughter's
affections."
" Fiddlestick upon affections, Nelly ; don't you begin to
talk. It makes me perfectly sick to hear the twaddle
about it. People in good circumstances always like each
other well enough, and any girPcan get along with any
man that puts her in a good position and takes good care
of her. If Ida had been made to marry a good man when
she first came out of school she never would have gone off
at all these tangents, and she 'd have been a contented
woman, and so would Eva. She ought to be made to
marry Wat Sydney; it is a tempting of Providence to let
the thing drag on so. Now, if Sydney was like Sim Eiv-
ington, I would n't say a word. I think Polly's conduct
is perfectly abominable, and if Sim goes on getting drunk
and raises a hell upon earth at home, Polly may just have
378 MY WIFE AND I
herself to thank for it, for she was told all about him.
She did it with her eyes open, but Eva's case is different."
At this moment the door-bell rang, and the waiter
brought in a letter on a silver salver. Both ladies pounced
upon it, and Aunt Maria, saying, "It 's to you, from Syd-
ney," eagerly broke it open and began reading.
"I should think, sister," said Mrs. Van Arsdel, in an
injured tone, " I might be allowed the first reading of my
own letters."
"Oh, pshaw, don't be so peevish," said Aunt Maria,
pushing it petulantly toward her. "If you don't want me
to take any interest in your affairs I 'm sure I don't see
why I should. I '11 go, and you may manage them your-
self."
"But, Maria," said poor Mrs. Van Arsdel apologeti-
cally, "one naturally has the wish to see one's own letters
first."
"Well, mercy on us, child, don't be in a passion about
it," said Aunt Maria; "you've got your letter, haven't
you? Do read it, and you '11 see it 's just as I thought.
That girl has offended him with her airs and graces, and
he is just on the point of giving her up."
"But, you see, he says that he still desires to propose
to her," said Mrs. Van Arsdel, reading, "only that as her
manner to him is so marked he does not wish to expose
himself to another refusal."
"Well," said Aunt Maria, "now you see, Nelly, after
all, that letter leaves the game in Eva's own hands. If
now she will behave herself and let you invite him to an
interview and treat him properly, it can all be settled.
The letter, in fact, amounts to a proposal in form. Now,
Nelly, that girl must be made to behave herself. I wish
I could put some pluck into you; you must be decided
with her."
"It's of no use, sister, you don't know Eva. She's
DOMESTIC CONSULTATIONS 379
an easy child to be coaxed, but she has a terrible will of
her own. The only way to manage her is through her
affections. I can't bear to cross her, for she always was
a good child.**
"Well, then, tell her just how critical the state of the
family is. She may have it in her power to save her father
from failure. It may be just life or death with us all.
Put it to her strongly. It would be a pretty thing, in-
deed, if instead of being mistress of Clairmont and that
place at Newport, we should all be driven to take second-
rate houses and live like nobodies, just for her foolish
fancies. You ought to frighten her, Nelly. Set it out
strongly. Appeal to her affections."
"WeU, I shall do my best," said Mrs. Van Arsdel.
" Wher& is she ? let me talk with her," said Aunt Maria.
"She and Ida are both gone driving in the Park this
afternoon, but after all, sister, I think / had best manage
it. I think I understand Eva better than you do. She
would do more for me than for anybody, I think, for the
child is very affectionate."
"There can't be anybody else in the case, can there t"
said Aunt Maria. "I began to think it rather imprudent
to have that Henderson round so much, but of late he
seems to have stopped coming."
"I flatter myself I managed him," said Mrs. Van Ars-
del, with complacency. " I gave him a little motherly admo-
nition that had a wonderful effect. After all, it was a duty
I owed to him, poor youth! Eva is wonderfully fascinat-
ing, and I could see he was getting too much interested in
her. I have a regard for him. He is a nice fellow."
"I intended to have him take Ida," said Aunt Maria.
"That would have been the proper thing to do."
" Well, Maria, I should think you might have found out
by this time that everybody in the world is n't going to
walk in the ways you mark out for them."
380 MY WIFE AND I
"It would be better for them if they would,'' said Aunt
Maria. " If I had had the bringing up of your children
from the beginning, Nelly, and you had never interfered,
I think you would have seen results that you never will
see now. It seems mysterious that Providence shouldn't
send children to those best fitted to bring them up. Well,
you must do the best you can. What time is itf Dear
me, it is almost dinner-time and I have a new table girl
to*day. I expect she '11 have everything topsyturvy. I '11
call round to-morrow to see how things come on.''
CHAPTER XXXV
WKALTH VERSUS LOVE
Eva Van Aksdel "Wm seftted in h^t apaHment in all
that tremulous flush of happiness and hope, that confusioti
of feeling, which a young girl experiences when she thinks
that the gi'eat crisis of her lif has been passed, and hei^
destiny happily decided.
"Yes, yes," she said to herself, ''I like him, I like him;
and I am going to like him, no matter what mamma, or
Aunt Maria, or all the world say. I '11 stand by him
through life and death."
At this moment her mothet came into the room.
"Deai met Eva, child, not gone to bed yet! Why^
what's the mattet? how flushed your cheeks ea^l Why,
you look really feverish*"
"Do IV* said Eva, hardly knowing what she iras say-'
ing. '^Well, I suppose that is becoming, at any rate."
"Aren't you wellt" said he* mother. "Does yotur
head ache ? "
"Well? certainly, nicely; nsvsr better, mamma deal?,"
said Eva caressiiigly, coming and seating herself on her
mother's knee, and putting her arm atound her neck'
"never better, mother."
" Well, Eva, then I am glad of it. I just Wanted a few
minutes alone with you to-night. I have got something
to tell you" and she drew a letter from her pocket.
"Here 's this letter from Mr. Sydney; I want to read ytm
something from it."
"Oh dear, mamma! what's the usef Don't yon think
it rather stupid, reading letters ? "
382 MY WIFE AND I
"My dear child, Mr. Sydney is such a good man, and
so devoted to you."
"I haven't the least objection, mamma, to his being a
good man. Long may he be so. But as to his being de-
voted to me, I am sorry for it."
"At least, Eva, just read this letter there's a dear;
and I am sure you must see how like a gentleman he
writes. "
Eva took the letter from her mother's hand and ran it
over hurriedly.
"All no use, mamma, dear," she said, when she had
done. "It won't hurt him. He'll get over this just as
people do with the chicken-pox. The fact is, mamma,
Mr. Sydney is a man that can't bear to be balked in any-
thing that he has once undertaken to do. It is not that he
loves me so very dreadfully, but he has set out to have
me. If he could have got me, ten to one he would have
tired of me before now. You know he said that he never
cared anything about a girl that he knew he could have.
It is simply and only because I have kept myself out of
his way and been hard to get that he wants me. If he
once had me for a wife, I should be all well enough, but
I should be got, and he 'd be off after the next thing he
could not get. That 's just his nature, mamma."
"But, Eva dear, such a fine man as he is."
"I do not see that he is so very fine."
" But, Eva, only look at the young men that girls marry !
Why, there's that yoimg Rivington; he's drunk three
nights in a week, so they tell me. And there are worse
stories than that about him. He has been bad in every
kind of way that a man could be bad. And yet, Polly
Elmore is perfectly crazy with delight to have her daughter
get him. And here 's Wat Sydney, who, everybody says,
is always perfectly sober and correct."
" Well, mamma dear, if it is only a sober, correct man
WEALTH VERSUS LOVE 383
that you want me to have, there 's that Mr. Henderson,
just as sober and correct, and a great deal more cultivated
and agreeable."
"How absurd of you, my daughter I Mr. Henderson
has not anything to support a wife on. He is a good
moral young man, I admit, and agreeable, and has talent
and all that; but, my dear Eva, you are not fitted to con-
tend with poverty. You must marry a man that can sup-
port you in the position that you have always been in. "
" Whether I love him or not, mamma 1 "
"My dear Eva, you would, of cpurse, love your hus-
band. A man that is able to take care of you and get you
everything that you want give you every wish of your
heart you would love of course."
"Well, mamma, I have got a man that does exactly that
for me, now," said Eva, "and I don't need another.
That 's just what papa does for me. And now, when I
marry, I want a companion that suits me. I have got now
all the bracelets, and jewelry, and finger-rings that I can
think of; and if I wanted forty more I could tease them
out of papa any day, or kiss them out of him. Pa always
gets me everything I want; so I don't see what I want of
Mr. Sydney."
"Well, now, my dear Eva, I must speak to you seri-
ously. You are old enough now not to be talked to like
a child. The fact is, my darling, there is nothing so inse-
cure as our life here. Your father, my love, is reported
to be a great deal richer than he is. Of course we have to
keep up the idea, because it helps his business. But the
last two or three years he has met with terrible losses, and
I have seen him sometimes so nervous about our family
expenditures that, really, there was no comfort in life.
But, then, we had this match in view. We supposed, of
course, that it was coming off. And such a splendid set-
tlement on you would help the family every way. Mr.
384 MY WIFE AND I
Sjdney is a very generous man; and the use of his capital,
the credit that the marriage would give to your father in
business circles, would be immense. And then, my child,
just think of the establishment you would have ! Why,
there is not such an establishment in the country as his
place on the North River ! You saw it yesterday. What
could you ask more ? And there is that villa at Newport.
You might be there in the summer, and have all your sis-
ters there. And he is a man of the most splendid taste as
to equipages and furniture, and everything of that sort.
And, as I said before, ^he is a good man."
"But, mamma, mamma, it will never do. Not if he
had the East and West Indies. All that can't buy your
little Eva. Tell me, now, mamma, dear, was pa a rich
man when you married him I mean when you fell in
love with him 1 "
"Well, no, dear, not very; though people always said
that he was a man that would rise."
"But you didn't begin in a house like this, mamma.
You began at the beginning and helped him up, didn't
you 1 "
" Well, yed, dear, we did begin in a quiet way ; and I
had to live pretty carefully the first years of my life; and
worked hard, and know all about it; and I want to save
you from going through the same that I did."
"Maybe if you did I should not turn out as you are
How. But really, mother, if pa is embarrassed, why dp
we live sol Why don't we economize? I am sure I am
willing to."
"Oh, darling! we mustn't. We mustn't make any
change ; because, if the idea should once get running that
there is any difl&oulty about money, everybody would be
down on your father. We have to keep everything going,
and everything up, or else things would go abroad that
would injure his credit; and he could not get mon^ fox
WEALTH VERSUS LOVE 385
his operations. He is engaged in great operations now
that will bring in millions if they succeed."
"And if they don't succeed," said Eva, "then I suppose
that we shall lose millions is that it ? "
"Well, dear, it is just as I tell you, we rich people live
on a very uncertain eminence, and for that reason I wanted
to see my darling daughter settled securely."
"Well, mamma, now I will tell you what I have been
thinking of. Since * riches make to themselves wings and
fly away, ' what is the sense of marrying a man whose main
recommendation is that he is rich? Because that is the
thing that makes Mr. Sydney more, for instance, than Mr.
Henderson, or any other nice gentleman we know. Now
what if I should marry Mr. Sydney, who, to say the truth,
dear mamma, I do not fancy, and who is rather tiresome
to me and then some fine morning his banks should fail,
his railroads burst up, and his place on the North Eiver
and his villa at Newport have to be sold, and he and I
have to take a little unfashionable house together, and
rough it what then t Why, then, when it came to that,
I should wish that I had chosen a more entertaining com-
panion. For there is n't a thing that I am interested in
that I can talk with him about. You see, dear mother,
we have to take it ' for better or for worse ; ' and as there
is always danger that the wheel may turn, by and by it
may come so that we '11 have nothing but the man himself
left. It seems to me that we should choose our man with
great care. He should be like the pearl of great price, the
Bible speaks of, for whom we would be glad to sell every-
thing. It should be somebody we could be happy with if
we lost all beside. And when I marry, mother, it will be
with a man that I feel is all that to me."
"Well, Eva dear, where '11 you find such a man? "
''What if I had found him, mother or thought I
had?"
886 BfY WIFE AND I
"What do you mean, child? "
"Mother, I have found the man that I love, and he
loves me, and we are engaged."
"Eva, child! I would not have thought this of you.
Why have n't you told me before ? "
"Because, mamma, it was only this afternoon that I
found out that he loved me and wanted me to be his wife.''
" And may I presume to ask now who it is ? " said Mrs.
Van Arsdel in a tone of pique.
"Dear mother, it is Harry Henderson.''
"Mr. Henderson! Well, I do think that is too dishon-
orable; when I told him your relations with Mr. Sydney."
"Mother, you gave him to understand that I was en-
gaged to Mr. Sydney, and I told him this afternoon, that
I was not, and never would be. He was honorable. After
you had that conversation with him he avoided our house
a long time, and avoided me. I was wretched about it^
and he was wretched; but this afternoon we met acciden-
tally in the Park; and I insisted on knowing from him
why he avoided us so. And, at last, I found out all;
and he found out alL We understand each other perfectly
now, and nothing can ever come between us. Mother, I
would go with him to the ends of the earth. There is
nothing that I do not feel able to do or gufPer for him.
And I am glad and proud of myself to know that I can
love him as I do."
"Oh well, poor child! I do not know what we shall
do," said Mrs. Van Arsdel, with profound dejection.
" Deary mother, I will do everything I can to help you,
and everything I can to help papa. I do not believe there
is one of us children that would not. And I think it is
true, what Ida is always telling us, that it would be a great
deal better for us if we had less, and had to depend on
ourselves and use our own faculties more. There are the
boys in college; there is no need of their having spending
WEALTH VERSUS LOVE 387
money as they do. And I know if papa would tell them
of his difficulties it would make men of them, just as it
would make a woman of me."
"Well, I do not know," said Mrs. Van Arsdel. "Your
father has not told me of any particular embarrassments,
only I see he is anxious and nervous, and I know him so
well that I always know when his affairs trouble him.
And this is a great blow to me, Eva."
"Well, dear mother, I am very sorry it is 8o; but I
cannot help it It would be wicked for me, mother, to
marry any other man when I love Harry as I do. Love
is not a glove that you can take off as you please. It is
something very different. Kow, with him, I never felt
tired. I always like to be with him; I always like to
talk with him ; he never makes me nervous ; I never wish
he was gone; he can always understand me, and I can un-
derstand him. We can almost tell what the other is think-
ing of without speaking. And I will risk our not being
happy together. So please do, dear mother, look a little
cheerful about it. Let me be happy in my own way."
"Well, I suppose I must," said Mrs. Van Arsdel, with
a deep sigh, taking up the lamp. "You always did have
your own way, Eva."
"Oh, welli mother dear, some day you '11 be glad of it
Oood-night"
CHAPTER XXXVI
FURTHER CONSULTATIONS
After the departure of her mother, Eva in vain tried
to compose herself to sleep. Her cheeks were flushed, and
her hrain was in a complete whirl. Her mother had said
and hinted just enough about the financial condition of the
family to fill her with vague alarms. She walked uneasily
up and down her luxurious chamber, all whose appointments
spoke of wealth and taste; and it was with an unpleasant
feeling of insecurity that she regarded the pictures and
statues and sofas, and all the charming arrangements, in
perfecting which her father had always allowed her carte
blanche as to money. She reflected uneasily that in mak-
ing all these expensive arrangements she had ordered sim-
ply what pleased her fancy, without inquiry as to price,
and without ever glancing over a bill to know the result;
and now, she found herself affianced to a young man with-
out any other resources than those which must come from
the exertion of his talents, seconded by prudence and econ-
omy. And here, again, offered to her acceptance, was an-
other marriage, which would afford her the means of grati-
fying every taste, and of continuing to live in all those
habits of easy luxury and careless expenses that she could
not but feel were very agreeable to her. Not for one
moment did she feel an inclination, or a temptation, to
purchase that luxury, and that ease, by the sale of herself;
but still, when she thought of her lover of the difficul-
ties that he must necessarily meet, of the cares which she
must bring upon him she asked herself, " Was it not an
FURTHER CONSULTATIONS 389
act of injustice to him to burden him with so incapable and
helpless a wife as she feared she should prove ? "
''But I am not incapable," she said to herself, ''and I
will not be helpless. I have strength in me, and I will
use it; I will show that I am good for something. I won-
der if it is true that papa is embarrassed. If he is, I wish
he would trust us; I wish he would tell us at once, and
let us help him economize. I would do it; I am sure we
all would do it."
It was in vain, under the pressure of these thoughts, to
try to compose herself to sleep; and, at last, she passed
into her sister Ida's room, who, with her usual systematic
regularity as to hours, had for a long time been in the
enjoyment of quiet slumber.
" Ida, dear ! " she said, stooping over and speaking to
her sister, " Ida, look here ! "
Ida opened her eyes and sat up in bed. "Why, Eva,
child! not gone to bed yet? What is the matter with
you ? You will certainly ruin your health with these ir-
regular hours."
"Oh, Ida, I ^m so nervous I can't sleep! I am sorry
to disturb you; but, indeed, I want to talk to you about
something that worries ipe; and you know you are always
gone before I am up in the morning."
" Well, dear, what is it 1 " said Ida, stroking her head.
"Do you know, mamma has just been into my room
with a letter from Mr. Sydney. He is coming into the
field again, and has written to mamma, and mamma has
been in talking to me till I am just ready to cry. Now,
Ida, you know all that took place between Mr. Henderson
and me yesterday in the Park ; we are engaged, are we not,
as much as two people can be ? "
" Certainly you are, " said Ida decisively.
"Well now, mamma is so distressed and disappointed."
* You told her about it, then? " said Ida.
390 MY WIFE AND I
"Certainly; yes, I told her all about it; and oh, Ida!
what do you think? mamma really made me feel as if
something dreadful was going to happen in the family, that
papa was getting embarrassed in his business, and perhaps
we might all fail and come to ruin if I did not help him bj
marrying Mr. Sydney. Now, do you think it would be
right for me ? It certainly cannot be my duty ! "
"Ask yourself that question," said Ida; "think what
you must promise and vow in marriage."
"To be sure! and how wicked it would be to promise
and vow all that to one man when I know that I love an-
other one better ! "
"Then^" said Ida, "asking a woman to take false mar-
riage vows to save her family, or her parents from trouble,
is just like asking her to steal money, or forge a false note
to save them. Eva, you cannot do it."
"Well," said Eva, "that is what I told mamma. But,
Ida dear, is it really true, do you think, that papa is trou-
bled in his business 1 "
"Papa is not a man that would speak freely to any
woman on business matters," said Ida, "^ot even to me;
but I know that his liabilities and ventures are terrific; and
nothing would surprise me less than to have this whole
air-castle that we have been living in dissolve like a morn-
ing mist, and let us down on the pavement. All I have
to say is, that if it comes it is just what I have been pre-
paring for all my life. I have absolutely refused to be
made such a helpless doll as young girls in our position
commonly are. I have determined that I would keep my
faculties bright, and my bodily health firm and strong; and
that all these luxuries should not become a necessity to me,
so but what I could take care of myself, and take care of
others, without them. And all I have to say is, if a crash
comes it will find me ready, and it won't crush me."
"But, Ida, don't you think it would be a great deal
FURTHER CONSULTATIONS 391
better if we would all begin now to economize, and live
very differently ? Why, I am sure I would be willing to
move out of this house, and rent it, or sell it, and live in
a smaller one, and give up the carriages and horses. We
could live a great deal cheaper and more quietly than we
do, and yet have everything that I care about. Yes, I 'd
even rather sell the pictures all except a few and feel
safe and independent, than to live in this sort of glitteringi
uncertain way, and be pressed to marry a man that I do
not love, for the sake of getting out of it.''
"Well, dear," said Ida, "you never will get Aunt Maria
to let mamma stop running this race with the Elmores till
the last gun fires and the ship is ready to sink; that's
the whole of it. It is what people will say, and the
thought of being pitied by their set, and being beaten in
the race, that will go further than anything else. If you
talk about any drawing in of expenses, they say that we
must not do anything of the sort that it will injure
papa's credit. Kow I know enough of what things cost^
and what business estimates are, to know that we are
spending at a tremendous rate. If we had an entailed
estate settled upon us with an annual income of two or
three hundred thousand dollars, there might be some sense
in living as we do; but when all depends on the value of
stocks that are going up to-day and down to-morrow, there
is never any knowing what may happen; and that is what
I have always felt. Father made a lucky hit by investing
in stocks that doubled, and trebled, and quadrupled in
value; but now, there is a combination against them, and
they are falling. I know it gives father great anxiety;
and, as I said before, I should not wonder in the least-
nothing would surprise me less, than that we should have
a great crisis one of these times."
"Poor Harry!" said Eva, "it was the thought of my
being an heiress that made him hesitate so long; perhaps
892 MY WIFE AND I
he '11 have a chance to take me without that obstacle. Ida,
do you think it would be right and just in me to let him
take such an inefficient body as I am 1 Am I quite spoiled,
do you think past all redemption ? "
"Oh, no, darling!" said Ida; "I have good hopes of
you. In the first place, a woman that has strength of mind
enough to be true to her love against all the pressure that
has been brought to bear on you has strength of mind to
do anything that may be required of her. Of course, dear,
it will come to the practical point of living in an entirely
different style from what we now live in ; and you must
count the cost. In the first place, you must give up fash-
ionable society altogether. You must consent to be pitied
and wondered at as one that has fallen out of her sphere
and gone down in the world. All the Mrs. Grundys will
stop calling on you; and you won't have any turnout in
the Park; and you may have to take a small house on an
unfashionable street, and give your mind to the business
of calculating expenses and watching outgoes and incomes. '^
"Well, now, seriously, Ida, I shouldn't mind these
things a bit. I don't care a penny for Mrs. Grundy, nor
her works and ways. As to the little house, there '11 be
the less care to keep it; and as to its being on an imfash-
ionable street, what do I care for that? Nobody that I
really care for would fail to come and see me, let me live
where I would. And Harry and I just agree in our views
of life. We are not going to live for the world, but for
ourselves and our friends. We '11 have the nicest little
home, where every true friend of ours shall feel as much at
home as we do. And don't you think, Ida, that I should
make a good manager? Oh! I know that I could make
a house pretty charming on ever so little money, just
as I get up a spring hat, sometimes, out of odds and ends;
and I quite like the idea of having it to do. Of course,
poor papa, I don't want him to fail; and I hope he won't;
FURTHER CONSULTATIONS 398
but I 'm something like you, Ida, if all should go to ruin,
I feel as if I could stand up, now that I have got Harry
to stand up with me. We can begin quietly at first, and
make our fortune together. I have thought of ever so
many things that I could do for him to help him. Do
you know, Ida (I rather guess you '11 laugh), that I brought
home his gloves and mended them this very evening? I
told him I was going to begin to take care of him. You see,
I '11 make it cheaper for him in a thousand ways I know
I can. He never shall find me a burden. I am quite
impatient to be able to show what I can do."
"To begin, darling," said Ida, "one thing you must do
is to take care of your body ; no late hours to waste your
little brain. And so don't you think you had better go to
your room and go quietly to sleep ? "
" Oh Ida ! I am going to be so good and so regular after
to-night; but to-night, you know, is a kind of exception.
Girls don't get engaged every day of their lives, and so
you must forgive me if I do make a run upon you to-night.
The fact is, what with my talk with Harry this afternoon,
and with mamma to-night, and all the fuss that I see im-
pending, my eyes are just as wide open as they can be;
and I don't believe I could go to sleep if I were to try.
Oh Ida! Harry told me all about his mother, and all
about that handsome cousin of his, that he has spoken of
so many times. Do you know I used to have such worries
of mind about that cousin ? I was perfectly sure that she
stood in my way. And now, Ida, I have a most capital
idea about her! She wants to go to France to study, just
as you do; and how nice it would be if you could join
company and go together."
"It would be pleasant," said Ida. "I must confess I
don't like the idea of being * damsel errant,' wandering off
entirely alone in the world; and if I leave you, darling, I
shall want somebody to speak to. But come, my dear lit-
894 MY WIFE AND I
tie Pussy, you must lie down and shut your eyes, and say
your prayers, and try to go to sleep."
"You darling good little doctor, you," said Eva, "it is
too bad of me to keep you up ! There, I will be good
see how good I am ! Good-night " and kissing her sister,
she sought her own apartment.
CHAPTEE XXXVII
MAKING LOVE TO ONE's FATHER-IN-LAW
Life has many descents from romance to reality that
are far from agreeable. But every exalted hotir, and every
charming passage in our mortal pilgrimage, is a luxury that
has to be paid for with something disagreeable. The Ger-
man story-teller, Tieck, has a pretty legend of a magical
region where were marvelous golden castles, and fountains,
and flowers, and bright-winged elves, living a life of cease-
less pleasure; but all this was visible only to the anointed
eyes of some favored mortal to whom was granted the
vision. To all others this elfin country was a desolate
wilderness. I had had given me within a day or two that
vision of Wonderland, and wandered scarce knowing
whether in the body or out in its enchanted bowers.
The first exhilarating joy of the moment when every mist
rose up from the landscape of love, when there was perfect
understanding, perfect union, perfect rest, was something
that transfigured life. But having wandered in this blessed
country and spoken the tongue of angels, I was now to
return to every-day regions and try to translate its marvels
and mysteries into the vernacular of mortals. In short, I
was to wait upon Mr. Van Arsdel and ask of him the hand
of his daughter. Now however charming, with suitable
encouragement, to make love to a beautiful lady, making
love to a prospective father-in-law is quite another matter.
Men are not as a general thing inclined to look sympa-
thetically on other men in love with any fine woman of
their acquaintance, and are rather provoked than otherwise
896 MY WIFE AND I
to have them accepted. "What any woman can see in
that fellow ! " is a sort of standing problem. But posses-
sors of daughters are, a fortiori^ enemies ready-made to
every pretender to their hands. My own instincts made
me aware of this, and I could easily fancy that had I a
daughter like Eva I should be ready to shoot the fellow
who came to take her from me.
Mr. Van Arsdel, it is true, had showed me, hitherto, in
his quiet way, marked favor. He was seldom much of a
talker, though a shrewd observer of all that was said by
others. He had listened silently to all our discussions and
conversations in Ida's library, and oftentimes to the read-
ing of the articles I had subjected to the judgment of the
ladies; sometimes, though very rarely, interposing little
bits of common-sense criticism which showed keen good
sense and knowledge of the world.
Mr. Van Arsdel, like many of our merchant princes,
had come from a rural district, and an early experience of
the hard and frugal life of a farm. Good sense, acute ob-
servation, an ability to take wide and clear views of men
and things, and an incorruptible integrity, had been the
means of his rise to his present elevation. He was a true
American man in another respect, and that was his devo-
tion to women. In America, where we have a clear demo-
cracy, women hold that influence over men that is exerted
by the aristocracy in other countries. They are something
to be looked up to, petted, and courted. The human
mind seems to require something of this kind. The faith
and fealty that the middle-class Englishman has toward his
nobility is not all snobbery. It has something of poetry
in it it is his romance of life. Up in those airy regions
where walk the nobility, he is at liberty to fancy some
higher, finer types of manhood and womanhood than he
sees in the ordinary ways of life, and he adores the unseen
and unknown. The American life would become vidgai
%
MAKING LOVE TO ONE'S FATHER-IN-LAW 397
and commonplace did not a chivalrous devotion to women
come in to supply the place of recognized orders of nobil-
ity. The true democrat sees no superior in rank among
men, but all women are by courtesy his superiors.
Mr, Van Arsdel had married a beauty and a belle.
When she chose him from among a crowd of suitors he
could scarcely believe his own eyes or ears, or help marveling
at the wondrous grace of the choice ; and, as he told her so,
Mrs. Van Arsdel believed him, and their subsequent life
was arranged on that understanding. The Van Arsdel house
was an empire where women ruled, though as the queen was
a pretty, motherly woman, her reign was easy and flowery.
Mr. Van Arsdel delighted in the combinations of busi-
ness for its own sake. It was his form of mental activity.
He liked the effort, the strife, the care, the labor, the suc-
cess of winning; but when money was once won he cared
not a copper for all those forms of luxury and show, for
the pride, pomp, and circumstance of fashion, which were
all in all to his wife. In his secret heart he considered
the greater part of the proceedings in and about his splen-
did establishment as a rather expensive species of humbug ;
but then it was what the women wanted and desired, and
he took it all quietly and without comment. I felt some-
what nervous when I asked a private interview with him
in Ida's library.
"I have told mamma, Harry," whispered Eva, "and
she is beginning to get over it."
Mrs. Van Arsdel received me with an air of patient en-
durance, as if I had been the toothache or any of the other
inevitable inflictions of life; Miss Alice was distant and
reserved, and only Ida was cordial.
I found Mr. Van Arsdel dry, cold, and wary, not in the
least encouraging any sentimental effusion, and therefore I
proceeded to speak to him with as matter-of-fact directness
as if the treaty related to a bag of wooL
898 MT WIFE AND I
" Mr. Van Arsdel, I love your daughter. She has hon-
ored me so far as to accept of my love, and I have her per-*
mission to ask your consent to our marriage.*'
He took off his spectacles, wiped them deliberately while
I was speaking, and coughed dryly.
''Mr. Henderson," he said, ''I have always had a great
respect for you so far as I knew you, but I must confess
I don't know why I should want to give you my daughter.*'
" Simply, sir, because in the order of nature you must
give her to somebody, and I have the honor to be chosen
by her."
"Eva could do better, her mother thinks."
" I am aware that Misa Van Arsdel could marry a man
with more money than I have, but none who would love
her more or be more devoted to her happiness. Besides
I have the honor to be the man of her choice, and perhaps
you may be aware that Miss Eva is a young lady of very
decided preferences."
He smiled dryly, and looked at me with a funny twinkle
in his eye.
''Eva has always been used to having her own way,'' he
remarked.
"Then, my dear sir, I must beg leave to say that the
choice of a companion for life is a place where a lady has
a good right to insist on her own way. "
"Well, Mr. Henderson, you may be right. But per-
haps her parents ought to insist that she shall not make
an imprudent marriage."
" Mr. Van Arsdel, I do not conceive that I am proposing
an imprudent marriage. I have not wealth to offer, it is
true, but I have a reasonable prospect of being able to sup-
port a wife and family. I have good firm health, I have
good business habits, I have a profession which already
assures me a certain income, and an influential position in
society."
MAKING LOVE TO ONl'S FATHER-IN-LAW 899
" What do you call your profession t "
"Literature," I replied.
He looked skeptical, and I added, "Yes, Mr. Van Ars-
del, in our day literature is a profession in which one may
hope for both fame and money."
"It is rather an uncertain one, isn't iti " said he.
" I think not. A business which proposes to supply a
great, permanent, constantly increaging demand you must
admit to be a good one. The demand for current reading
is just as wide and steady as any demand of our life, and
the men who undertake to supply it have as certain a busi-
ness as those that undertake to supply cotton cloth or rail-
road iron. At this day fortunes are being made in and by
literature. "
Mr. Van Arsdel drummed on the table abstractedly.
"Now," said I, determined to speak in the language of
men and things, " the case is just this : If a young man of
good, reliable habits, good health, and good principles has
a capital of seventy thousand dollars inyested in a fair
paying business, has he not a prospect of supporting a
family in comfort ? "
"Yes," said Mr. Van Arsdel, regarding me curiously,
"I should call that a good beginning."
"Well," rejoined I, "my health, my education, my
power of doing literary work are this capital. They secure
to me for the next year an income equal to that of seventy
thousand dollars at ten per cent. Now, I think a capital
of that amount invested in a man is quite as safe as the
same sum invested in any stocks whatever. It seems to
me that in our country a man who knows how to take care
of his health is less likely to become unproductive in in-
come than any stock yon can name."
"There is something in that, I admit," replied Mr. Van
Arsdel.
"And there 's something in thie^ too^ P^F^'^ Mud Sv%
400 MY WIFE AND I
who entered at this moment and could not resist her desire
to dip her oar in the current of conversation, ''and that is,
that an/ investment that you have got to take for better or
worse, and can't sell or get rid of all your life, had better
be made in something you are sure you will like.''
" And are you sure of that in this case. Pussy ? " said
her father, pinching her cheek.
"Tolerably, as men go. Mr. Henderson is the least
tiresome man of my acquaintance, and you know, papa,
it's time I took somebody; you don't want me to go into
a convent, do you 1 "
"How about poor Mr. Sydney? "
"Poor Mr. Sydney has just called, and I have invited
him to a private audience and convinced him that I am
not in the least the person to make him happy; and he is
one of the sort that feel that it is of the last importance
that he should be made happy."
"Well, well! Mr. Henderson, I presume you have
seen, in the course of your observations, that this is one of
the houses where the women rule. You and Eva will have
to settle it with her mother."
"Then I am to understand," exclaimed I, "that, as far
as you are concerned "
"I submit," said Mr. Van ArsdeL
"The ayes have it, then," said Eva.
"I'm not so sure of that, young lady," said Mr. Van
Arsdel, " if I may judge by the way your mother lamented
to me last night."
"Oh, that 's all Aunt Maria! You see, papa, this is an
age of revolution, and there 's going to be a revolution in
the Aunt Maria dynasty in our house. She has governed
mamma and all the rest of us long enough, and now she
must go down and I must rule. Harry and I are going to
start a new era and have things all our own way. I 'm
going to crown him King, and he then will crown me
MAKING LOVE TO ONE'S FATHER-IN-LAW 401
Queen, and then we shall proceed to rule and reign in our
own dominions, and Aunt Maria, and Mrs. Grundy, and
all the rest of them may help themselves; they can't hin-
der us. We shall be happy in our own way, without con-
sulting them."
" Well, well ! " said Mr. Van Arsdel, following with an
amused eye a pirouette Eva executed at the conclusion of
her speech, "you young folks are venturesome."
" Yes, papa, I am * The woman who dared, ' " said Eva.
" * Nothing venture, nothing have, ' " quoted I.
"Eva knows no more about managing money than a this
year's robin," said her father.
" Yet this year's robins know how to build respectable
nests when their time comes," said she. "They don't
bother about investments and stocks and all those things,
but sing and have a good time. It all comes right for
them, and I don't doubt it will for us."
"You have a decided talent for spending money most
agreeably, I confess," said Mr. Van Arsdel.
"Now, papa, it's too bad for you to be running down
your own daughter ! I'm not appreciated. I have a
world of undeveloped genius for management. Harry has
agreed to teach me accounts, and as I belong to the class
who always grow wiser than their teachers, I 'm sure that
before six months are over I shall be able to suggest im-
proved methods to him. When I get a house you '11 all
be glad to come and see me, I shall make it so bright and
sunny and funny, and give you such lovely things to eat;
and in my house everybody shall do just as they please,
and have their own way if they can find out what it is. I
know people will like it."
"I believe you. Pussy," said Mr. Van Arsdel; "but
houses don't grow on bushes, you know."
"Well, haven't I six thousand dollars, all my own, that
grandma left me ? "
402 MT WIFE AND I
''And how much of a house do jou think that would
buy?"
"Perhaps as big a one as you and mother began in."
"You never would be satisfied with such a house as we
began in."
"Why not? Are we any better than you were? "
"No. But nowadays no yoimg folks are contented to
do as we did."
"Then, papa, you are going to see a new thing upon the
earth, for Harry and I are going to be pattern folks for
being rational and contented. We are going to start out
on a new tack and bring in the golden age. But, bless me I
there 's Aunt Maria coming down the street. Now, Harry,
comes the tug of war. I am going now to emancipate
mamma and proclaim the new order of things," and out she
flitted.
"Mr. Henderson," said Mr. Van Arsdel, when she had
gone, "I think it is about certain that I am to look on
you as a future member of our family, I '11 be fair with
you, that you may take steps with your eyes open. My
daughters are supposed to be heiresses, but, as things are
tending, in a very short time I may be put back to where
I started in life and have all to begin over. My girls will
have nothing. I see such a crisis impending, and I have
no power to help it."
"My dear sir," said I, "while I shall be sorry for your
trouble, and hope it may not come, I shall be only too glad
to prove my devotion to Eva."
"It is evident," said Mr. Van Arsdel, "that her heart is
set on you, and, after all, the only true comfort is in hav-
ing the one you want. I myself never cared for fashion,
Mr. Henderson, nor parties, nor any of this kind of fuss
and show the women think so much of; and I believe that
Eva is a little like me. I like to go back to the old place
in summer and eat huckleberries and milk, and see the
MAKING LOVE TO ONE'S FATHER-IN-LAW 403
COWS come home from pasture, and sit in father's old arm-
chair. It would n't take so much running and scheming
and hard thinking and care to live if folks were all of my
mind. Why, up in New Hampshire where I came from,
there 's scarcely ever an estate administered upon that fig-
ures up more than five thousand dollars, and yet they all
live well have nice houses, nice tables, give money in
charity, and make a good thing of life."
There was something really quite pathetic in this burst
of confidence from the worthy man. Perhaps I was the
first one to whom he had confessed the secret apprehensions
with which he was struggling.
" You see, Mr. Henderson, you never can tell about in-
vestments. Stocks that seem' to stand as firm as the foun-
dations of the earth, that the very oldest and shrewdest and
longest-headed put into, run down and depreciate and
when they get running you can't draw out, you see. Now
I advanced capital for the new Lightning Line Eailroad to
the amount of two hundred thousand, and pledged my
Guatemala stock for the money, and then arose this combi-
nation against the Guatemala stock and it has fallen to a
fourth of its value in six months, and it takes heavy row-
ing heavy. I 'd a great deal rather be in father's old
place, with an estate of five thousand dollars, and read my
newspaper in peace, than to have all I have with the mis-
ery of managing it. I may work out and I may not."
CHAPTER XXXVm
ACCEPTED AND ENGAGED
And so at last I was accepted, and my engagement with
Eva was recognized as 2k fait accompli. In the family of
my hetrothed were all shades of acquiescence. Mrs. Van
Arsdel was pensively resigned to me as a mysterious dis-
pensation of Providence. Mr. Van Arsdel, though not in
any way demonstrative, showed an evident disposition to
enter into confidential relations with me. Ida was whole-
hearted and cordial; and Alice, after a little reconnoitring,
joined our party as a gay, generous young girl, naturally
disposed to make the best of things, and favorably inclined
toward the interests of young lovers.
Mr. TroUope, in "The Small House at AUington,'' re-
presents a young man just engaged as feeling himself in the
awkward position of a captive led out in triumph for exhi-
bition. The lady and her friends are spoken of as march-
ing him forth with complacency, like a prize ox with rib-
bons in his horns, unable to repress the exhibition of their
delight in having entrapped him. One would infer from
this picture of life such a scarcity of marriageable men that
the capture even of such game as yoimg Crosbie, who is
represented to be an untitled young man, without fortune
or principle, is an occasion of triumph.
In our latitudes, we of the stronger sex are not taught
to regard ourselves as such overpoweringly delightful acqui-
sitions, and the declaration of an engagement is not with
us regarded as evidence of a lady's skill in hunting. I did
not, as young Crosbie is said to have done, feel myself
ACCEPTED AND ENGAGED 405
somehow caught. On the contrary, I was lost in wonder
at my good fortune. If I had found the pot of gold at the
end of the rainbow, or dug up the buried treasures of Cap-
tain Kidd, I could not have seemed to myself more as one
who dreamed.
I wrote all about it to my mother, who, if she judged
by my letters, must have believed " Hesperian fables " true
for the first time in the world, and that a woman had been
specially made and created out of all impossible and fabu-
lous elements of joy. The child- wife of my early days,
the dream-wife of my youth, were both living, moving,
breathing in this wonderful reality. I tried to disguise
my good fortune to walk soberly and behave myself
among men as if I were sensible and rational, and not
dazed and enchanted. I felt myself orbed in a magical
circle, out of which I looked pityingly on everybody that
was not I. A spirit of universal match-making benevo-
lence possessed me. I wanted everybody I liked to be
engaged. I pitied and made allowances for everybody that
was not. How could they be happy or good that had not
my fortune? They had not, they never could have, an
Eva. There was but one Eva, and I had her !
I woke every morning with a strange, new thrill of joy.
Was it so ? Was she still in this world, or had this im-
possible, strange mirage of bliss risen like a mist and
floated heavenward ? I trembled when I thought how frail
a thing human life is. Was it possible that she might
die ? Was it possible that an accident in a railroad car, a
waft of drapery toward an evening lamp, a thoughtless false
step, a mistake in a doctor's prescription, might cause this
lovely life to break like a bubble, and be utterly gone, and
there be no more Eva, never, nevermore on earth f The
very intensity of love and hope suggested the possibility of
the dreadful tragedy that every moment underlies life;
that with every joy connects the possibility of a propor-
406 MY WIFE AND I
tioned pain. Surely love, if nothing else, inclines the soul
to feel its helplessness and he prayerful, to place its trea-
sures in a Father's hand.
Sometimes it seemed to me too much to hope for, that
she should live to he my wife; that the fahulous joy of
possession should ever he mine. Each morning I left my
hunch of fresh violets with a greeting in it at her door, and
assured myself that the earth yet retained her, and all day
long I worked with the under-thought of the little houdoir
where I should meet her in the evening. Who says mod-
em New York life is prosaic? The everlasting poem of
man and woman is as fresh there at this hour as among the
crocuses and violets of Eden.
A graceful writer, in one of our late magazines, speaks
of the freedom which a young man feels when he has
found the mistress and queen of his life. He is hound to
no other service, he is anxious ahout no other smile or
frown. I had heen approved and crowned hy my Queen of
Love and Beauty. If she liked me, what matter ahout the
rest?
It did not disturh me a particle to feel that I was suh-
mitted to as a necessity, rather than courted as a hlessing,
hy her parents. I cared notliing for cold glances or indif-
ferent airs so long as my golden-haired Ariadne threw me
the clue hy which I threaded the labyrinth, and gave me
the talisman by which to open the door. Once safe with
her in her little "Italy," the boudoir in which we first
learned to know each other, we laughed and chatted, mak-
ing ourselves a gay committee of observation on the whole
world besides. Was there anybody so fortunate as we?
and was there any end to our subject-matter for conversa-
tion?
"You have no idea, Harry," she said to me the first
evening after our engagement had been declared, "what a
time we 've been having with Aunt Maria! You know she
ACCEPTED AND ENGAGED 407
is mamma's oldest sister, and mamma is one of the gentle,
yielding sort, and Aunt Maria has always ruled and reigned
over us alL She really has a way of ordering mamma
about, and mamma I think is positively afraid of her.
Not that she 's really ill-tempered, but she is one of the
sort that thinks it 's a matter of course that she should
govern the world, and is perfectly astonished when she
' finds she can't. I have never resisted her before, because
I have been rather lazy, and it 's easier to give up than to
fight; and besides one remembers one's catechism, and
doesn't want to rise up against one's pastors and masters."
''But you thought you had come to a place where amia-
bility ceased to be a virtue ? " said I.
"Exactly. Ida always said that people must have cour-
age to be disagreeable, or they couldn't be good for much;
and so I put on all my terrors, and actually bullied Aunt
Maria into submission."
"You must have been terrific," said I, laughing.
" Indeed, you ought to have seen me ! I astonished my-
self. I told her that she always had domineered over us
all, but that now the time had come that she must let my
mother alone, and not torment her; that, as for myself, I
was a woman and not a child, and that I should choose my
lot in life for myself, as I had a right to do. I assure you,
there was warm work for a little while, but I remained
mistress of the field."
"It was a revolutionary struggle," said I.
"Exactly, a fight at the barricades; and as a result a
new government is declared. Mamma reigns in her own
house and I am her prime minister. On the whole I think
mamma is quite delighted to be protected in giviilg me my
own way, as she always has. Aunt Maria has shaken
dreadful warnings and threatenings at me, and exhausted
a perfect bead-roll of instances of girls that had married for
love and come to grief. You 'd have thought that nothing
408 MY WIFE AND I
less than beggaiy and starvation was before us; and the
more I laughed the more solemn and awful she grew. She
didn't spare me. She gave me a sad character. I hadn't
been educated for anything, and I did n't know how to do
anything, and I had no strength; in short, she made out
such a picture of my incapacities as may well make you
tremble. ^'
"I don't tremble in the least," said I. "I only wish*
we could set up our establishment to-morrow."
"Aunt Maria told me that it was ungenerous of me to
get engaged to a man of no fortune, now when papa is
struggling with these heavy embarrassments, and can't
afford the money to marry me, and set me up in the style
he would feel obliged to. You see. Aunt Maria is think-
ing of a wedding twice as big as the Elmores, and a trous-
seau twice as fine, and a brown-stone front palace twice as
high and long and broad as the Eivingtons' ; and twice as
many coupes and Park wagons and phaetons as Maria Kiv-
ington is to have; and if papa is to get all this for me, it
will be the ruin of him, she says."
"And you told her that we didn't want any of them?"
said I.
"To be sure I did. I told her that we did n't want one
of these vulgar, noisy, showy, expensive weddings, and
that I didn't mean to send to Paris for my things. That
a young lady who respected herself was always supplied
with clothes good enough to be married with; that we
did n't want a brown-stone palace, and could be very happy
without any carriage; and that there were plenty of cheap
little houses in unfashionable streets we could be very
happy in; that people who really, cared for us would come
to see us, live where we would, and that those who didn't
care might keep away."
" Bravo, my queen ! and you might tell her how Madame
B^camier drew all the wit and fashion of Paris to her little
ACCEPTED AND ENGAGED 409
brick-floored rooms in the old Abbey. People will always
want to come where you are."
"I don't set up for a R^camier," she exclaimed, "but I
do say that where people have good times, and keep a
bright pleasant fireside, and are always glad to see friends,
there will always be friends to come; and friends are the
ones we want."
"Ah! we will show them how things can be done, won't
weT'
"Indeed we will. I always wanted a nice little house
all my own where I could show what I could do. I have
quantities of pet ideas of what a home should be, and I
always fancied I could make things lovely."
"If you couldn't, who could?" said I, enchanted.
"See here," she added, "I have just begun to think
what we have to start with. All the pictures in this little
room are mine, bought with my own allowance; they are
my very own. Pictures, you know, are a great thing, they
half furnish a house. Then you know that six thousand
dollars that grandmamma left me! Besides, sir, only
think, a whole silver cream- pitcher and six tablespoons!
Why, Harry, I 'm an heiress in my own right, even if
poor papa should come to grief."
Something in this talk reminded me of the far-off child-
ish days when Susie and I made our play-houses under the
old butternut-tree, and gathered in our stores of chestnuts
and walnuts and laid our grave plans for life as innocently
as two squirrels, and I laughed with a tear in my eye. I
recounted to her the little idyl, and said that it had been
a foreshadowing of her, and that perhaps my child-angel
had guided me to her.
" Some day you shall take me up there, Harry, and show
me where you and she played together, and we will gather
strawberries and lilies and hear the bobolinks," she said.
"How little the world knows how cheap happiness is! "
410 MY WIFE AND I
"To those that know where to look for it," said I.
"I heard papa telling you that half the estates on which
good New England families live in comfort up there in the
country don't amount to more than five thousand dollars,
yet they live well, and they have all those lovely things
around them free. Here in this artificial city life people
struggle and suffer to get money for things they don't want
and don't need. Nobody wants these great parties, with
their candy pyramids and their artificial flowers and their
rush and crush that tire one to death, and yet they pay as
much for one as would keep one of those country houses
going for a year. I do wish we could live there ! "
" I do too with all my heart, but my work must lie
here. We must make what the French call an interior
here in New York. I shall have to be within call of
printers and the slave of printers' devils, but in summer
we will go up into the mountains and stay with my
mother, and have it all to ourselves.''
"Do you know, Harry," said Eva after a pause, "I can
see that Sophie Elmore really does admire Sydney. I
can't help wondering how one can, but I see she does.
Now don't you hope she '11 get engaged to him ? "
"Certainly I do," said I. "I want all nice people to be
engaged if they have as good a time as we do. It 's my
solution of the woman question."
"Well, do you know I managed my last interview with
Sydney with reference to that ? I made what you would
call a split-shot' in croquet to send him from me and to
her."
"How did you do it?"
"Oh, don't ask me to describe. There are ways of
managing these men that are incommunicable. One can
play on them as upon a piano, and I '11 wager you a pair
of gloves that Sydney goes off after Sophie. She 's too
good for him, but she likes him, and Sophie will make him
ACCEPTED AND ENGAGED 411
a nice wife. But only think of poor Aunt Maria! It
will be the last stroke that breaks the camel's back to have
the Elmores get Sydney. "
"So long as he doesn't get you, I shall be delighted, '^
said I.
"Now only think,'' she added, "this spring I was drift-
ing into an engagement with that man just because I was
idle, and blasee, and didn't know what to do next, and
did n't have force enough to keep saying * No ' to mamma
and Aunt Maria and all the rest of them."
" And what gave you force ? ''
"Well, sir, I couldn't help seeing that somebody else
was getting very prettily entangled, and I felt a sort of
philosophic interest in watching the process, and somehow
you know I was rather sorry for you."
" Well 1 "
"Well, and I began to feel that anybody else would be
intolerable, and you know they say there must be some-
body."
"But me you could tolerate? Thank you for so much."
"Yes, Harry, I think you are rather agreeable. I
couldn't fancy myself sitting a whole evening with Sydney
as I do with you. I always had to resort to whist and
all sorts of go-betweens to keep him entertained; and I
could n't fancy that I ever should run to the window to
see if he were coming in the evening, or long for him to
come back when he was on a journey. I 'm afraid I should
long quite the other way and want him to go journeys
often. But Sophie will do all these things. Poor man!
somebody ought to, for he would n't be a bit satisfied if
his wife were not devoted. I told him that, and told him
that he needed a woman capable of more devotion than I
could feel, and flattered him up a little poor fellow, he
took to it so kindly I And after a while I contrived to let
fall a nice bit of a compliment I had once heard about him
412 MY WIFE AND I
from a lady, who I remarked was usually a little fastidious,
and hard to please, and you ought to have seen how ani-
mated he looked! A mouse in view of a bit of toasted
cheese never was more excited. I would n't tell him who
it was, yet I sent him off on such a track that he inevita-
bly will find out. That 's what I call sending Sophie a
ball to play on. You see if they don't have a great wed-
ding about the time we have our little one I ''
CHAPTER XXXIX
CONGRATULATIONS, ETC.
The announcement of my engagement brought the usual
influx of congratulations by letter and in person. Bolton
was gravely delighted, shook my hand paternally, and even
promised to quit his hermit hole and go with me to call
upon the Van Arsdels.
As to Jim, he raised a notable breeze among the papers.
"Engaged! you^ sly dog, after all! Well! well! Let
your sentimental fellows alone for knowing what they 're
about. All your sighing, and poetry, and friendship, and
disinterestedness and all that don't go for nothing. Up
to ^ biz* after all ! Well, you ' ve done a tolerably fair
stroke! Those Van Arsdel girls are good for a hundred
thousand down, and the rest will come in the will. Well,
joy to you, my boy! Remember your old grandfather."
Now there was no sort of use in going into high heroics
with Jim, and I had to resign myself to being congratulated
as a successful fortune-hunter, a thing against which all
my resolution and all my pride had always been directed.
I had every appearance of being caught in the fact, and
Jim was prepared to make the most of the situation.
"I declare, Hal," he said, perching himself astride a
chair, " such things make a fellow feel solemn. We never
know when our turn may come. Nobody feels safe a min-
ute; it 's you to-day and me to-morrow. I may be engaged
before the week is out who knows 1 "
"If nothing worse than that happens to you, you
need n't be frightened," said I. "Better try your luck. I
don't find it bad to take at all."
414 MY WIFE AND I
"Oh, but think of the consequences, man! Wedding
journey, bandboxes and parasols to look after; beefsteaks
and coffee for two; house rent ^ and water taxes; marketing,
groceries ; all coming down on you like a thousand of brick !
And then, * My dear, won't you see to this ? ' and * My
dear, have you seen to that 1 * and * My dear, what makes
you let it rain 1 ' and * My dear, how many times must I
tell you I don't like hot weather? ' and * My dear, won't
you just step out and get me the new moon and seven stars
to trim my bonnet? * That 's what I call getting a fellow
into business ! It 's a solemn thing, Hal, now I tell you,
this getting married ! '^
"If it makes you solemn, Jim, I shall believe it," I said.
" Well, when is it to come off ? When is the blissful
day?"
"No time fixed as yet," said I.
"Why not? You ought to drive things. Nothing
under heaven to wait for except to send to Paris for the
fol-de-rols. Well, I shall call up and congratulate. If Miss
Alice there would take me, there might be a pair of us.
Wouldn't it be jolly? I say, Hal, how did you get it
off?"
"Get what off?"
"Why, the question."
" You '11 have to draw on your imagination for that,
Jim."
"I tell you what, Harry, I won't offer myself to a girl
on uncertainties. I 'd pump like thunder first and find
out whether she 'd have me or not."
"I fancy," said I, "that if you undertake that process
with Miss Alice, you '11 have your match. I think she
has as many variations of yes and no as a Frenchwoman."
"She doesn't catch this child," said Jim, "though she 's
*mag,* and no mistake. Soberly, she's one of the nicest
girls in New York but Jim's time is n't come yet.
CONGRATULATIONS, ETC. 415
* Oh, no, no I not for Joe,
Not for Joseph, if he knows it,
Oh, dear, no ! '
So now, Hal, don't disturb my mind with these trifles.
I 've got three books to review before dinner, and only an
hour and a half to do it in."
In my secret heart I began to wish that the embarrass-
ments that were hanging over the Van Arsdel fortunes
would culminate and come to a crisis one way or another,
so that our position might appear to the world what it
really was. Mr. Van ArsdePs communications to me were
so far confidential that I did not feel that I could allude
to the real state of things even with my most intimate
friends ; so that while I was looked upon from the outside
as the prospective winner of an heiress, Eva and I were
making all our calculations for the future on the footing of
the strictest prudence and economy. Everybody was look-
ing for splendor and festivities; we were enacting a secret
pastoral, in which we forsook the grandeurs of the world
to wander forth hand in hand in paths of simplicity and
frugality.
A week after this I received a note from Caroline which
announced her arrival in the city, and I lost no time in
waiting on her and receiving her congratulations on my
good fortune. Eva and Ida Van Arsdel were prompt in
calling upon her, and the three struck up a friendship
which grew with that tropical rapidity and luxuriance
characteristic of the attachments of women. Ida and Caro-
line became at once bosom friends.
"I'm so glad," Eva commented to me, "because you
and I are together so much now that I was afraid Ida
might feel a little out in the cold; I have been her pet and
stand-by. The fact is, I 'm like that chemical thing that
dyers call a mordant something that has an affinity for
two different colors that have no affinity for each other.
416 MY WIFE AND I
I 'm just enough like mamma and just enough like Ida to
hold the two together. They both tell me everything, and
neither of them can do without me."
"I can well believe that," said I, "it is an experience
in which I sympathize. But I am coming in now, like
the third power in a chemical combination, to draw you
away from both. I shouldn't think they 'd like it."
" Oh, well, it 's the way of nature ! Mamma left her
mother for papa but Ida ! I'm glad for her to have so
nice a friend step in just now one that has all her pecu-
liar tastes and motives. I wish she could go to Paris and
study with Ida when she goes next year. Do you know,
Harry, I used to think you were engaged to this cousin of
yours ? Why were n't you ? "
" She never would have had me, her heart was gone
to somebody else."
"Why isn't she married, then?"
"Oh! the course of true love, you know."
"TeU me all about it."
" She never made me her confidant, " said I evasively.
"Tell me who it was, at all events," demanded she.
"Bolton."
"What! that serious, elegant Bolton that you brought
to call on us the other night ? We all liked him so much !
What can be the matter there ? Why, I think he 's superb^
and she 's just the match for him. What broke it off ? "
"You know I told you she never made me her confi-
dant."
"Nor he, either?"
"Well," said I, feeling myself cornered, "I throw my-
self on your mercy. It 's another man's secret, and I
ought not to tell you, but if you ask me I certainly shall."
" Eight or wrong 1 "
" Yes, fair Eve, just as Adam ate the apple ; so beware ! "
"I 'm just dying to know, but if you really ought not
CONGRATULATIONS, ETC. 417
to tell me I won't tease for it ; but I tell you what it is,
Harry, if I were you I should bring them together."
''Would you dare take the responsibility of bringing any
two together 1 '^
"I suppose I should. I am a daring young woman."
"I have not your courage," said I, "but if it will do you
any good to know, Bolton is in a fair way to renew the
acquaintance, though he meant not to do it. "
" You can tell me how that happened, I suppose ? "
" Yes, that is at your service. Simply, the meeting was
effected as some others of fateful results have been, in
a New York street car."
"Aha!" she said, laughing.
"Yes; he was traveling up Sixth Avenue the other
night when a drunken conductor was very rude to two
ladies. Bolton interfered, made the man behave himself,
waited on the ladies across the street to their door as some-
body else once did, when, behold ! a veil is raised, the
light of the lamp flashes, and one says ' Mr. Bolton I * and
the other * Miss Simmons! ' and the romance is opened."
"How perfectly charming! Of course he '11 call and see
her. He must, you know."
"That has proved the case in my experience."
"And all the rest will follow. They are made for each
other. Poor Ida, she won't have Caroline to go to Paris
with her ! "
"No? I think she will. In fact, I think it would be
the best thing Caroline could do."
" You do ! You don't want them to be married ? "
" I don't know. I would n't say in fact, it 's a case I
wouldn't for the world decide."
" Oh, heavens ! Here 's a mystery, an obstacle, an un-
known horror, and you can't tell me what it is, and I must
not ask. Why, this is perfectly dreadful ! It is n't any-
thing against Bolton ? "
418 MT WIFE AND I
''Bolton is the man I most love, most respect, most
revere," I said.
"What can it be then 1-'^
"Suppose we leave it to fate and the future," said I.
CHAPTER XL
THE EXPLOSION
"Hal! it's too confounded bad!" said Jim Fellows,
bursting into my room; "your apple-cart 's upset for good.
The Van Arsdels are blown to thunder. The old one has
failed for a million. Gone to smash on that Lightning
Eailroad, and there you all are ! Hang it all, I 'm sorry
now ! " And to say the truth Jim's face did wear an air
of as much concern as his features were capable of.
"Seems to me," he added, "you take it coolly."
" The fact is, Jim, I knew all about this the day I pro-
posed. I knew it must come, and I 'm glad, since it had
to be, to have it over and be done with it. Mr. Van
Arsdel told me exactly what to expect when I engaged
myself. "
" And you and Miss Eva Van Arsdel are going to join
hands and play * Babes in the Wood ' ? "
"No," said I, "we are going to play the interesting
little ballet of * Man and Wife. ' I am to work for her,
and all that I win is to be put into her hands."
" Hum ! I fancy she '11 find things on quite another
scale when it comes to your dividends."
"We 're not at all afraid of that you '11 see."
"She's a trump that girl!" said Jim; "now that's
what I call the right sort of thing. And there 's Alice !
Now, I declare it 's too confounded rough on Alice! Just
as she 's come out, and such a splendid girl, too ! "
At this moment the office boy brought up a note.
"From Eva," I said, opening it.
420 MT WIFE AND I
It ran thus:
Well, dearest, the storm has hurst and nohody is killed
yet. Papa told mamma last night, and mamma told ns
this morning, and we are all agreed to he hrave as possihle
and make it seem as light as we aa to papa. Dear papa !
I know it was for us he struggled, it was for us he was
anxious, and we 'U show him we can do very well. Gome
down now. Mamma says she feels as if shp could trust
you as a son. Is n't that kind )
Your own Eta.
"I 'm going right down to the house," sai4 I.
"I declare," said Jim, "I want to do something, and
one does n't know what. I say, I 'U buy a bouquet for
Alice, and you just take it with my compliments." So
saying Jim ran dowi;! with me, crossed to a florist's cellar,
and selected the most extrayaga4t of the floral treasures
there.
"Hang it all!" he saiiJi "I wouldn't send her such a
one when she was up in the world, but now a fellow wants
to do all he can, you know."
"Jim," said I, "you are not a mere ^nu)oth- water
friend."
"Not I. *Go for the under dog in the fight' is my
principle, so get along with you and stay as long as you
like. I can do your book notices; I know just the sort
of thing you would say, you know do 'em up brown, so
that you wouldn't know my ideas from your own."
Arrived jat the Van Arsdel house, I thought I could see
and feel the traces of a crisis, by that mysterious intimation
that fills the very air of a place where something has just
happened. The elegant colored servant who opened the
door wore an aspect of tender regret like an undertaker at
a funeral.
THE EXPIiOSION 421
**Mi8fi Era was in her bondoir," he said, "but Miss Alice
hadn't come down.'' I sent up the bouquet with Mr. Fel-
lows's compliments, and made the best of my way to Eva.
She was in the pretty little nook in which we had had
our first lotig talk, and which now she called our "Italy.''
I found her a little pale and serious, but on the whole in
cheerful spirits.
"It's about as bad as it can be," said she. "It seems
papa has made himself personally responsible for the Lights
ning Bailroad and borrowed money to put into it, and then
there 's soiðing or other about the stock he borrowed on
running down till it is n't worth anything. I don't under-
stand a Word of it, only I know that the upshot of it all
is, papa is going to give up all he has and begin over.
This house and furniture will be put into a broker's hands
and advertised for sale. All the pictures are going to
Goupil's sale rooms and will make quite a nice gallery.^'
"Except yours in this room," said I.
" Ah, well ! I thought we should keep these, but 1 find
papa is very sensitive about giving up everything that is
really his and these are his in fact. I bought them with
his money. At all events, let them go. We won't care.
Will we 1 "
"Not so long as we have each other," said I. "For my
part, though I 'm sorry for you all, yet I bless the stroke
that brings you to me. You see, we must make a new
holne at once, you and I; isn't it sot Kow, hear me; let
us be married in June, the month of months, and for our
wedding journey we '11 go up to the mountains and see my
mother; It 's perfectly lovely up there. Shall it be so? "
"As you will, Harry. And it will be all the better so,
because Ida is going to sail for Paris sooner than she
anticipated."
"Why does Ida do that ? "
"Well, you see, Ida has been the manager of papa's tcit^
422 MY WIF AND I
eign correspondence and written all the letters for three
years past, and papa has paid her a large salary, of which
she has spent scarcely anything. She has invested it to
make her studies with in Paris. She offered this to papa,
but he would not take it. He told her it was no more his
than the salary of any other of his clerks, and that if she
would n*t make him very unhappy she would take it and
go to Paris; and by going immediately she could arrange
some of his foreign business. So, you see, she wiU stay to
see us married and then saiL"
"We '11 bo married in the same church where we put up
the Easter crosses," said I.
"How little we dreamed it then," she said; "and that
reminds me, sir, where 's my glove that you stole on that
occasion? You naughty boy, you thought nobody saw
you, but somebody did."
"Your glove," said I, "is safe and sound in my reli-
quary along with sundry other treasures."
" You unprincipled creature I what are they 1 Confess. "
"Well! a handkerchief."
" Wretched man I and besides ? "
"Two hairpins, a faded rose, two beads that dropped
from your croquet suit, and a sleeve-button. Then there
is a dry sprig of myrtle that you dropped on, let me see,
the 14th of April, when you were out at the Park in one
of those rustic arbors."
"And you were sitting glowering like an owl in an ivy
bush. I remember I saw you there."
We both found ourselves laughing very much louder
than circumstances seemed really to require, when Eva
heard her father's footstep and checked herself. "There
goes poor papa. Isn't it a shame that we laugh) We
ought to be sober, now, but for the life of me I can't.
I'm one of the imponderable elastic gases; you can't keep
me down."
THE EXPLOSION 423
"One may 'as well laugh as cry,' undei all ciicum-
Btances," said I.
*' Better, a dozen times. But seriously and soberly, I
believe that even papa, now it 's all over, feels relieved.
It was while he was struggling, fearing, dreading, afraid to
tell us, that he had the worst of it."
"Nothing is ever so bad as one's fears," said I. "There
is always some hope even at the bottom of Pandora's box."
"Sententious, Mr. Editor, but true. Now in illustra-
tion. Last week Ida and I wrote to the boys at Cambridge
all about what we feared was coming, and this very morn-
ing we had such nice manly letters from both of them. If
we had n't been in trouble we never should have known
half what good fellows they are. Look here," she said,
opening a letter, " Tom says, * Tell father that I can take
care of myself. I 'm in my senior year and the rest of the
course isn't worth waiting for, and I 've had an opportu-
nity to pitch in with a surveying party on the Northern
Bailroad along with my chum. I shall work like sixty,
and make myself so essential that they can't do without
me. And, you see, the first that will be known of me I
shall be one of the leading surveyors of the day. So have
no care for me. ' And here 's a letter from Will which
says, *Why didn't father tell us before? We've spent
ever so much more than we needed, but are going about
financial retrenchments with a vengeance. Last week I
attended the boat-race at Worcester and sent an account of
it to the "Argus," written off-hand, just for the fun of it.
I got a prompt reply, wanting to engage me to go on a re-
porting tour of all the great election meetings for them.
I 'm to have thirty dollars a week and all expenses paid;
so, you see, I step into the press at once. We shall sell our
pictures and furniture to some freshies that are coming in,
and wind up matters so as not to come on father for any-
thing till he gets past these straits. Tell mother not to
424 MY WIFE AND I
worry, she shall be taken care of; she shall have Tom and
me both to work for her. ' "
"They are splendid fellows!" said I, "and it is worth
a crisis to see how well they behave in it. Well, then,"
I resumed, " our wedding day shall be filed, say for the
14th of June 1 "
"How very statistical! I 'm sure I can't say. I 've got
to talk with mamma and all the powers that be, and settle
my own head. Don't let 's set a day yet; it soils the blue
line of the distance nothing like those pearl tints. Our
drawing master used to tell us one definite touch would
spoil them."
" For the present, then, it is agreed that we are to be
married generally in the month of June ? " said I.
"P. P. Providence permitting," said she "Provi-
dence, meaning mamma, Ida, Aunt Maria, and all the
rest."
CHAPTER XLI
1?HB WEDDINa AND THE TALK OYER THE PBATEB-
BOOK
If novels are to be considered true pictures of real life
we must believe that the fall from wealth to poverty is a
less serious evil in America than in any other known quar-
ter of the world.
In English novels the failure of a millionaire is repre-
sented as bringing results much the same as the commission
of an infamous crime. Poor old Mr. Sedley fails, and
forthwith all his acquaintances cut him; nobody calls on his
wife or knows her in the street; the family who have all
along been courting his daughter for their son, and kissing
the ground at her feet, now command the son to break with
her, and turn him out of doors for marrying her.
In America it is quite otherwise. A man fails without
losing friends, neighbors, and the consideration of society.
He moves into a modest house, find some means of honest
livelihood, and everybody calls on his wife as before.
Friends and neighbors as they have opportunity are glad
to stretch forth a helping hand, and a young fellow who
should break his engagement with the daughter at such a
crisis would simply be scouted as infamous.
Americans have been called worshipers of the almighty
dollar, and they certainly are not backward in that species
of devotion, but still these well-known facts show that our
worship is not, after all, so absolute as that of other quar-^
ters of the world.
Mr. Van Arsdel commanded the respect and sympathy
426 MY WIFE AND I
of the influential men of New York. The inflexible hon-
esty and honor with which he gave up all things to his
creditors won sympathy, and there was a united efl*ort
made to procure for him an appointment in the Custom
House, which would give him a comfortable income. In
short, by the time that my wedding day arrived, the family
might be held as having fallen from wealth into compe-
tence. The splendid establishment on Fifth Avenue was
to be sold. It was, in fact, already advertised, and our
wedding was to be the last act of the family drama in it.
After that we were to go to my mother's, in the mountains
of New Hampshire, and Mr. Van ArsdePs family were to
spend the summer at the old farm-homestead where his
aged parents yet kept house.
Our wedding preparations therefore went forward with
a good degree of geniality on the part of the family, and
with many demonstrations of sympathy and interest on the
part of friends and relations. A genuine love-marriage
always and everywhere evokes a sort of instinctive warmth
and sympathy. The most worldly are fond of patronizing
it as a delightful folly, and as Eva had been one of the
most popular girls of her set she was flooded with presents.
And now the day of days was at hand, and for the last
time I went up the steps of the Van Arsdel mansion to
spend a last evening with Eva Van Arsdel.
She met me at the door of her boudoir: "Harry, here
you are ! oh, I have no end of things to tell you ! the
door-bell has been ringing all day, and a perfect storm of
presents. We have duplicates of all the things that nobody
can do without. I believe we have six pie-knives and four
sugar-sifters and three egg-boilers and three china hens to
sit on eggs, and a perfect meteoric shower of salt-cellars.
I couldn't even count them."
"Oh, well! Salt is the symbol of hospitality/' said I,
"so we can't have too many."
THE WEDDING 427
"And look here, Harry, the wedding dress has come
home. Think of the unheard-of incomprehensible virtue
of TuUegig! I don't think she ever had a thing done in
time before in her life. Behold now ! "
Sure enough! before me, arranged on a chair, was a
misty and visionary pageant of vapory tulle and shimmer-
ing satin.
"All this is Ida's gift. She insisted that she alone
would dress me for my wedding, and poor TuUegig actually
has outdone herself, and worked over it with tears in her
eyes. Good soul ! she has a heart behind all her finery,
and really seems to take to me especially, perhaps because
I 've been such a model of patience in waiting at her doors,
and never scolded her for any of her tricks. In fact, we
girls have been as good as an annuity to TuUegig; no won-
der she mourns over us. Do you know, Harry, the poor
old thing actuaUy kissed me ! "
"I 'm not in the least surprised at her wanting that priv-
ilege," said I.
" Well, I felt rather tender toward her. I believe it *s
Dr. Johnson or somebody else who says there are few
things, not purely evU, of which we can say without emo-
tion, ' This is the last ! ' And TuUegig is by no means a
pure evU. This is probably the last of her with me.
But come, you don't say what you think of it. What is
it like ? ''
"Like a vision, like the clouds of morning, Uke the
translation robes of saints, like impossible undreamed mys-
teries of bliss. I feel as if they might aU dissolve away
and be gone before to-morrow."
"Oh, shocking, Harry! you must n't take such indefinite,
cloudy views of things. You must learn to appreciate
details. Open your eyes, and learn now that TuUegig out
of special love and grace has adorned my dress with a new
style of trimming that not one of the girls has ever had or
428 MV WIFE AND I
seen before. It is an original composition ol hei own.
Isn'titbHssful, nowT'
Extremely blissful," said I obediently.
You don^t admire, -^you are not half awake."
"I do admire -^ wonder adore anything 6lse that
yon like ^-'^ but I can't help feeling that it is all a vision,
and that when those cloud wreaths float around you, you
will dissolve away and be gone."
"Pohl pohl You will find me Very visible and present,
as a sharp little thorn in your side. Now, see, here are
the slippers!" and therewith she set down before me a
pair of pert little delicious white satin absurdities, with
high heels and tiny toes, and great bows glistening with
bugled.
Nothing fascinates a man like a woman's slipper^ from
its utter incomprehensibility, its astonishing unlikeness to
any article subserving the same purpose for his own sex.
Eva's slippers always seemed to have a character of their
own, a prankish elfin grace, and these as they stood
there seemed instinct with life as two white kittens just
reddy for a spring.
I put two fingers into each of the little wretches and
made them caper and danoe, and we laughed gayly
" Let me see your boots, Harry ? "
"There," said I, putting best foot forward^ a brand-new
pair bought for the occasion. " I am wearing them to get
used to them, so as to give my whole mind to the solemn
services to-mortow."
"Oh, yoil enormous creature!" she said; "you are a
perfect behemoth. Fancy now my slippers peeping over
the table here and wondering at your boots. I can
imagine the woman question discussed between the slippers
and the boots."
"And I can fancy," said I, "the poor, stumping, well-
meaning old boots being utterly perplexed and routed by
THE WEDDING 429
the elfin slippois. What can poor boots do 9 They cannot
follow them, cannot catch or control them, and if they
come down hard on them they ruin them altogether,"
^'And the good old boots i^eyerthe)es9|" said she, "ure
worth forty pairs of slippers. They can st^mp through
wet and mud and rain, and come out afterward good as
neW) and lift the slippers oyer impossible places. Dear
old patient long-suffering boots, let the slippers respect
them ! But come} Harry, this is the last evening now, and
do you know I 've some anxiety about our little programme
to-morrow 1 You were not bred in the Church, and you
never were married before, and sq you ought to be well up
in your part beforehand."
"I confess," said I, "I feel ignorant and a bit nervous."
"Kow, I've been a bridesniaid no end of times, and
seen all the possibles that may happen under those inter-
esting circumstances, and men are so awkward their
great feet are always sure to step somewhere where they
shouldn't, and then they thumb and fumble about the
ring, and their gloves always stick to their hands, and it 's
uncomfortable generally. Now don't, I beg you, disgrace
me by any such enormities."
"This is what the slippers say to the boots," said I.
"!^xactly. And here is where the boots do well to take
a lesson of the slippers. They are * on their native heath, '
here."
"Well, then," said I, "get down the Prayer-Book an4
teach me my proprieties. I will learn my lesson thor^
oughly , "
"Well, now, we have the thing all arranged for to-
morrow; the carriages are to be here at ten; ceremony fit
eleven, The procession will form at the church door;
first, Jin^ Eellpws and Alice, then you and mamma, then
papa and n^e, and when we meet at the altar be sure to
mind where you step, and don't tread on niy veil or any
430 MY WIFE AND I
of my tulle clouds, because, though it may look like vapor,
you can't very well set your foot through it; and be sure
you have a well-disciplined glove that you can slip off
without a fuss; and have the ring just where you can lay
your hand on it. And now let 's read over the service and
responses and all that/'
We went through them creditably till Eva, putting her
finger on one word, looked me straight in the eye.
" Obey, Harry, isn't that a droll word between you and
mel I can't conceive of it. Now up to this time you
have always obeyed me.*'
"And * turn about is fair play,' the proverb says," said
I; "you see, Eva, since Adam took the apple from Eve
men have obeyed women nem. con, there was no need
of putting the * obey ' into their part. The only puzzle is
how to constrain the subtle, imponderable, ethereal essence
of womanhood under some law; so the obey is our helpless
attempt."
" But now, really and truly, Harry, I want to talk seri-
ously about this. The girls are so foolish! Jane Sey-
mour said she said * be gay ' instead of * obey ' and Maria
Bivington said she didn't say it at all. But really and
truly, that is Gk)d's altar and it is a religious service, and
if I go there at all, I must understand what I mean^ and
say it from my heart."
"My dear, if you have any hesitancy you know that
you can leave it out. In various modem wedding services
it is often omitted. We could easily avoid it."
"Oh, nonsense, Harry! Marry out of the Church!
What are you thinking of 1 Not I, indeed! I should n't
think myself really married."
"Well, then, my princess, it is your own affair. It
you choose to promise to obey me, I can only be grateful
for the honor; if it gives any power, it is of your giving,
not my seeking."
THE WEDDING 431
"But what does a woman promise when she promises at
the altar to obey 1 "
"Well, evidently, she promises to obey her husband in
every case where he commands and a higher duty to (rod
does not forbid."
" But does this mean that all through life in every case
where there arises a difference of opinion or taste between
a husband and wife she is to give up to him ? "
"If," said I, "she has been so unwise as to make this
promise to a man without common sense or gentlemanly
honor, who chooses to have his own will prevail in all cases
of differences of taste, I don't see but she must."
" But between people like you and me, Harry 1 "
" Between people like you and me, darling, I can't see
that the word can make any earthly difference. There
can be no obeying where there never is any commanding,
and as to commanding you I should as soon think of com-
manding the sun and moon."
"Well; but you know we shall not always think alike
or want the same thing."
"Then we will talk matters over, and the one that gives
the best reasons shall prevail. You and I will be like any
other two dear friends who agree to carry on any enterprise
together: we shall discuss matters, and sometimes one and
sometimes the other will prevail."
" But, Harry, this matter puzzles me. Why is there a
command in the Bible that wives should always obey?
Very many times in domestic affairs, certainly, the woman
knows the most and has altogether the best judgment. "
" It appears to me that it is one of those very general
precepts that require to be largely interpreted by common
sense. Taking the whole race of man together, for all
stages of society and all degrees of development, I suppose
it is the safest general direction for the weaker party. In
low stages of society where brute force rules, man has
482 MY WIFE AND I
woman wholly in bis power, and she can win peace and
protection only by submission. But where society rises
into those higher forms where husbands and wives are in-
telligent companions and equals, the direction does no
harm, because it confers a prerogative that no cultivated
man would think of asserting any more than he would
think of using his superior physical strength to enforce it."
"I suppose," said Eva, "it is just like the command
that children should obey parents. When children are
grown up and married and settled, parents never think
of it."
"Precisely," said I, "and you and I are the grown-up
children of the Christian era all that talk of obedience is
the old calyx of the perfect flower of love * when that
which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall
be done away. ' "
" So, then, it appears you and I shall have a free field
of discussion, Harry, and maybe I shall croquet your ball
off the ground sometimes, as I did once before, you know."
"I dare say you will. There was an incipient spice of
matrimonis^ virulence, my fair Eva, in the way you played
that game I Jn fact, I began to hope I was not indifferent
to you from the zeal with which you pursued and routed
me on that occasion."
"I must confess it did my heart good to set your ball
spinning, -^ and that puts me in mind. I have the great-
est piece of pews to tell you. If you '11 believe me, Syd-
nej/ and Sophie are engaged already I She came here
this morning with her present, this lovely amethyst cross
and it seems funny to me, but she is just as dead in
love with Sydney m she ean be, and do you know he is so
delighted with the compliment that he has informed her
that he has made the discovery that he nev^ was in lov^
he/ore,"
"Tbe scampi wh^t does he mesin? " said I.
THE WEDDING 438
"Oh, he said that little witch Eva Van Arsdel had daz-
zled him and he had really supposed himself in love, but
that she never had 'excited the profound,' etc., etc, he
feels for Sophie."
" So * all 's well that ends well, ' " said I.
''And to show his entire pacification toward me," said
Eva, " he has sent me this whole set of mantel bronzes
clock, vases, candlesticks, match-box, and all. Are n't they
superb ? "
"Magnificent!" said I. "What an air they will give
our room! On the whole, dear, I think rejected lovers
are not so bad an article."
"Well, here, I must show you Bolton's present, which
came in this afternoon," with which she led me to a pair
of elegantly carved book-racks enriched with the complete
works of Longfellow, Whittier, Lowell, Holmes, and Haw-
thorne. They were elegantly gotten up in a uniform style
of binding.
"Isn't that lovely 1" said she, "and so thoughtful!
Eor how many happy hours he has provided here ! "
"Good fellow!" said I, feeling the tears start in my
eyes. "Eva, if there is a mortal absolutely without sel-
fishness, it is Bolton."
" Oh, Harry, why could n't he marry and be as happy
as we are ? "
"Perhaps some day he may," said I, "but, dear me!
who gave that comical bronze inkstand 9 It 's enough to
make one laugh to look at it."
"Don't you know at once? Why, that 's Jim Fellows's
present. Is n't it just like him 1 "
"I might have known it was Jim," said I, "it 's so de-
cidedly frisky."
" Well, really, Harry, do you know that I am in deadly
fear that that wicked Jim will catch my eye to-morrow in
the ceremony or do something to set me of, and I'm
434 MT WI7 AlffD I
alwajs peifectly hysterical when I 'm excited, and if I look
his mj there 'U be no hope for me.'^
"We must trust to Providence/' said I; ''if I should
say a word of remonstrance it would make it ten timee
worse. The creature is possessed of a frisky spirit and
can't help it.''
"Alice was lecturing him about it last night, and the
only result was we nearly killed ourselves laughing. After
all, Harry, who can help liking Jim ? Since our troubles
be has been the kindest of mortals; so really delicate
and thoughtful in his attentions. It was something I
shouldn't have expected of him. Harry, what do yoa
think 1 Should you want Alice to like him, supposing you
knew that he would like her! Is there stability enough in
himf"
"Jim is a qneer fellow," nid L "On a slight view he
looks a mere bundle of comicalities and caprices, and he
takes a singular delight in shocking respectable prejudices
and making himself out worse than he is, or ever thinks of
being. But after all, as yoimg men go, Jim is quite free
from bad habits. He does not drink, and he doesn't
even smoke. He is the most faithful, assiduous worker in
his line of work among the newspaper men of New York.
He is a good son, a kind brother."
"But, somehow, he doesn't seem to me to have real
deep firm principle."
" Jim is a child of modem New York - an eleve of her
school. A good wife and a good home, with good friends,
might do much for him, but he will always be one that
will act more from kindly impulses than from principle.
He will be very apt to go as his friends ga"
"You know," she said, "in old times, when Alice was
in full career, I never thought of anything serious as pos-
sible. It is only since our trouble and his great kindness
to us that I have thought of the thing as at all likely.^'
V
THE WEDDING 435
"We may as well leave it to the good powers," said I;
"we can't do much to help or hinder, only, if they should
come together I shall be glad for Jim's sake, for I love
him. And now, my dear Eva, have you any more orders,
counsels, or commands for the fateful to-morrow 1 " said
I; "for it waxes late, and you ought to get a beauty sleep
to-night. "
" Oh, I forgot to tell you I 'm not going to wear either
my new traveluig dress or hat^ Hr anything to mark me out
as a Inide; and look here, Harry^ you must try and stody
the old staid married man's demeanor. Don't let 's dia
grace ourselves by being discovered at onoe.^'
" Shall I turn my back on you and read the ziiew8{Mkper f
I observe that some married men do that."
"Yes, and if you could conjugally wipe your boots on
my dress, it would have an extremely dd married effect.
You can read the paper first, and then pass it to me that
is another delicate litUe point."
"I 'm afraid that in your zeal you will drive me to ex-
cesses of boorishness that will overshoot the mark," said I.
^ You would n't want me to be so negligent of ' that pretty
girl ' that some other gentleman would feel a dispo&ition
to befriend her ? "
^Well, dear, but there's a happy medium. We can
appear like two relatives traveling together."
"I am afraid," said I, "after all, we shall be detected;
but if we are, we shall be in good company. Our first
day's journey lies in the regular bridal route, and I expect
that every third or fourth seat will show an enraptured
pair, of whom we can take lessons after all, dear, you
know there is no sin in being just married."
"No, only in acting silly about it, as I hope we sha'n't.
I want us to be models of rationality and decorum."
Here the clock striking twelve warned me that the last
day of Eva Van Arsdel's life was numbered.
CHAPTER XTiTT
BOLTON
I RETURNED to my room past midnight, excited and
wakefuL Seeing a light through the crack of Bolton's
door, I went up and knocked and was bidden to enter. I
found him seated under his study-lamp, looking over a
portfolio of papers, some of which lay strewed around him
open. I observed at a glance that the handwriting was
that of Caroline. He looked at me. Our eyes met a
slight flush rose in his cheeks as he said, "I have been
looking over a collection of writings belonging to your
cousin, the fruits of the solitary years of her secluded
life."
"And you find them "
"A literary treasure," he said, with emphasis. "Yes,"
he added, " what there is here will, I think, give her repu-
tation and established position, and a command of prices
which will enable her to fulfill her long-cherished intention
of studying in Paris. She will go out with Miss Ida Van
Arsdel soon after you are gone. I can assure her the
means, and I have already procured her the situation of
correspondent to the 'Chronicle,* with very liberal terms.
So, you see, her way is all plain."
" But what shall we do with the * Ladies Cabinet * ? "
" Oh, we *11 manage it among us. Caroline will write
for it occasionally."
" Caroline ! " There was a great deal in the manner in
which Bolton spoke that name. It was full of suppressed
feeling. Some can express as much intensity of devotion
BOLTON 437
by the mere utterance of a name as others by the most
ardent protestations.
I was in the mood that holds every young man on the
eve of a happy marriage. I could conceive of no bliss out-
side of that; and there was in the sound of Bolton's voice,
as he spoke, a vibration of an intense pain which distressed
me.
"Bolton," I said imploringly, "why will you sacrifice
yourself and her? She loves you you love her. Why
not another marriage another home 1 ''
His face quivered a moment, and then settled firmly.
He smiled.
"Hal, my boy," he said, "you naturally see nothing for
man and woman but marriage just now. But it is not
every man and woman who love each other who have the
right to marry. She does love me," he added, with a
deep, inward breathing. "She is capable of all that mag-
nanimity, all that generous self-sacrifice that make women
such angels to us "
" Then, oh ! why not " began I eagerly.
^^ Because I love her dearly, devotedly, I will not ac-
cept such a sacrifice. I will not risk her wrecking her life
on me. The pain she feels now in leaving me will soon
die out in the enthusiasm of a career. Yes, the day is
now come, thank God, when a woman as well as a man
can have some other career besides that of the heart. Let
her study her profession, expand her mind, broaden her
powers become all that she can be. It will not impede
her course to remember that there is in the world one friend
who will always love her above all things; and the know-
ledge that she loves me will save me if I am salvable. "
" * If M Oh, Bolton, my brother ! why do you say * if ' ? "
"Because the danger is one I cannot comprehend and
provide for. It is like that of sudden insanity. The
curse may never return pray God it may not but if it
should, at least I shall wreck no other heart."
438 MY WIFE AND I
" Bolton, can you say so if there is one that loves you ? "
"Not as a wife would love. Her whole being and des-
tiny are not intertwined with mine as marriage would
unite them. Besides, if there is somewhere hid away in
my brain and blood the seed of this fatal mania, shall I
risk transmitting them to a helpless child ? Shall I expose
such a woman to the danger of suffering over again, as a
mother, the anguish she must suffer as a wife ? the fears,
the anxieties, the disappointment, the wearing, wasting
pain? As God is my Judge, I will not make another
woman suffer what my mother has."
In all my intercourse with Bolton I never heard him
speak of his mother before, and he spoke now with intense
vehemence; his voice vibrated and quivered with emotion.
In a few moments, however, he resumed his habitual self-
possession.
"No, Hal," he said cheerily, "build no air-castles for
me. I shall do well enough; you and yours will be enough
to occupy me. And now show me first what I am to do
for you while you are gone. Jim and I will trudge to all
impossible places, to look you up that little house with a
good many large rooms in it, that all young housekeepers
are in search of. I will cut out advertisements and look
over nice places and let you know the result; and I '11 see
to the proof-sheets of your articles for the * Milky Way, *
and write your contributions to the * Democracy. * If you
want to be our special correspondent from the Garden of
Eden, why you may send us back letters on your trip.
You can tell us if the * gold of that land ' is still * good, '
and if there are there still ' bdellium and oynx stone, ' as
there were in the Bible days."
"Thank you," said I. "I shall send you letters, but
hardly of a kind to appear in the * Democracy. ' "
"What with your engagements on that sheet, and what
I shall have ready to pile in on you by the time you come
BOLTON 439
back, you will have little time for philandering after your
return. So take it out now and get all the honey there is
in this next moon. For me, I have my domestic joys.
Finnette has presented me with a charming batch of kittens.
Look here."
And sure enough, snugly ensconced in a large, well-
padded basket by the fire lay madam asleep, with four
downy little minikins snuggled to her. Bolton took the
lamp and kneeled down to show them, with the most ab-
sorbed intent. Stumpy came and stood by the basket,
wagging what was left of his poor tail, and looking as if
he had some earnest responsibility in the case.
As to Finnette, she opened her yellow eyes, sleepily
stretched out her claws, purred and rolled over, as if in
excess of pride and joy.
"Who says there isn't happiness on earth?" said Bol-
ton. "A cat is a happiness-producing machine. Hal, I
shall save one of those kittens to set you up with. Ko
family is complete without a cat. I shall take one in train-
ing for you. You should have a dog, too; but I can't
spare Stumpy. I don't believe there is anything like
him in the world."
"I verily believe you," said I.
" Stumpy 's beauty is so entirely moral that I fear it
never would be popularly appreciated; besides, poor brute,
he is quite capable of dying for love of me if I gave him
up. That 's an accomplishment few men attain to. Well,
Hal, go to bed now, or you '11 be too sleepy to behave re-
spectably to-morrow. God bless you I '*
CHAPTEE XLin
THE WEDDING JOUBNET
A WEDDING journey, what is iti A tour to all the
most expensive and fashionable hotels and watering-places.
The care of Saratoga trunks and bonnet-boxes. The dis-
play of a fashionable wardrobe made purposely for this
object, and affording three altogether new and different
toilettes a day.
Very well.
Doubtless all this may coexist with true love ; and true lov-
ers, many and ardent, have been this round, and may again,
and have been and may be none the worse for it. For where
true love is, it is not much matter whatever else is or is not.
But when the Saratoga trunks, the three dresses a day,
and the display of them to Mrs. Grundy, have been the
substitute for love and one of the impelling motives to
marriage, or when they absorb all those means and re-
sources on which domestic comfort and peace should be
built during the first years of married life, then they are
simply in Scriptural phrase " the abomination of desolation,
standing where it ought not."
Yet apart from that there is to me a violation of the
essential sacredness of the holiest portion of mortal life in
exposing it to the glare of every-day observation. It seems
as if there were something so wonderful and sacred in that
union by which man and woman, forsaking all others,
cleave to each other, that its inception requires quiet soli-
tude, the withdrawal from the commonplace and bustling
ways of ordinary life.
THE WEDDING JOURNEY 441
The two, more to each other than all the world besides,
are best left to the companionship of nature. Carpets of
moss are better than the most elaborate of fashionable hotel
furniture ; birds and squirrels are more suitable companions
than men and women.
Our wedding was a success so far as cheerfulness and
enjoyment were concerned. The church had been gar-
landed and made fair and sweet by the floral tributes of
many friendly hands. Jim Fellows and one or two of the
other acquaintances of the family had exerted themselves
to produce a very pretty effect. The wedding party was
one of relatives and near friends only, without show or
parade, but with a great deal of good taste. There was
the usual amount of weeping among the elderly female rela-
tives, particularly on the part of Aunt Maria, who insisted
x)n maintaining a purely sepulchral view of our prospects
in life.
Ever since the failure of Mr. Van Arsdel, Aunt Maria
had worn this aspect, and seemed to consider all demon-
strations of lightness of heart and cheerfulness on the part
of the family as unsuitable trifling with a dreadful dispen-
sation. But the presence of this funereal influence could
not destroy the gayety of the younger members, and Jim
Fellows seemed to exert himself particularly to whip up
such a froth and foam of merriment and jollity as caused
the day to be remembered as one of the gayest in our
annals.
We had but one day's ride in the cars to bring us up to
the old simple stage route of the mountain country. Dur-
ing this said day in the cars, under the tutelage of my
Empress, I was made to behave myself with the grimmest
and most stately reserve of manner. Scarcely was I allowed
the same seat with her, and my conversation with her, so
far as could be observed, was confined to the most unim-
passioned and didactic topics.
442 MY WIFE AND I
The reason for this appeared to be that having married
in the very matrimonial month of June, and our track
lying along one of the great routes of fashionable travel,
we we^e beset behind and before by enraptured couples,
whose amiable artlessness in the display of their emotions
appeared particularly shocking to her taste. On the row
of seats in front of us could be seen now a masculine head
lolling confidentially on a feminine shoulder, and again in
the next seat an evident bridal bonnet leaning on the
bosom of the beloved waistcoat of its choice in sweet
security.
"It is perfectly disgusting and disagreeable," she said
in my ear.
. "My dear," I replied, "I don't see as we can do any-
thing about it."
"I don't see I cannot imagine how people can make
such a show of themselves," she said.
"Well, you see," said I, "we are all among the par-
venus of married life. It is n't everybody that knows how
to behave as if he had always been rich let us comfort
ourselves with reflections on our own superiority."
The close of the day brought us, however, to the verge
of the mountain region where railroads cease and stages
begin, the beautiful country, of hard, flinty, rocky roads,
of pines and evergreens, of silvery cascades and brooks of
melted crystal, and of a society as yet homely and heart-
some, and with a certain degree of sylvan innocence. At
once we seemed to have left the artificial world behind us
the world of observers and observed. We sat together
on the top of the stage, and sailed like two birds of the air
through the tree-tops of the forest, looking down into all
the charming secrets of woodland ways as we went on, and
feeling ourselves delivered from all the spells and incanta-
tions of artificial life. We might have been two squirrels,
or a pair of robins, or bluebirds. We ceased to think how
^
THE WEDDING JOURNEY 448
we appeared. We forgot that there were an outer world
and spectators, and felt ourselves taken in and made at
home in the wide hospitality of nature. Highland, where
my mother lived, was just within a day's ride of the finest
part of the White Mountains. The close of a charming
leisurely drive upward hrought us at night to her home,
and I saw her sweet face of welcome at the door to meet
us, and gave her new daughter to her arms with confident
pride.
The village was so calm, and still, and unchanged I
The old church where my father had preached, the houses
where still lived the people I had known from a boy, the
old store, the tavern with its creaking sign-post, and, best
of all, Uncle Jacob's house, with its recesses and comers
full of books, its quiet rooms full of comfort, its traditions
of hospitality, and the deep sense of calm and rest that
seemed ever brooding there. This was a paradise where I
could bring my Eve for rest and for refuge.
What charming days went over our heads there ! We
rambled like two school- children, hand in hand, over all
the haunts of my boyhood. Where I and my little child-
wife had gathered golden-hearted lilies and strawberries,
we gathered them again. The same bobolink seemed to
sit on the top twig of the old apple-tree in the comer of
the meadow and say, "Chack, chack, chack!" as he said
it when Susie and I used to sit with the meadow grass over
our heads to watch him while he poured down on us show-
ers of musical snowdrops. It seemed as if I had gone back
to boyhood again, so much did my inseparable companion
recall to me the child-wife of my early days. We were
both such perfect children, living in the enjoyment of the
bright present, without a care or a fear for the future.
Every day when we returned from our rambles and ex-
cursions the benignant face of my mother shone down on
us with fullness of appreciation and joy in our joy; while
444 MY WIFE AND I
Uncle Jacob, still dry, quizzical, and active as ever, re-
garded us with an undisguised complacency.
"You've done the right thing now, Harry," he said to
me. " She '11 do. You 're a lucky boy to get such a one,
even though she is a city girl."
Eva, after a little experience in mountain climbing, pro-
ceeded to equip herself for it with feminine skill. Our
village store supplied her with material out of which with
wonderful quickness she constructed what she called a
mountain suit, somewhat of the bloomer order, but to which
she contrived to impart a sort of air of dapper grace and
fitness. And once arrayed in this she climbed with me to
the most impossible places, and we investigated the inner-
most mysteries of rock, forest, and cavern.
My uncle lent me his horse and carriage, and with a
luncheon- basket well stored by my mother's providing
care, we went on a tour of exploration of two or three
days into the mountains, in the course of which we made
ourselves familiar in a leisurely manner with some of the
finest scenery.
The mutual acquaintance that comes to companions in
this solitude and face-to-face communion with nature is
deeper and more radical than can come when surrounded
by the factitious circumstances of society. When the whole
artificial world is withdrawn, and far out of sight, when
we are surrounded with the pure and beautiful mysteries
of nature, the very best and most genuine part of us comes
to the surface, we know each other by the communion of
our very highest faculties.
When Eva and I found ourselves alone together in the
heart of some primeval forest, where the foot sank ankle-
deep in a carpet of more exquisite fabric than any loom of
mortal workmanship could create, where the old fallen
trunks of trees were all overgrown with this exquisite
mossy tapestry, and all around us was a perfect broidery
THE WEDDING JOURNEY 445
and inlay of flower and leaf, while birds called to us over-
head, down through the flickering shadows of the pine
boughs, we felt ourselves out of the world and in paradise,
and able to look back from its green depths with a dispas-
sionate judgment on the life we had left.
Then, the venture we had made in striking hands with
each other to live, not for the pomps and vanities of this
world, but for the true realities of the heart, seemed to us
the highest reason. Nature smiled on it. Every genuine
green thing, every spicy fragrant bush and tree, every
warbling bird, true to the laws of its nature, seemed to say
to us, "WeU done.''
"I suppose," said Eva, as we sat in one of these moun-
tain recesses whence we could gain a view of the little sil-
very cascade, "I suppose that there are a great many peo-
ple who look on me as a proper subject of pity. My father
has failed. I have married a man with no fortune, except
what he has in himself. We can't afford to spend our
honeymoon at Niagara, Saratoga, and the rest of the show
places; and we don't contemplate either going to parties or
giving them when we go back to New York."
"Poor, poor Eva Van Arsdel! how art thou fallen!"
said I.
"Poor Aunt Maria!" said Eva. "I honestly and truly
am sorry for her. She really loves me in her way the
way most people love you, which is to want you to be
happy in doing as they please. Her heart was set on my
making an astoundingly rich match, and having a wedding
that should ^clipse all former weddings, and then becoming
a leader of fashionable society ; and to have me fail of all
this is a dreadful catastrophe. I want somehow to com-
fort her and make-up with her, but she can't forgive me.
She kissed me at last with a stem and warning air that
seemed to say, 'Well, if you will go to destruction, I
can't help it. ' "
446 MY WIFE AND I
"Perhaps when she sees how bappj we are she will get
over it|'' said L
"1^0, I fear notw Aunt Maria can't conoeive of any-
body's being happy that has to begin life with an ingrain
carpet on the floor. She would think it a positive indeco-
rum to be happy under such circumstances a want of a
proper sense of the fitness of things. Now, I propose to
be yery happy under precisely those circumstances, and to
try to make you so; consequently you see I shall ofifend
her moral sense continuously, and, as I said, I do wish it
weren't so, because I love Aunt Maria, and am sonj I
can't please her."
"I suppose," said I, "there is no making her compre-
hend the resources we have in each other our love of
just this bright, free, natural life 1 "
"Oh dear, no! All Aunt Maria's idea of visiting ike
mountains would be having rooms at the Profile House in
the height of the season, and gazing in full dress at the
mountains from the verandas. I don't think she really
cares enough for anything here to risk wetting her feet for
it. I dare say the poor dear soul is lying awake nights
now, lamenting over my loss of what I don't care for, and
racking her brains how we may contrive to patch up m
little decent gentility."
"And you are as free and g^y as an oriole ! "
"Certainly I am. All I wish is that we could Hvb in
one of these little moimtain towns, just as your mother
and uncle do. I love the hearty, simple society here.''
"Well," said I, "as we cannot, we can only try to make
a home in New York as simple-hearted, and kindly, and
unworldly as if we lived here."
"Yes, and we can do that," said she. "You have only
to resolve to be free, and you are free. Now, that is the
beauty of our being married. Alone, we are parts of other
families, drawn along with them entrained^ as the
THE WEDDING JOUENEY 447
French say; now we aie married we can do as we please;
we become king and queen of a new state. In oar own
iionse we can have our own ways. We are monarchs of
all we survey."
"True," said I, "and a home and a family that has an
original and individual life of its own is always recognized
in time as a fait accowplu You and I will be for the
future *The Hendersons;' and people will say the Hen-
dersons do this and that, or the Hendersons don't do the
other. They will study us as one studies a new State."
"Yes," aaid she, taking up my idea in her vivacioaB
way, "and when they have ascertained oar latitude and
longitude, e(l and productions, manners and customs, they
can choose whether they like to visit us."
"And you are not in the least afraid of having it said,
* The Hendersons are odd ' ? " asked I.
"Not a bit of it," replied Eva, "so long as the oddity
is some unusual form of comfort. For example, a sitting-
room like your uncle's, with its brass andirons and blazing
wood fire, its books and work, its motherly lounges, would
be a sort of exotic in Kew York, where people, as a matter
of course, expect a pier-glass and marble slab, a sombre
concatenation of cord and tassels and damask curtains, and
a given number of French chairs and ottomans, veiled with
linen covers, and a general funereal darkness of gentility.
Now, I propose to introduce the country sitting-room into
our New York house. Your mother already has given me
her wedding andirons perfect loves with shovel and
tongs corresponding; and I am going to have a bright,
light, free and easy room which the sunshine shall glorify."
"But you know, my love, wood is very dear in New
York."
" So are curtains, and ottomans, and mirrors, and marble
slabs, and quantities of things which we shall do without.
And then, you see, we don't propose to warm our house
448 MY WIFE AND I
with a wood fire, but only to adorn it. It is an altar fire
that we will kindle every evening, just to light up our
room and show it to advantage. How charming every-
thing looks at your mother's in that time between daylight
and dark, when you all sit round the hearth, and the fire
lights up the pictures and the books, and makes every-
thing look so dreamy and beautiful I "
"You are a little poet, my dear; it will be your spe-
cialty to turn life into poetry."
"And that is what I call woman's genius. To make
life beautiful; to keep down and out of sight the hard,
dry, prosaic side, and keep up the poetry that is my
idea of our ' mission. ' I think woman ought to be what
Hawthorne calls ' the Artist of the BeautifuL ' ''
CHAPTEE XLIV
MY wife's WABDBOBE
Let not the reader imagine by the paragraph on Saratoga
trunks that my little wife had done what the Scripture
assumes is the impossibility for womankind, and as a bride
forgotten her attire. Although possessing ideas of great
moderation, she had not come to our mountain home with-
out the appropriate armor of womanhood.
I interpreted the duties of a husband after the direc-
tions of Michelet, and was my wife's only maid, and in all
humility performed for her the office of packing and
unpacking her trunks, and handling all those strange and
wonderful mysteries of the toilette, which seemed to my
eyes penetrated with an ineffable enchantment.
I have been struck with dismay of late, in reading the
treatises of some very clever female reformers concerning
the dress of the diviner sex. Is it really in contemplation
among them to reduce it to a level as ordinary and prosaic
as it occupies among us men, heavy-footed sons of toil?
Are sashes and bows, and neck-ribbons and tiny slippers
and gloves, to give way to thick-soled boots and buckskin
gauntlets and broadcloth coats ] To me my wife's ward-
robe was a daily poem, and from her use of it I derived the
satisfaction of faculties which had lain dormant under my
heavy black broadcloth, like the gauzy tissue under the
black horn wings of a poor beetle. I never looked at the
splendid pictures of Paul Veronese and Titian in the Vene-
tian galleries without murmuring at the severe edicts of
modem life which send every man fortL on the tide of life.
450 MY WIFE AND I
like a black gondola condemned to one unvarying color.
Those gorgeous velvets in all the hues of the rainbow, those
dainty laces and splendid gems, which once were allowed
to us men, are all swept away, and for us there remains no
poetry of dress. Our tailor turns us out a suit in which
one is just like another with scarce an individual variation.
The wife, then, the part of one's self which marriage
gives us, affords us a gratification of these suppressed
faculties. She is our finer self; and in her we appreciate
and enjoy what is denied to us. I freely admit the truth
of what women-reformers tell us, that it is the admiration
of us men that stimulates the love of dress in women.
It is a fact I confess it with tears in my eyes but it
is the truth, that we are blindly enchanted by that play of
fancy and poetry in their externals, which is forever denied
to us; and that we look with our indulgent eyes even on
what the French statesman calls their fureurs de toilette.
In fact, woman's finery never looks to another woman
as it does to a man. It has to us a charm, a sacredness,
that they cannot comprehend
Under my wife's instruction I became an expert guardian
of these filmy treasures of the wardrobe, and knew how to
fold and unfold, and bring her everything in its place, as
she daily performed for me the charming work of making
up her toilette. To be sure, my slowness and clumsiness
brought me many brisk little lectures, but my good will
and docility were so great that my small sovereign declared
herself on the whole satisfied with my progress. There
was a vapory collection apparently made up of bits and
ends of rainbows, flosses of clouds, spangles of stars, but-
terflies and humming-birds' wings, which she turned and
tossed over daily, with her dainty fingers, selecting a bit
here and a morsel there, which went to her hair, or her
neck, or her girdle, with a wonderful appropriateness, and
in a manner to me wholly incomprehensible; only the
MY wife's wardrobe 451
result was a new picture every day. This little artless
tableau was expensive neither of time nor money, and the
result was a great deal of very honest pleasure to us both.
It was her pride to be praised and admired first by me, and
then by my mother, and aunt, and Uncle Jacob, who
turned her round and admired her as if she had been some
rare tropical flower.
Now, do the very alarmingly rational women-reformers
I speak of propose to forbid to women in the future all
the use of clothes except that which is best adapted to pur-
poses of work ? Is the time at hand when the veil and
orange flowers and satin slippers of the bride shall melt
away into mist, and shall we behold at the altar the union
of young parties, dressed alike in swallow-tailed coats and
broadcloth pantaloons, with brass buttons?
If this picture seems absurd, then, it must be admitted
that there is a reason in nature why the dress of woman
should forever remain different from that of man, in the
same manner that the hand of her Creator has shaped her
delicate limbs and golden hair differently from the rugged
organization of man. Woman was meant to be more than
a worker; she was meant for the poet and artist of life;
she was meant to be the charmer; and that is the reason,
dear Miss Minerva, why to the end of time you cannot
help it that women always will, and must, give more care
and thought to dress than men.
To be sure, this runs into a thousand follies and extrava-
gances; but in this as in everything else the remedy is not
extirpation, but direction.
Certainly my pretty wife's pretty toilettes had a success
in our limited circle, which might possibly have been de-
nied in fashionable society at Saratoga and Newport. She
was beauty, color, and life to our little world, and followed
by almost adoring eyes wherever she went. It was as real
an accession of light and joy to the simple ways of our
452 MY WIFE AND I
household to have her there, as a choice picture, or a mar-
velous strain of music. My wife had to perfection the
truly artistic gift of dress. Had she lived in Brohinson
Crusoe's island with no one to look at her but the paroquets
and the monkeys, and with no mirror but a pool of water,
she would have made a careful toilette every day, from the
mere love of beauty; and it was delightful to see how a
fresh, young, charming woman, by this faculty of adorn-
ment, seemed to make the whole of the sober old house
like a picture or a poem.
"She is like the blossom on a cactus," said my Uncle
Jacob. "We have come to our flower, in her; we have
it in us; we all like it, but she brings it out; she is our
blossom."
In fact, it was charming to see the delight of the two
sober, elderly matrons, my mother and my aunt, in turning
over and surveying the pretty things of her toilette. My
mother, with all her delicate tastes and love of fineness and
exquisiteness, had lived in these respects the self-denied
life of a poor country minister's wife, who never has but
one " best pocket-handkerchief," and whom one pair of gloves
must last through a year. It was a fresh little scene of
delight to see the two way-worn matrons in the calm, sil-
very twilight of their old age, sitting like a pair of amicable
doves on the trunks in our room, while my wife displayed
to them all her little store of fineries, and all three chatted
them over with as whole-hearted a zeal as if finery were
one of the final ends in creation.
Every morning it was a part of the family breakfast to
admire some new device of berries or blossoms adapted to
her toilette. Now, it was knots of blue violets, and now
clusters of apple blossoms, that seemed to adapt themselves
to the purpose, as if they had been made for it. In the
same manner she went about the house filling all possible
flower vases with quaint and original combinations of leaves
and blossoms till the house bloomed like a garland.
MY wife's wardrobe 453
Then there were days when I have the vision of my wife
in .calico dress and crisp white apron, taking lessons in
ornamental housewifery of my mother and aunt in the
great, clean kitchen. There the three proceeded with all
care and solemnity to perform the incantations out of which
arose strange savory compounds of cakes and confections,
whose recipes were family heirlooms. Out of great plat-
ters of egg-whites, whipped into foamy masses, these mys-
tical dainties arose, as of old rose Venus from the foam of
the sea.
I observe that the elderly priestesses in the temple of
domestic experience have a peculiar pride and pleasure in
the young neophyte that seeks admission to these Eleusinian
mysteries.
Eva began to wear an air of precocious matronly grav-
ity, as she held long discourses with my mother and aunt
on all the high mysteries of household ways, following
them even to the deepest recesses of the house where they
displayed to her their hidden treasures of fine linen and
napery, and drew forth gifts wherewith to enrich our fu-
ture home.
In the olden times the family linen of a bride was of her
own spinning and that of her mother and kinswomen; so
that every thread in it had a sacredness of family life and
association. One can fancy dreams of peace could come in
a bed, every thread of whose linen has been spun by
loving and sainted hands. So, the gift to my wife from
my mother was some of this priceless old linen, every piece
of which had its story. These towels were spun by a be-
loved Aunt Avis, whose life was a charming story of faith
and patience; and those sheets and pillow-cases were the
work of my mother's mother; they had been through the
history of a family life, and came to us fragrant with rose-
mary and legend. We touched them with reverence, as
the relics of ascended saints.
454 MY WIFE AND I
Then there were the family receipt-books, which had a
quaint poetry of their own. I must confess, in the face
of the modem excellent printed manuals of cookery and
housekeeping, a tenderness for these old-fashioned receipt-
books of our mothers and grandmothers, yellow with age,
where in their own handwriting are the records of their
attainments and discoveries in the art of making life health-
ful and charming. There was a loving carefulness about
these receipts an evident breathing of human experience
and family life they were entwined with so many asso-
ciations of the tastes and habits of individual members of
the family, that the reading of my mother's receipt-book
seemed to bring back all the old pictures of home life;
and this precious manual she gave to Eva, who forthwith
resolved to set up one of her own on the model of it.
In short, by the time our honeymoon had passed Eva
regarded herself as a past mistress in the grand free-
masonry of home life, and assumed toward me those grave
little airs of instruction blent with gracious condescension
for male inferiority which obtain among good wives. She
began to be my little mother no less than wife.
My mother and aunt were confident of her success and
abilities as queen in her new dominions. It was evident
that though a city girl and a child of wealth and fashion,
she had what Yankee matrons are pleased to denominate
"faculty," which is, being interpreted, a genius for home
life, and she was only impatient now to return to her realm
and set up her kingdom.
CHAPTER XLV
LETTERS FROM NEW YORK
About this time we got a very characteristic letter from
Jim. Here it is :
Dear Hal, My head buzzes like a swarm of bees.
What haven't I done since you left? The Van Arsdels
are all packing up and getting ready to move out, and of
course I have been up making myself generally useful
there. I have been daily call-boy and page to the adorable
Alice. Mem. That girl is a brick ! Did n't use to
think so, but she 's sublime I The way she takes things is
so confounded sensible and steady ! I respect her there 's
not a bit of nonsense about her now you 'd better be-
lieve. They are all going up to the old paternal farm to
spend the summer with his father, and by fall there '11 be
an arrangement to give him an income (Van Arsdel I
mean), so that they '11 have something to go on. They '11
take a house somewhere in New York in the fall and do
fairly ; but think what a change to Alice !
Oh, by the bye, Hal, the Whang Doodle has made her
appearance in our parts again. Yesterday as I sat scratch-
ing for dear life, our friend 'Dacia sailed in, cock's-feathers
and all, large as life. She was after money, as usual, but
this time it 's her book she insisted on my subscribing for.
She informed me that it was destined to regenerate society,
and she wanted five dollars for it.
The title is:
456 MY WIFE AND I
THE UNIVERSAL EMPYREAL HARMONLAD,
BEING
An Exposition of the Dual Triplicate
Conglomeration of the Infinite,
There, now, is a book for you.
'Dacia was in high spirits, jaunty as ever, and informed
me that the millennium was a-coming straight along, and
favored me with her views of how they intended to manage
things in the good time.
The great mischief at present, she informs me, lies in
possessive pronouns, which they intend to abolish. There
is n't to be any my or thy. Everybody is to have every-
thing just the minute they happen to want it, and every-
body else is to let 'em. Marriage is an old effete institu-
tion, a relic of barbarous ages. There is to be no my of
husband and wife, and no my of children. The State is
to raise all the children as they do turnips in great insti-
tutions, and they are to belong to everybody. Love, she
informed me, in those delightful days is to be free as air;
everybody to do exactly as they 've a mind to; a privilege
she remarked that she took now as her right. " If I see
a man that pleases me," said she, "I shall not ask Priest
or Levite for leave to have him." This was declared with
so martial an air that I shrank a little, but she relieved me
by saying, "You needn't be frightened. I don't want
you. You wouldn't suit me. All I want of you is your
money." Whereat she came down to business again.
The book she informed me was every word of it dictated
by spirits while she was in the trance state, and was com-
posed conjointly by Socrates, St. Paul, Ching Ling, and
Jim Crow, representing different races of the earth and
states of progression. From some specimens of the style
which she read to me, I was led to hope that we might all
live as long as possible, if that sort of thing is what we
are coming to after death.
LETTERS FROM NEW YORK 457
Well, it was all funny and entertaining enough to hear
her go on, but when it came to buying the book and plank-
ing the V, I flunked. Told 'Dacia I could n't encourage
her in possessive pronouns, that she had no more right to
the book than I had, that truth was a universal birthright,
and so the truths in that book were mine as much as hers,
and as I needed a Y more than she did I proposed she
should buy the book of me. She didn't see it in that
light, and we had high words in consequence, and she
poured down on me like a thousand of brick, and so I
coolly walked downstairs, telling her when she had done
scolding to shut the door.
Is n't she a case ? The Dominie was up in his den, and
I believe she got at him after I left. How he managed
her I don't know. He won't talk about her. The Dom-
inie is working like a Trojan, and his family are doing
finely. The kittens are all over his room with as many
capers as the fairies, and I hear him laughing all by him-
self at the way they go on. We have looked at a dozen
houses advertised in the paper, but not one yet is the bar-
gain you want ; but we trudge on the quest all our exercise-
time daily. It will turn up yet, I 'm convinced, the very
thing you want.
Heigho, Hal, you are a lucky dog. I 'm like a lean old
nag out on a common, looking over a fence and seeing you
in clover up to your hat-band. If my kettle only could
boil for two I 'd risk about the possessive pronouns. To
say the truth I am tired of I and my, and would like to
say we and our if I dared.
Come home anyway and kindle your tent fire, and let
a poor tramp warm himself at it.
Your dog and slave, Jim.
Bolton's letter was as follows :
458 MY WIFE AND I
Dear Hal, I promised you a family cat, but I am
going to do better by you. There is a pair of my kittens
that would bring laughter to the cheeks of a dying ancho-
rite. They are just the craziest specimens of pure jollity
that flesh, blood, and fur could be wrought into. Who
wants a comic opera at a dollar a night when a family cat
will supply eight kittens a year? Nobody seems to have
found out what kittens are for. I do believe these two
kittens of mine would cure the most obstinate hypochondria
of mortal man, and, think of it, I am going to give them
to you! Their names are Whisky and Frisky, and their
ways are past finding out.
The house in which the golden age pastoral is to be
enacted has not yet been found. It is somewhere in fairy
land, and will probably suddenly appear to you as things
used to, to good knights in enchanted forests.
Jim and I went down to the steamer yesterday to see
Miss Van Arsdel and your cousin off for Europe. They
are part of a very pleasant party that are going together,
and seem in high spirits. I find her articles (your cousin's)
take well, and there is an immediate call for more. So
far, good ! Stay your month out, my boy, and get all you
can out of it before you come back to the " dem'd horrid
grind " of New York.
Ever yours, Bolton.
P. S. While I have been writing. Whisky and Frisky
have pitched into a pile of the proof-sheets of your " Milky
Way " story, and performed a ballet dance with them so
that they are rather the worse for wear. No fatal harm
done, however, and I find it reads capitally. I met Hes-
termann yesterday quite enthusiastic over one of your arti-
cles in the " Democracy " that happened to hit his fancy,
and plumed myself to him for having secured you next
year for his service. So, you see, your star is in the ascend-
ant. The Hestermanns are liberal fellows, and the place
LETTERS FROM NEW YORK 459
you have is as sure as the Bank of England. So yoiu
pastoral will have a good bit of earthly ground to begin on.
B.
The next was from Alice.
Dear Sister, I am so tired out with packing and
all the thousand and one things that have to be attended
to ! You know mamma is not strong, and now you and
Ida are gone, I am the eldest daughter, and take everything
on my shoulders. Aunt Maria comes here daily, looking
like a hearse, and I really think she depresses mamma as
much by her lugubrious ways as she helps. She positively
is a most provoking person. She assumes with such cer-
tainty that mamma is a fool, and that all that has happened
out of the way comes by some fault of hers, that when she
has been here a day mamma is sure to have a headache.
But I have discovered faculties and strength I never knew
I possessed. I have taken on myself the whole work of
separating the things we are to keep from those which are
to be sold, and those which we are to take into the country
with us from those which are to be stored in New York
for our return. I don't know what I should have done if
Jim Fellows had n't been the real considerate friend he is.
Papa is overwhelmed with settling up business matters, and
one wants to save him every care, and Jim has really been
like a brother looking up a place to store the goods,
finding just the nicest kind of a man to cart them, and
actually coming in and packing for me, till I told him I
knew he must be giving us time that he wanted for him-
self and all this with so much fun and jollification that
we really have had some merry times over it, and quite
shocked Aunt Maria, who insists on^ maintaining a general
demeanor as if there were a corpse in the house.
One wicked thing about Jim is that he will take her of ;
and though I scold him for it, between you and me, Eva,
460 MY WIFE -AND I
and in the "buzzom of the family,'' as old Mrs. Knabbs
used to say, I must admit that it 's a little too funny for
anything. He can make himself look and speak exactly
like her, and breaks out in that way every once in a while ;
and if we reprove him, says, "What's the matter? Who
are you thinking of? I wasn't thinking of what you
were." He is a dreadful rogue, and one can't do anything
with him; but what we should have done without him
I 'm sure I don't know.
Sophie Elmore called the other day, and told me all
about things between her and Sydney. She is sending to
Paris for all her things, and Tullegig's is all in commotion.
They are to be married early in October and go off for a
tour in Europe. You ought to see the gloom on Aunt
Maria's visage when the thing is talked about. If it had
been anybody but the Elmores I think Aunt Maria could
have survived it, but they have been her Mordecai in the
gate all this time, and now she sees them triumphant. She
speaks familiarly about our being ruined, and finally the
other day I told her that I found ruin altogether a more
comfortable thing than I expected, whereat she looked at
me as if I were an abandoned sinner, sighed deeply, and
said nothing. Poor soul! I oughtn't to laugh, but she
does provoke me so I am tempted to revenge myself in a
little quiet fun at her expense.
The other day Jim was telling me about a house he had
been looking at. Aunt Maria listened with a severe grav-
ity and interposed with, "Of course nobody could live on
that street. Eva would be crazy to think of it. There
isn't a good family within squares of that quarter."
I said you didn't care for fashion, and she. gave me one
of her looks, and said, "I trust I sha'n't see Eva in that
street; none but most ordinary people live there." Only
think, Eva, what if you should live on a street where ordi-
nary people live ? How dreadful I
LETTERS FROM NEW YORK 461
Well, darling, I can't write more; my hands are dusty
with packing and overhauling, and I am writing now on
the top of a box waiting for the man to cart away the next
load. We are all well, and the girls behave charmingly,
and are just as handy and 'helpful as they can be, and
mamma says she never knew the comfort of her children
before.
God bless you, dear, and good-by.
Your loving sister Alice.
CHAPTEE XLVI
AUNT MABIA's dictum
OuB lovely moon of moons had now waned, and the
time drew on when, like Adam and Eve, we were hand in
hand to turn our backs on paradise and set our faces toward
the battle of life.
"The world was all before us where to choose.'' In
just this crisis we got the following from Aunt Maria:
My dbab Eva, Notwithstanding all that has passed,
I cannot help writing to show that interest in your affairs
which it may be presumed, as your aunt and godmother,
I have some right to feel, and though I know that my
advice always has been disregarded, still I think it my
duty to speak, and shall speak.
Of course, as I have not been consulted or taken into
your confidence at all, this may seem like interference,
but I overheard Mr. Fellows talking with Alice about
looking for houses for you, and I must tell you that I am
astonished that you should think of such a thing. House-
keeping is very expensive, if you keep house with the least
attention to appearance ; and genteel board can be obtained
at a far less figure. Then as to your investing the little
that your grandmother left you in a house, it is something
that shows such childish ignorance as really is pitiable. I
donH suppose either you or your husband ever priced an
article of furniture at David & SauPs in your lives, and
have not the smallest idea of the cost of all those things
which a house makes at once indispensable. You fancy
AUNT MAEIA'S dictum 468
a house arranged as you have always seen your father's,
and do not know that the kind of marriage you have chosen
places all these luxuries wholly out of your reach. Then
as to the house itself, the whole of your little property
would go but a small way toward giving you a dwelling
any way respectable for you to live in.
It is true there are cheap little houses in New York, but
where, and on what streets ? You would not want to live
among mechanics and dentists, small clerks, and people of
that description. Everything when one is first married
depends on taking a right stand in the beginning. Of
course, since the ruin that has come on your father, and
with which you will see I never reproach you, though you
might have prevented it, it is necessary for all of us to be
doubly careful. Everybody is very kind and considerate,
and people have called and continue to invite us, and we
may maintain our footing as before, if we give our whole
mind to it, as evidently it is our duty to do, paying proper
attention to appearances. I have partially engaged a place
for you, subject of course to your and your husband's ap-
proval, at Mivart's, which is a place that can be spoken of
a place where the best sort of people are. Mrs. Mivart
is a protegee of mine, and is willing to take you at a con-
siderable reduction, if you take a small back room. Thus
you will have no cares, and no obligations of hospitality,
and be able to turn your resources all to keeping up the
proper air and appearances, which with the present shock-
ing prices for everything, silks, gloves, shoes, etc., and the
requirements of the times, are something quite frightful to
contemplate.
The course of conduct I have indicated seems specially
necessary in view of Alice's future. The blight that comes
on all her prospects in this dreadful calamity of your
father's is something that lies with weight on my mind.
A year ago Alice might have commanded the very best of
464 MY WIFE AND I
offers, and we had every reason to hope such an establish-
ment for her as her beauty and accomplishments ought to
bring. It is a mercy to think that she will still be invited
and have her chances, though she will have to struggle
with her limited means to keep up a proper style ; but with
energy and attention it can be done. I have known girls
capable of making, in secret, dresses and bonnets that were
ascribed to the first artists. The puffed tulle in which
Sallie Morton came to your last german was wholly of her
own make although of course this was told me in confi-
dence by her mother and ought to go no farther. But if
you take a mean little house among ordinary low classes,
and live in a poor, cheap, and scrubby way, of course you
cut yourself off from society, and you see it degrades the
whole family. I am sure, as I told your mother, nothing
but your inexperience would lead you to think of it, and
your husband being a literary man naturally would not un-
derstand considerations of this nature. I have seen a good
deal of life, and I give it as the result of my observation
that there are two things that very materially influence
standing in society: the part of the city we live in, and
the church we go to. Of course, I presume you will not
think of leaving your church, which has in it the most
select circles of New York. A wife's religious consolations
are things no husband should interfere with, and I trust
you will not fling away your money on a mean little house
in a fit of childish ignorance. You will want the income
of that money for your dress, and carriages for calls and
other items essential to keep up life.
I suppose you have heard that the Elmores are making
extensive preparations for Sophie's wedding in the fall.
When I see the vanity and instability of earthly riches, I
cannot but be glad that there is a better world; the conso-
lations of religion at times are all one has to turn to. Be
careful of your health, my dear child, and don't wet youi
AUNT MARIA'S DICTUM 465
feet. From your letters I should infer that you were need-
lessly going into very damp, unpleasant places. Write me
immediately what I am to tell them at Mivart's.
Your affectionate aunt,
Maria Wouvermans.
It was as good as a play to see my wife's face as she
read this letter, with flushed cheeks and an impatient tap-
ping of her little foot that foreboded an outburst.
"Just like her for all the world," she said, tossing the
letter to me, which I read with vast amusement.
"We '11 have a house of our own as quick as we can get
one," she said. "I think I see myself gossiping in a
boarding-house, hanging on to the outskirts of fashion in
the way she plans, making puffed tulle dresses in secret
places and wearing out life to look as if I were as rich as
I am not, and trying to keep step with people of five times
our income. If you catch Eva Van Arsdel at that game,
then tell me ! "
"Eva Van Arsdel is a being of the past, fortunately for
me, darling."
"Well, Eva Van Arsdel Henderson, then," said she.
"That compound personage is stronger and more defiant of
worldly nonsense than the old Eva dared to be."
"And I think your aunt has no idea of what there is
developing in Alice."
"To be sure she hasn't; not the remotest. Alice is
proud and sensible, proud in the proper way I mean. She
was full willing to take the goods the gods provided while
she had them, but she never will stoop to all the worries,
and cares, and little mean artifices of genteel poverty. She
never will dress and go out on hunting expeditions to catch
a rich husband. I always said Alice's mind lay in two
strata, the upper one worldly and ambitious, the second
generous and high-minded. Our fall from wealth has been
466 MY WIFE AND I
like a landslide; the upper stratum has slid off and left
the lower. Alice will now show that she is both a strong
and noble woman. Our engagement and marriage have
wholly converted her, and she has stood by me like a little
Trojan all along."
"WeU,'' said I, "about this letter?"
"Oh! you answer it for me. It's time Aunt Maria
learned that there is a man to the fore; besides, you are
not vexed, you are only amused, and you can write a diplo-
matic letter."
"And tell her sweetly and politely, with all ruffles and
trimmings, that it is none of her business ? " said I.
"Yes, just that, but of course with all possible, homage
of your high consideration. Then till we can find a house
I suppose we can find nice country board for the hot months
near New York, where you can come out every night on
the railroad and stay Sundays."
"Exactly. I have the place all thought of and terms
arranged long ago. A charming Quaker family where you
will find the best of fruit, and the nicest of board, and the
quietest and gentlest of hosts, all for a sum quite within
our means."
"And then," said she, "by fall I trust we shall, find 4
house to suit us."
"Certainly," said I. "I have faith that such a house
is all waiting for us somewhere in the unknown future.
We are traveling toward it, and shall know it when we
see it."
"Just think," said my wife, "of Aimt Maria as suggest-
ing that we should board so that we could shirk all obliga-
tions of hospitality! What's life good for if you can't
have your friends with you, and make people happy under
your* roof ? "
" And who would think of counting the money spent in.
hospitality 1 " said I,
AUNT MAEIA'S dictum 467
C(
Yet I have heard of people who purposely plan to have
no spare room in their house, " answered Eva. " I remem-
ber, now, Aunt Maria's speaking of Mrs. Jacobs with
approbation for just this piece of economy."
"By which she secures money for party dresses and a
brilliant annual entertainment, I suppose,^' said I.
"Well," said Eva, "I have always imagined my home
with friends in it. A warm peculiar comer for each one
of yours and mine. It is the very charm of the prospect
when I figure this, that, and the other one enjoying with
us, and then I have the great essential of ' help ' secured.
Do you know that there was one Mary McClellan married
from our house years ago who was a perfect adorer at my
shrine, and always begged me to be married that she might
come and live with me ? Now she is a widow with a little
girl eight years old, and it is the desire of her heart to get
a place where she can have her child with her. It will fit
exactly. The little cub, under my training, can wait on
the table and tend the door, and Mary will be meanwhile
a mother to me in my inexperience."
" Capital I " said L " I am sure our star is in the as-
cendant, and we shall hear from our house before the
summer is through."
One day, near the first of October, while up for a
Sunday at our country boarding-place, I got the following
letter from Jim Fellows:
My dear Old Boy, I think we have got it. I
mean got the house. I am not quite sure what your wife
will say, but I happened to meet Miss Alice last night and
I told her, and she says she is sure it will do. Hear and
understand.
Coming down town yesterday I bought the "Herald"
and read to my joy that Jack Fergus had been appointed
Consul to Algiers. To say the truth we fellows have
468 BfY WIFE AND I
thought the game was pretty much up with poor Jack; his
throat and lungs are so bad, and his family consumptive.
So I said when I read it, "Good! there 's a thing that '11
do." I went right round to congratulate him and found
three or four of our fellows doing the same thing. Jack
was pleased, said it was all right, but still I could see there
was a hitch somewhere, and that, in fact, it was not all
right, and when the other fellows went away I stayed, and
then it came out. He said at once that he was glad of the
appointment, but that he had no money; the place at
Algiers does not support a man. He will have to give up
his bank salary, cmd unless he could sell his house for ready
money he could do nothing. I never knew he had any
house. Heaven knows none of the rest of us have got
any houses. But it seems some aunt of his, an old Knick-
erbocker, left him one. Well, I asked him why he did n't
sell it. He said he could n't. He had had two agents
there that morning. They would n't give him any encour-
agement till the whole place was sold together. They
wouldn't offer anything, and would only say they would
advertise it on his account. You see it is one of those
betwixt-and-between places which is going to be a business
place, but isn't yet. So he said; and it was that which
made me think of you and your wife.
I asked where it was, and he told me. It is one of
those little streets that lead out of Varick Street, if you
know where that is; I '11 bet Mrs. Henderson a dozen pair
that she does n't. Well, I went with him to see it when
the bank closed, for I still thought of you. By George, I
think you will like it. It is the last house in a block ; the
street is dull enough, but is inhabited by decent, quiet peo-
ple, who mind their own business. Of course the respect-
able Mrs. Wouvermans would think it an unknown horror
to live there; and be quite sure they were all Jews or
sorcerers, or some other sort of come-outers. Well, this
AUNT MARIANS DICTUM 469
house itself is not like the rest of the block having been
built by this old Aunt Martila, or Van Beest, or whatever
else her name was, for her own use. It is a brick house,
with a queer stoop, two and a half stories high (the house,
not the stoop), with a bay-window on the end, going out
on a sort of a churchyard, across which you look to what
is, I believe, St. John's Park^ a place with trees, and
English sparrows, and bird-houses, and things. Jack and
his wife have made the place look quite cosy, and managed
to get a deal of comfort out of it. I wish I could buy it
and take my wife there if only I had one. This place
Jack will sell for eight thousand dollars four thousand
down and four thousand on mortgage. I call that dirt
cheap, and Livingstone, our head bookkeeper, who used to
be a house-broker, tells me it is a bargain such as he never
heard of, and that you can sell it at any time for more than
that. I have taken the refusal for three days, so come
down, both of you, bright and early Monday and look
at it.
So down we came; we saw; we bought. In a few days
we were ready, key in hand, to open and walk into " Our
House."
1 ItfDcuf but alasl since the recent time of this story, insatiate com-
merce has taken the old Park and built therein a huge railway freight
depot.
CHAPTEE XLVn
OUB HOUSE
Thebe are certain characteristic words which the human
heart loves to conjure with, and one of the strongest among
them is the phrase, "Our House." It is not my house,
nor your house, nor their house, but Our House. It is
the inseparable we who own it, and it is the we and the
our that go a long way towards impregnating it with the
charm that makes it the symbol of things most blessed and
eternaL
Houses have their physiognomy, as much as persons.
There are commonplace houses, suggestive houses, attrac-
tive houses, mysterious houses, and fascinating houses, just
as there are all these classes of persons. There are houses
whose windows seem to yawn idly to stare vacantly
there are houses whose windows glower weirdly, and look
at you askance; there are houses, again, whose very doors
and windows seem wide open with frank cordiality, which
seem to stretch their arms to embrace you, and woo you
kindly to come and possess them.
My wife and I, as we put our key into the door and let
ourselves into the deserted dwelling, now all our own, said
to each other at once that it was a home-like house. It
was built in the old style, when they had solid timbers and
low ceilings, with great beams and large windows, with
old-fashioned small panes of glass, but there was about it a
sort of homely individuality, and suggestive of cosy com-
forts. The front room had an ancient fireplace, with
quaint Dutch tiles around it. The Ferguses had Intro-
OUR HOUSE 471
duced a furnace, gas, and water into it; but the fireplace
in most of the rooms still remained, suggestive of the old
days in New York when wood was plenty and cheap. One
could almost fancy that those days of roaring family hearths
had so heartened up the old chimneys that a portion of the
ancient warmth yet inhered in the house.
"There, Harry," said my wife, exultantly pointing to
the fireplace, "see: this is the very thing that your
mother's brass andirons will fit into how charmingly
they will go with it ! "
And then those bright, sunny windows, and that bay-
window looking across upon those trees was perfectly
lovely. In fact, the leaves of the trees shimmering in
October light cast reflections into the room suggestive of
country life, which, fresh from the country as we were,
was an added charm.
The rooms were very low studded, scarcely nine feet in
height and, by the bye, I believe that that feature in old
English and Dutch house-building is one that greatly con-
duces to give an air of comfort. A low ceiling insures ease
in warming, and in our climate, where one has to depend
on fires for nine months in the year, this is something
worth while. In general, I have noticed in rooms that
the sense of snugness and comfort dies out as the ceiling
rises in height rooms twelve and fifteen feet high may
be all very grand and very fine, but they are never sociable,
they never seem to brood over you, soothe you, and take
you to their heart as the motherly low-browed room does.
My wife ran all over her new dominions exploring
and planning, telling me volubly how she would arrange
them. The woman was Queen here; her foot was on her
native heath, and she saw capabilities and possibilities with
the eye of an artist.
Now, I desire it to be imderstood that I am not indiffer-
ent to the charms of going to housekeeping full-handed.
472 MY WIFE AND I
I do not pretend to say that my wife and I should not have
enjoyed opening our family reign in a stone palace, over-
looking New York Central Park, with all the charms of
city and country life united, with all the upholsterers and
furniture shops in New York at our feet. All this was
none too good for our taste if we could have had it, but
since we could not have it, we took another kind of delight,
and one quite as vivid, in seeing how charmingly we could
get on without it. In fact, I think there is an exiiltation
in the constant victory over circumstances, in little inven-
tions, substitutions, and combinations, rendered necessary
by limited means, which is wanting to those to whose hand
everything comes without an effort.
If, for example, the brisk pair of robins, who have built
in the elm-tree opposite to our bay-window, had had a
nest all made, and lined, and provided for them to go into,
what an amount of tweedle and chipper, what a quantity
of fluttering, and soaring, and singing would have been
wanting to the commencement of their housekeeping! All
those pretty little conversations with the sticks and straw,
all that brave work in tugging at a bit of twine and thread,
which finally are carried off in triumph and wrought into
the nest, would be a loss in nature. How much adventure
and enterprise, how many little heart-beats of joy go into
one robin's nest simply because Mother Nature makes them
work it out for themselves!
We spent a cheerful morning merely in running over our
house, and telling each other what we could do with it,
and congratulating each other that it was " such a bargain, "
for, look, here is an outlook upon trees; and here is a
little back yard, considerably larger than a good-sized
pocket-handkerchief, where Mrs. Fergus had raised mignon-
ette, heliotropes, and roses and geraniums enough to have
a fresh morning bouquet of them daily; and jn ancient
grape-vine planted by some old Knickerbocker, which Jack
OUR HOUSE 473
Fergus had trained in a sort of arbor over the dining-room
window, and which at this present moment was hanging
with purple clusters of grapes. We ate of them, and felt
like Adam and Eve in Paradise. What was it to us that
this little Eden of ours was in an unfashionable quarter,
and that, as Aunt Maria would say, there was not a crea-
ture living within miles of us, it was still our mystical
"garden which the Lord God had planted eastward in
Eden." The purchase of it, it is true, had absorbed all
my wife's little fortune, and laid a debt upon us but we
told each other that it was, after all, our cheapest way of
renting a foothold in New York. "For, you see," said
my wife instructively, "papa says it is a safe investment,
as it is sure to rise in value, so that even if we wtmt to
sell it we can get more than we paid."
" What a shrewd little trader you are getting to be I " I
said, admiring this profound financial view.
"Oh, indeed I am; and, now, Harry dear, don't let's
go to any expense about furniture till I 've shown you what
I intend to do. I know devices for giving a room an air
with so little; for example, look at this recess. I shall
fill this up with a divan that I shall get up for nine or ten
dollars."
"You get it up!"
"Yes, I with Mary to help me you'll see in time.
We '11 have all the comfort that could be got out of a sofa,
for which people pay eighty or ninety dollars, and the
eighty or ninety dollars will go to get other things, you
see. And then we must have a stuffed seat running round
this bay-window. I can get that up. I 've seen at Stew-
art's such a lovely piece of patch, with broad crimson
stripes, and a sort of mauresque figure interposed. I think
we had better get the whole of it, and that will do for one
whole room. Let 's see. I shall make lambrequins for
the windows, and cover the window-seats, and then we
474 MY WIFE AND I .
shall have only to buy two or three great stuffed chairs and
cover them with the same. Oh, you '11 see what I '11 do.
I shall make this house so comfortable and charming that
people will wonder to see it."
"Well, darling, I give all that up to you; that is your
dominion, your reign."
"To be sure, you have all your work up at the office
there, and your articles to write, and besides, dear, with
all your genius, and all that, you really don't know much
about this sort of thing, so give yourself no trouble, I '11
attend to it it is my ground, you know. Now, I don't
mean mother or Aunt Maria shall come down here till we
have got everything arranged. Alice is going to come and
stay with me and help, and when I want you I '11 call on
you, for, though I am not a writing genius, I am a genius
in these matters, as you '11 see."
"You are a veritable household fairy," said I, "and this
house, henceforth, lies on the borders of the fairy land.
Troops of gay and joyous spirits are flocking to take posses-
sion of it, and their little hands will carry forward what
you begin."
CHAPTER XLVm
PICNICKING IN NEW YORK
OuB house seemed so far to be ours that it was appar-
ently regarded by the firm of good fellows as much their
affair as mine. The visits of Jim and Bolton to our quar-
ters were daily, and sometimes even hourly. They coun-
seled, advised, theorized, and admired my wife's generalship
in an artless solidarity with myself. Jim was omnipresent.
Now he would be seen in his shirt-sleeves nailing down a
carpet, or unpacking a barrel, and again making good the
time lost in these operations by scribbling his articles on
the top of some packing- box, dodging in and out at all
hours with news of discoveries of possible bargains that he
had hit upon in his rambles.
For a while we merely bivouacked in the house, as of
old the pilgrims in a caravansary, or as a picnic party might
do, out under a tree. The house itself was in a state of
growth and construction, and, meanwhile, the work of eat-
ing and drinking was performed in moments snatched in
the most pastoral freedom and simplicity. I must confess
that there was a joyous, rollicking freedom about these
times that was lost in the precision of regular housekeepers.
When we all gathered about Mary's cooking-stove in the
kitchen, eating roast oysters and bread and butter, without
troubling ourselves about table equipage, we seemed to
come closer to each other than we could in months of or-
derly housekeeping.
Our cooking-stove was Bolton's especial prot^g^ and pet.
He had studied the subject of stoves, for our sakes, with
476 MY WIFE AND I
praiseworthy perseverance, and after philosophic investiga-
tion had persuaded us to buy this one, and of course had
a fatherly interest in its well-doing. I have the image of
him now as he sat, seriously, with the hook of directions
in his hand, reading and explaining to us all, while a set
of muffins were going through the experimentum cruets
the oven. The muffins were excellent, and we ate them
hot out of the oven with gladness and singleness of heart,
and agreed that we had touched the absolute in the matter
of cooking-stoves. All my wife's plans and achievements,
all her .bargains and successes, were reported and admired
in full conclave, when we all looked in at night, and took
our snack together in the kitchen.
One of my wife's enterprises was the regeneration of the
dining-room. It had a pretty window draped pleasjmtly
by the grape-vine, but it had a dreadfully common wall-
paper, a paper that evidently had been chosen for no other
reason than because it was cheap. It had moreover a
wainscot of dark wood running round the side, so that
what with our low ceiling, the portion covered by this
offending paper was only four feet and a half wide.
I confess, in the multitude of things on hand in the
work of reconstruction, I was rather disposed to put up
with the old paper as the best under the circumstances.
"My dear," said I, "why not let pretty well alone?"
" My darling child ! " said my wife, " it is impossible -
that paper is a horror."
"It certainly isn't pretty, but who cares?" said I. "I
don't see so very much the matter with it, and you are
undertaking so much that you '11 be worn out."
"It will wear me out to have that paper, so now, Harry
dear, be a good boy, and do just what I tell you. Go to
Berthold & Capstick's and bring me one roll of plain black
paper, and six or eight of plain crimson, and wait then to
see what I'll do,"
PICNICKING IN NEW YORK 477
The result on a certain day after was that I found my
dining-room transformed into a Pompeiian salon, by the
busy fingers of the house fairies.
The ground-work was crimson, but there was a series of
black panels, in each of which was one of those floating
Pompeiian figures which the traveler in Italy buys for a
trifle in Naples.
"There now," said my wife, "do you remember my
portfolio of cheap Neapolitan prints? Haven't I made
good use of them ] "
"You are a witch," said I. "You certainly can't paper
walls. "
"Can't I! haven't I as many fingers as your mother 1
and she has done it time and again; and this is such a
crumb of a wall. Alice and Jim and I did it to-day, and
have had real fun over it."
" Jim ? " said I, looking amused.
" Jim ! " said my wife, nodding with a significant laugh.
"Seems to me," said I.
"So it seems to me," said she. After a pause she
added, with a smile, "But the creature is both entertaining
and useful. We have had the greatest kind of a frolic
over this wall."
"But, really," said I, "this case of Jim and Alice is
getting serious."
"Don't say a word," said my wife, laughing. "They
are in the F's; they have got out of Flirtation and into
Friendship."
"And friendship between a girl like Alice md a young
man, on his part soon gets to mean "
"Oh, well, let it get to mean what it will," said my
wife ; " they are having nice times now, and the best of it
is, nobody sees anything but you and I. Nobody bothers
Alice, or asks her if she is engaged, and she is careful to
inform me that she regards Jim quite as a brother. You
478 MY WIFE AND I
see that is one advantage of our living where nobody
knows us we can all do just as we like. This little
house is Eobinson Crusoe's island in the middle of New
York. But now, Harry, there is one thing you must do
toward this room. There must be a little gilt moulding to
finish off the top and sides. You ju^t go to Berthold &
Capstick's and get it. See, here are the figures," she said,
showing her memorandum-book. "We shall want just
that much."
" But can we put it up ? "
"No, but you just speak to little Tim Brady, who is a
clerk there Tim used to be a boy in father's office he
will like nothing better than to come and put it up for us,
and then we shall be fine as a new fiddle."
And so, while I was driving under a great pressure of
business at the office daily, my home was growing leaf by
leaf, and unfolding flower by flower, under the creative
hands of my home-queen and sovereign lady.
Time would fail me to relate the enterprises conceived,
carried out, and prosperously finished under her hands. In-
deed, I came to have such a reverential belief in her power
that had she announced that she intended to take my house
up bodily and set it down in Japan, in the true "Arabian
Nights " style, I should not in the least have doubted her
ability to do it. The house was as much an expression of
my wife's personality, a thing wrought out of her being,
as any picture painted by an artist.
Many homes have no personality. They are made by
the upholsterers; the things in them express the tastes of
David & Saul, or Berthold & Capstick, or whoever else
of artificers undertake the getting up of houses. But our
house formed itself around my wife like the pearly shell
around the nautilus. My home was Eva, she the schem-
ing, the busy, the creative, was the life, soul, and spirit
of all that was there.
PICNICKING IN NEW YORK 479
Is not this a species of high art, by which a house, in
itself cold and barren, becomes in every part warm and in-
viting, glowing with suggestion, alive with human tastes
and personalities] Wall- paper, paint, furniture, pictures,
in the hands of the home artist, are like the tubes of paint
out of which arises, as by inspiration, a picture. It is the
woman who combines them into the wonderful creation
which we call a home.
When I came home from my office night after night,
and was led in triumph by Eva to view the result of her
achievements, I confess I began to remember with approba-
tion the old Greek mythology, and no longer to wonder
that divine honors had been paid to household goddesses.
It seemed to me that she had a portion of the talent of
creating out of nothing. Our house had literally nothing
in it of the stereotyped sets of articles expected as a matter
of course in good families, and yet it looked cosy, comfort-
able, inviting, and with everywhere a suggestion of ideal
tastes, and an eye to beauty. There were chambers which
seemed to be built out of drapery and muslins, every detail
of which, when explained, was a marvel of results at small
expense. My wife had an aptitude for bargains, and when
a certain article was wanted, supplied it from some second-
hand store with such an admirable adaptation to the place
that it was difficult to persuade ourselves after a few days
that it had not always been exactly there, where now it
was so perfectly adapted to be.
In fact, her excursions into the great sea of New York
and the spoils she brought thence to enrich our bower
reminded me of the process by which Robinson Crusoe
furnished his island home by repeated visits to the old ship
which was going to wreck on the shore. From the wreck
of other homes came floating to ours household belongings,
which we landed reverently and baptized into the fellow-
ship of our ownr
CHAPTEE XLIX
NEIGHBOBS
"Do you know, Harry," said my wife to me one even-
ing when I came home to dinner, " I have made a discov-
ery ? ''
Now, the truth was, that my wife was one of those
lively, busy, active, enterprising little women, who are
always making incident for themselves and their friends;
and it was a regular part of my anticipation, as I plodded
home from my office, tired and work-worn, to conjecture
what new thing Eva would find to tell me that night.
What had she done, or altered, or made up, or arranged,
as she always met me full of her subject ?
"Well," said I, "what is this great discovery 1 "
"My dear, I '11 tell you. One of those dumb houses in
our neighborhood has suddenly become alive to me. I 've
made an acquaintance."
Now, I knew that my wife was just that social, convers-
ing, conversable creature that, had she been in Bobinson
Crusoe's island, would have struck up confidential relations
with the monkeys and paroquets, rather than not have
somebody to talk to. Therefore, I was not in the least
surprised, but quite amused, to find that she had begun
neighboring in our vicinity.
"You don't tell me," said I, "that you have begun to
cultivate acquaintances on this street, so far from the cen-
tres of fashion ? "
"Well, I have, and found quite a treasure, in at the
very next door."
NEIGHBORS 481
"And pray now, for curiosity's sake, how did you man-
age it 1 ''
" Well, to tell the truth, Harry, I 'm the worst person
in the world for keeping up what's called select society;
and I never coiild hear the feeling of not knowing anything
ahout anyhody that lives next to me. Why, suppose we
should he sick in the night, or anything happen, and we
not have a creature to speak to! It seems dreary to think
of it. So I was curious to know who lived next door;
and I looked down from our chamber window into the next
back yard, and saw that whoever it was had a right cunning
little garden, with nasturtiums and geraniums, and chrysan-
themums, and all sorts of pretty things. Well, this morn-
ing I saw the sweetest little dove of a Quaker woman, in
a gray dress, with a pressed crape cap, moving ahout as
quiet as a chip sparrow among the flowers. And I took
quite a fancy to her, and began to think how I should
make her acquaintance."
"If that isn't just like you! " said L "Well, did you
run in and fall on her neck ? "
"Not exactly. But, you see, we had all our windows
open to air the rooms, and my very best pocket-handker-
chief lay on the bureau. And the wind took it up, and
whirled it about, and finally carried it down into that back
yard; and it lit on her geranium bush. * There, now,'
said I to Alice, * there 's a providential opening. I 'm just
going to run right down and inquire about my pocket-hand-
kerchief.' Which I did: I just stepped off from our stoop
on to her door-step, and rang the bell. Meanwhile, I saw,
on a nice, shining door-plate, that the name was Baxter.
Well, who should open the door but the brown dove in
person, looking just as pretty as a pink in her cap and drab
gown. I declare, Harry, I told Alice I 'd a great mind to
adopt the Quaker costume right away. It 's a great deal
more becoming than all our finery."
482 MY WIFE AND I
"Well, my dear," said I, "that introduces a large sub-
ject; 6md I want to hear what came next."
" Oh, well, I spoke up, and said, * Dear Mrs. Baxter,
pray excuse me; hut I 've heen so very careless as to lose
my handkerchief down in your hack yard. ' You ought to
have seen the pretty pink color rise in her cheeks; and she
said in such a cunning way, * I '11 get it for thee I '
" * Oh, dear, no,' said I, * don't trouble yourself. Please
let me go out into your pretty little garden there. '
"Well, the upshot was, we went into the garden and
had a long chat about the flowers. And she picked me
quite a houquet of geraniums. And then I told her all
about our little garden, and how I wanted to make things
grow in it, and didn't know how; and asked her if she
wouldn't teach me. Well, then, she took me into the
nicest little drab nest of a parlor that ever you saw. The
carpet was drab, and the curtains were drab, and the sofas
and chairs were all covered with drab; but the windows
were perfectly blazing with flowers. She had most gor-
geous nasturtium vines trained all around the windows, and
scarlet geraniums that would really make your eyes wink to
look at them. I could n't help laughing a little to myself,
that they make it a part of their religion not to have any
color, tmd then fall back upon all these high-colored opera-
tions of the Lord by way of brightening up their houses.
However, I got a great deal of instruction out of her, and
she 's going to come in and show me how to arrange my
ferns and other things I gathered in the country, in a
Ward's case; and she's going to show me, too, how to
plant an ivy, so as to have it grow all around this bay-win-
dow. The inside of hers is a perfect bower."
"I perceive," said I, "the result of all was that you
swore eternal friendship on the spot, just like the Eva that
you are."
"Precisely."
NEIGHBORS 488
"And you didn't have the fear of your gentility before
your eyes 1 ''
"Not a bit. I always have detested gentility.''
"You don't even know the business of her husband."
" But I do, though. He 's a watchmaker, and works for
Tiffany & Go. I know, because she showed me a curious
little clock of his construction; and these things came out
in a parenthesis, you see."
"I see the hopeless degradation which this will imply
in Aunt Maria's eyes," said I.
" A fig for Aunt Maria, and a fig for the world I I 'm
married now, and can do as I 've a mind to. Besides, you
know Quakers are not world's people. They have come
out from it, and don't belong to it. There 's something
really refreshing about this dear little body, with her
' thees ' and her ' thous ' and her nice little ways. And
they *re young married people, just like us. She 's been
in this house only a year. But, Harry, she knows every-
body on the street, not in a worldly way, but in the way
of her sect. She 's made a visitation of Christian love to
every one of them. Now, is n't that pretty ? She 's been
to see what she could do for them, and to offer friendship
and kind offices. Is n't that sort of Arcadian, now 1 "
" Well, and what does she tell you 1 "
"Oh, there are a great many interesting people on this
street. I can't tell you all about it now, but some that
I think we must try to get acquainted with. In the third
story of that house opposite to us is a poor French gentle-
man, who came to New York a political refugee, hoping to
give lessons ; but has no faculty for getting along, and his
wife, a delicate little woman with a baby, and they 're
very, very poor. I 'm going with her to visit them some
time this week. It seems this dear little Euth was with
her when her baby was born, this dear little Ruth I It
struck me so curiously to see how interesting she thinks
everybody on this street is,"
484 MY WIFE AND I
" Simply, '^ said I, "because she looks at them from the
Christian standpoint. Well, dear, I canH but think your
new acquaintance is an acquisition."
"And only think, Harry, this nice little person is one
of the people that Aunt 'Maria calls nobody; not rich, not
fashionable, not of the world, in short; but just as sweet
and lovely and refined as she can be. I think those plain,
sincere manners are so charming. It makes you feel so very
near to people to have them call you by your Christian
name right away. She calls me Eva and I call her Kuth ;
and I feel somehow as if I must always have known her.'*
"I want to see her," said I.
" You must. It 'U amuse you to have her look at you
with her grave, quiet eyes, and call you Harry Henderson.
What an effect it has to hear one's simple, common name,
without fuss or title I "
"Yes," said I, "I remember how long I called you Eva
in my heart, while I was addressing you at arm's length as
Miss Van Arsdel."
"It was in the Park, Harry, that we lost the Mr. and
Miss, never to find them again."
"I 've often thought it strange," said I, "how these un-
worldly modes of speaking among the Quakers seem to have
with them a certain dignity. It would be an offense, a
piece of vulgar forwardness, in most people to address you
by your Christian name. But, with them it seems to be
an attempt at realizing a certain ideal of Christian simpli-
city and sincerity, which one almost loses sight of in the
conventional course of life."
"I was very much amused," said my wife, "at her tell-
ing me of one of her visits of Christian love to a Jew
family, living on this street. And really, Harry, she has
learned an amount of good about the Jews, from cultivat-
ing an intimacy with this family, that is quite astonish-
ing. I 'd no idea how good the Jews were."
NEI6HB0BS 485
"Well, my little High Church darling,'* said I, "you *re
in a fair way to hecome ultra-liberal, and to find that what
you call the Church doesn't come anywhere near represent-
ing the whole multitude of the elect in this world. I com-
fort myself with thinking, all the time, how much more
good there is in the world and in human nature than ap-
pears on the surface.'*
"And, now, Harry, that you and I have this home of
our own, we can do some of those things with it that our
friends next door seem to be doing. I thought we might
stir about and see if we could n't get up a class for this
poor Frenchman, and I 'm going to call on his wife. In
fact, Harry, J 've been thinking that it must be one's own
fault if one has no friends in one's neighborhood. I can't
believe in living on a street, and never knowing or caring
whether your next-door neighbor is sick or dead, simply
because you belong to a circle up at the other end of the
city."
"Well, dear, you know that I am a democrat by nature.
But I am delighted to have you make these discoveries for
yourself. It was bad enough, in the view of your friends,
I presume, for me to have come between you and a fashion-
able establishment, and a palace on the Park, without being
guilty of introducing you into such very mixed society as
the course that you 're falling into seems to promise. But
wherever you go I '11 follow*"
CHAPTER L
MY WIFE PROJECTS HOSPITALITIES
"My dear/' said my wife to me at breakfast, "our honse
is about done. To be sure there are ever so many little
niceties that I have n't got at yet, but it 's pretty enough
now. So that I 'm not at all ashamed to show it to mamma
or Aunt Maria, or any of them."
"Do you think," said I, "that last-named respectable
individual could possibly think of countenancing us, when
we have only an ingrain carpet on our parlor and nothing
but mattings on the chambers, and live down here where
nobody lives ? "
" Well, poor soul ! " said Eva, " she '11 hare to accept it
as one of the trials of life, and hare recourse to the conso-
lations of religion. Then, after all, Harry, I really am
proud of our parlor. Of course, we 've had the good luck
to have a good many handsome ornaments given to us ; so
that, though we have n't the regulation things that people
generally get, it does look very bright and pretty.*'
"It's perfectly lovely," said I. "Our house to me is
a perfect dream of loveliness. I think of it all day from
time to time when I 'm at work in my office, and am
always wanting to come home and see it again, and have
a little curiosity to know what new thing you *ve accom-
plished. So far, your career has been a daily succession
of triumphs, and the best of it is that it 's all so much like
you."
"So," said she, "that I can't be jealous at your loving
the house so much. I suppose you think it as much a
MY WIFE PROJECTS HOSPITALITIES 487
part of me as the shell on a turtle's back. Well, now,
before we invite mother and Aunt Maria, and all the folks
down here, I propose that we have just a nice little houser
warming, with our own little private particular set, who
know how to appreciate us."
"Agreed!" said I; "Bolton, and Jim, and Alice, and
you, and I will have a commemoration-dinner together.
Our fellows, you see, seem to feel as much interested in
this house as if it were their own."
"I know it," said she. "Isn't it really amusing to see
the grandfatherly concern that Bolton has for our cooking-
stove ? "
"Oh! Bolton has staked his character on that stove," I
said. "Its success is quite a personal matter now."
"Well, it does bake admirably," said my wife, "and I
think our dinner will be a perfect success, so far as that is
concerned. And, do you know, I 'm going to introduce
that new way of doing up cold chicken which I 've in-
vented."
"Yes," said I, "we shall christen it Chicken a la Eva,^^
"And I've been talking with our Mary about it, and
she 's quite in the spirit of the affair. You see, like
all Irishwomen, Mary perfectly worships the boys, and
thinks there never was anybody like Mr. Bolton and Mr.
Jim; and, of course, it's quite a labor of love with her.
Then I 've been giving her little cub there a series of les-
sons to enable her to wait on table ; and she is all exercised
with the prospect."
"Why," said I, "the little flibberty-gibbet is hardly as
high as the table."
"Oh, never say that before her. She feels very high
indeed in the world, and is impressed with the awful grav-
ity and responsibility of being eight years old. I have
made her a white apron with pockets, in which her soul
delights; and her mother has starched and ironed it till it
488 MY WIFE AND I
shines with whiteness. And she is learning to brash the
table-cloth, and change plates in the most charming way,
and with a gravity that is quite overcoming. ''
" Capital I said L " And when shall it be **
"To-morrow night."
"Agreed! I '11 tell the fellows this is to be a regular
blow-out, and we must do our very prettiest, which is very
pretty indeed," said I, "thanks to the contributions of our
numerous friends. For my part, I think the fashion of
wedding presents has proved a lucky thing for us."
"Even if we have six pie-knives, and no pie to eat with
them," said my wife, "as may happen in our establishment
pretty often."
"Still," said I, "among them all there are a sufficiency
of articles that give quite another aspect to our prudent
little house from what it would wear if we were obliged to
buy everything ourselves."
"Yes," said my wife, "and one such present as that set
of bronzes on the mantelpiece gives an air to a whole
room. A mantelpiece is like a lady's bonnet. It 's the
headpiece of a room, and if that be pleasing the rest is a
good deal taken for granted. Then, you see, our parlor is
all of a warm color, crimson carpet, crimson curtains,
everything warm and glowing. And so long as you have
the color it is n't a bit of matter whether your carpet cost
three dollars and a half a yard or eighty-seven cents, and
whether your curtains are damask or Turkey red. Color
is color, and will produce its effects, no matter in what
material."
"And we men," said I, "never know what the material
is, if only the effect is pleasant. I always look at a room
as a painting. It never occurs to me whether the articles
in it are cheap or dear, so that only the general effect is
warm, and social, and agreeable. And that is just what
you have made these rooms. I think the general effect of
MY WIFE PROJECTS HOSPITALITIES 489
the rooms, either by daylight, or lamplight, or firelight,
would be to make a person like to stay in them, and when
he had left them want to come back.''
"Yes," said my wife, "I flatter myself our rooms have
the air of belonging to people that are having nice times,
and enjoying themselves, as we are. And, for my own
part, I feel like sitting right down in them. All that
round of party-going, and calling, and visiting that I used
to have to keep up seems to me really wearisome. I want
you to understand, Harry, that it 's not the slightest sacri-
fice in the world for me to give it up. I 'm just happy to
be out of it."
"You see," said I, "we can sit down here and make
our own world. Those that we really like very much and
who like us very much will come to us. My ideal of good
society is of a few congenial persons who can know each
other very thoroughly, so as to feel perfectly acquainted
and at home with one another.. That was the secret of
those reunions that went on so many years around Madame
Beamier. It made no difference whether she lived in a
palace, or a little obscure street; her friends were real
friends, and followed her everywhere. The French have
made a science of the cultivation of friendship, which is
worth study."
Thus my wife and I chatted, and felicitated each other,
in those first happy home-making days. There was never
any end to our subjects of mutual conversation. Every
little change in our arrangements was fruitful in conversa-
tion. We himg our pictures here at first, and liked them
well, but our maturer second thoughts received bright in-
spirations to take them down and hang them there; and
then we liked them better. I must say, by the bye, that I
had committed one of those extravagances which lovers do
commit when they shut their eyes and go it blind. I had
bought back the pictures of Eva's little boudoir from
490 MY WIFE AND I
GoupiPs. The fact was that there was a considerable
sympathy felt for Mr. Van Arsdel, and one of the members
of the concern was a nice fellow, with whom I had some
pleasant personal acquaintance. So that the redemption
of the pictures was placed at a figure which made it possi-
ble for me to accomplish it. And the pictures themselves
were an untold store of blessedness to us. I believe we
took them all down and hung them over four times, on
four successive days, before we were satisfied that we had
come to ultimate perfection.
CHAPTER LI
PBEPABATIOKS FOR OUK DINNBB-PARTT
"Harry,'' said my wife, the morning of the day of our
projected house-warming, "there *s one thing you must get
me."
"Well, Princess?"
"Well, you know you and I don't care for wine and
don't need it, and can't afford it, but I have such a pretty
set of glasses and decanters, and you must get me a couple
of bottles just to set off our table for celebration. "
Immediately I thought of Bolton's letter, of what he
bad told me of the effect of wine upon his senses at Hester-
mann's dinner table. I knew it must not be at ours, but
how to explain to my wife without compromising him ?
At a glance I saw that all through the future my intimacy
with Bolton must be guided and colored by what I knew
of his history, his peculiar struggles and temptations, and
that not merely now, but on many future occasions, I
should need a full understanding with my wife to act as I
should be obliged to act. I reflected that Eva and I had
ceased to be two and had become one, that I owed her an
unlimited confidence in those respects where my actions
must involve her comfort, or wishes, or co5peration.
"Eva, darling," I said, "you remember I told you there
was a mystery about the separation of Bolton and Caro-
Hne."
"Yes, of course," said she, wondering; "but what hat
this to do with this wine question 1 "
"A great deal," I said, and going to my desk I took oat
492 MY WIFE AND I
Bolton's letter and put it into her hand. " Bead that, my
dear, and then tell me what to do." She took it and read
with something of the eagerness of feminine curiosity while
I left the room for a few moments. In a little while she
came after me and laid her hand on my arm.
"Harry, dear," she said, "I'll stand hy you in this
thing. His secret shall he sacred with me, and I will make
a safe harhor for him where he may have a home without
danger. I want our house to seem like a home for him. "
"You are an angel, Eva."
"Well, Harry, I must say I always have had conscience
ahout offering wine to some young men that I knew ought
to keep clear of it, hut it never occurred to me in regard
to such a grave, nohle man as Bolton."
" We never know who may he in this danger. It is a
diseased action of the nervous system often inherited
a thing very little understood, like the tendency to in-
sanity or epilepsy. But while we know such things are,
we cannot be too careful."
"I should never have forgiven myself, Harry, if I had
done it."
" The result would have been that Bolton would never
have dined with us again ; he is resolute to keep entirely
out of all society where this temptation meets him. "
"Well, we don't want it, don't need it, and won't have
it. Mary makes magnificent coffee, and that 's ever so
much better. So that matter is settled, Harry, and I 'm
ever and ever so glad you told me. I do admire him so
much! There is something really sad and noble in his
struggle. "
"Many a man with that temptation who fails often
exercises more self-denial and self-restraint than most Chris-
tians," said I.
"I 'm sure I don't deny myself much. I generally want
to do just what I do," said Eva.
PREPAKATIONS FOR OUR DINNER-PARTY 493
"You always want to do all that is good and generous,''
said I.
"I think, on the whole," said Eva reflectively, "my
self-denial is in not doing what other people want me to.
I 'm like Mrs. Quickly. I want to please everybody. I
wanted to please mamma and Aunt Maria."
"And came very near marrying a man you couldn't love
purely to oblige people."
"If you hadn't rescued me," she said, laughing. "But
now, Harry, really I want some little extravagance about
our dinner. So if we don't have wine, buy the nicest of
grapes and pears, and I will arrange a pretty fruit piece for
the centre of the table."
"My love, I will get you all the grapes and pears you
want. "
"And my little Ruth has sent me in this lovely tumbler
of apple jelly. You see, I held sweet counsel with her yes-
terday on the subject of jelly-making, where I am only a
novice, and hers is splendid; literally now, splendid, for
see how the light shines through it! And do you think,
the generous little Puss actually sent me in half a dozen
tumblers."
"What a perfect saint! " said I.
"And I am to have all the flowers in her garden. She
says the frost will take them in a day or two if we don't.
Harry, next summer we must take lessons of her about our
little back yard. I never saw so much made of so little
ground."
"She '11 be only too delightful," said I.
"Well, now, mind you are home at five. I want you
to look the house over before your friends come, and see if
I have got everything as pretty as it can be."
" Are they to * process ' through the house and see your
blue room, and your pink room, and your guest chamber,
and alii"
494 MY WIFE AND I
" Yes. I want them to see all through how pretty the
rooms are, and then sometimes, perhaps, we shall tempt
them to stay all night.''
''And sleep in the chamber that is called Peace," said
I, "after the fashion of Pilgrim's Progress."
" Come, Harry, begone. I want you to go, so as to be
sure and come back early."
CHAPTER LII
THE HOUSE-WARMING
Deab reader, fancy now a low-studded room, with crim-
son curtains and carpet, a deep recess filled by a crimson
divan with piUows, the lower part of the room taken up
by a row of book-shelves, three feet high, which ran aU
roimd the room and accommodated my library. The top
of this formed a convenient shelf, on which all our pretty
little wedding presents statuettes, bronzes, and articles
of vertu were arranged. A fireplace, surroimded by an
old-fashioned border of Dutch tiles, with a pair of grand-
motherly brass andirons, rubbed and polished to an extreme
of brightness, exhibits a wood fire, all laid in order to be
lighted at the touch of the match. My wife has dressed
the house with flowers, which our pretty little neighbor
has almost stripped her garden to contribute. There are
vases of fire-colored nasturtiums and many-hued chrysan-
themums, the arrangement of which has cost the little artist
an afternoon's study, but which I pronounce to be perfect.
I have come home from my office an hour earlier to see if
she has any commands.
"Here, Harry," she says, with a flushed face, "I believe
everything now is about as perfect as it can be. Now
come and stand at this door, and see how you think it
will strike our friends, when they first come in. You see
I've heaped up those bronze vases on the mantel with
nothing but nasturtiums ; and it has such a surprising effect
in that dark bronze ! Then I 've arranged those white
chrysanthemums right against these crimson curtains. And
496 MY WIFE AND I
now come out in the dining-room, and see how I 've set
the dinner table ! You see, I 've the prettiest possible cen-
tre-piece of fruit and flowers. Is n't it lovely ? "
Of course I kissed her and said it was lovely, and that
she was lovelier; and she was a regular little enchantress,
witch, and fairy-queen, and ever so much more to the
same purport. And then Alice came down, all equipped
for conquest, as pretty an additional ornament to the house
as heart could desire. And when the clock was on the
stroke of six, and we heard the feet of our guests at the
door, we lighted our altar-fire in the fireplace ; for it must
be imderstood that this was a pure coup de theatre^ a
brightening, vivifying, ornamental luxury one of the
things we were determined to have, on the strength of
having determined not to have a great many others. How
proud we were when the blaze streamed up and lighted the
whole room, fluttered on the pictures, glinted here and
there on the gold bindings of the books, made dreamy
lights and deep shadows, and called forth all the bright
glowing color of the crimson tints which seemed to give
out their very heart to firelight! My wife was evidently
proud of the effect of all things in our rooms, which Jim
declared looked warm enough to bring a dead man to
life.
Bolton was seated in due form in a great, deep armchair,
which, we informed him, we had bought especially with
reference to him, and the comer was to be known hence-
forth as his comer.
"Well," said he, with grave delight, "I have brought
my final contribution to your establishment;" and forth-
with from the capacious hinder pockets of his coat he drew
forth a pair of kittens, and set them down on the hearth-
rug. "There, Harry," he said gravely, "there are a
pair of ballet dancers that will perform for you gratisi at
any time."
THE HOUSE-WARMING 497
"Oh, the little witches, the perfect loves!" said my
wife and Alice, rushing at them.
Bolton very gravely produced from his pocket two long
strings with corks attached to them, and hanging them to
the gas fixtures, began, as he said, to exhibit the ballet
dancing, in which we all became profoundly interested.
The wonderful leaps and flings and other achievements of
the performers occupied the whole time till dinner was
annoimced.
"Now, Harry," said my wife, "if we let* Little Cub see
the kittens before she 's waited on table, it '11 utterly de-
moralize her. So we must shut them in carefully," which
was done.
I don't think a dinner party was ever a more brilliant
success than ours; partly owing to the fact that we were
a mutual admiration society, and our guests felt about as
much sense of appropriation and property in it as we did
ourselves. The house was in a sort of measure "our
house," and the dinner "our dinner." In short, we were
all of us strictly en famille. The world was one thing,
and we were another outside of it and by ourselves, and
having a remarkably good time. Everybody got some
share of praise. Mary got praised for her cooking. The
cooking-stove was glorified for baking so well, and Bolton
was glorified for recommending the cooking-stove. And
Jim and Alice and my wife congratulated each other on
the lovely looks of the dining-room. We shuddered to-
gether in mutual horror over what the wall-paper there had
been^ and we felicitated the artists that had brought such
brilliant results out of so little. The difficulties that had
been overcome in matching the paper and arranging the pan-
els were forcibly dwelt upon; and some sly jokes seemed to
pass between Jim and Alice, applicable to certain turns of
events in these past operations. After dinner we had most
transcendent coffee, and returned to our parlor as gay of
498 MY WIFE AND I
heart as if we had been merry with wine. The kittens
had got thoroughly at home by that time, having investi-
gated the whole of the apartment, and began exhibiting
some of their most irresistible antics with a social success
among us of a most flattering nature. Alice declared that
she should call them Taglioni and Madame Celeste, and
proceeded to tie blue and pink bows upon their necks,
which they scratched and growled at in quite a warlike
manner. A low whine from the entry interrupted us; and
Eva, opening the door and looking out, saw poor old
Stumpy sitting on the mat, with the most good-dog air of
dejected patience.
Why, here 's Stumpy, poor fellow! " she said.
Oh, don't trouble yourself about him," said Bolton.
"I've taught him to sit out on the mat. He's happy
enough if he only thinks I 'm inside."
"But, poor fellow," said Eva, "he looks as if he
wanted to come in."
"Oh, he 'U do well enough; never mind him,'* said Bol-
ton, looking a little embarrassed. " It was silly of me to
bring him, only he is so desolate to have me go out with-
out him."
"Well, he shall come in," said Eva. "Come in, you
poor homely old fellow," she said. "I dare say you 're as
good as an angel ; and to-night 's my house-warming, and
not even a dog shall have an ungratified desire, if I can
help it."
So poor Stumpy was installed by Bolton in the corner,
and looked perfectly beatified.
And now, while we have brought all our characters be-
fore the curtain, and the tableau of the fireside is complete,
as we sit there all aroimd the hearth, each perfectly at
home with the other, in heart and mind, and with even
the poor beasts that connect us with the \owef Ivorld
THE HOUSE-WAEMING 499
brightening in our enjoyment, this is a good moment for
the curtain to fall on the fortunes of
My Wife and I.