“Now, Lillie, darling, you know that isn't so.”

“It 's just so. You care more for your old missionary
work, now, than you do for me. I 'm sure I never
knew that I 'd married a home-missionary.”

“Darling, please, now, don't laugh at me, and try to
make me selfish and worldly. You have such power
over me, you ought to be my inspiration.”

“I 'll be your common-sense, John. When you get
on stilts, and run benevolence into the ground, I 'll pull
you down. Now, I know it must be bad for a man,
that has as much as you do to occupy his mind all the
week, to go out and work Sundays; and it 's foolish,
when you could perfectly well hire somebody else to do
it, and stay at home, and have a good time.”

“But, Lillie, I need it myself.”

“Need it, — what for? I can't imagine.”

“To keep me from becoming a mere selfish, worldly
man, and living for mere material good and pleasure.”

“You dear old Don Quixote! Well, you are altogether
in the clouds above me. I can't understand a
word of all that.”

“Well, good-by, darling,” said John, kissing her,
and hastening out of the room, to cut short the interview.

Milton has described the peculiar influence of woman
over man, in lowering his moral tone, and bringing him
down to what he considered the peculiarly womanly
level. “You women,” he said to his wife, when she
tried to induce him to seek favors at court by some
concession of principle, — “you women never care for

[figure description] Page 082.[end figure description]

any thing but to be fine, and to ride in your coaches.”
In Father Adam's description of the original Eve, he
says, —

Something like this effect was always produced on
John's mind when he tried to settle questions relating
to his higher nature with Lillie. He seemed, somehow,
always to get the worst of it. All her womanly graces
and fascinations, so powerful over his senses and imagination,
arrayed themselves formidably against him,
and for the time seemed to strike him dumb. What
he believed, and believed with enthusiasm, when he
was alone, or with Grace, seemed to drizzle away, and
be belittled, when he undertook to convince her of it.
Lest John should be called a muff and a spoon for this
peculiarity, we cite once more the high authority aforesaid,
where Milton makes poor Adam tell the angel, —

John went out from Lillie's presence rather humbled
and over-crowed. When the woman that a man loves
laughs at his moral enthusiasms, it is like a black frost
on the delicate tips of budding trees. It is up-hill work,
as we all know, to battle with indolence and selfishness,
and self-seeking and hard-hearted worldliness. Then
the highest and holiest part of our nature has a

[figure description] Page 083.[end figure description]

bashfulness of its own. It is a heavenly stranger, and
easily shamed. A nimble-tongued, skilful woman can
so easily show the ridiculous side of what seemed
heroism; and what is called common-sense, so generally,
is only some neatly put phase of selfishness. Poor
John needed the angel at his elbow, to give him the
caution which he is represented as giving to Father
Adam: —

But John had no angel at his elbow. He was a
fellow with a great heart, — good as gold, — with upward
aspirations, but with slow speech; and, when not
sympathized with, he became confused and incoherent,
and even dumb. So his only way with his little pink
and white empress was immediate and precipitate flight.

Lillie ran to the window when he was gone, and saw
him and Grace get into the carriage together; and then
she saw them drive to the old Ferguson House, and
Rose Ferguson came out and got in with them. “Well,”
she said to herself, “he shan't do that many times
more, — I 'm resolved.”

No, she did not say it. It would be well for us all
if we did put into words, plain and explicit, many

[figure description] Page 084.[end figure description]

instinctive resolves and purposes that arise in our hearts,
and which, for want of being so expressed, influence us
undetected and unchallenged. If we would say out
boldly, “I don't care for right or wrong, or good or evil,
or anybody's rights or anybody's happiness, or the
general good, or God himself, — all I care for, or feel
the least interest in, is to have a good time myself,
and I mean to do it, come what may,” — we should be
only expressing a feeling which often lies in the dark
back-room of the human heart; and saying it might
alarm us from the drugged sleep of life. It might
rouse us to shake off the slow, creeping paralysis of
selfishness and sin before it is for ever too late.

But Lillie was a creature who had lost the power
of self-knowledge. She was, my dear sir, what you
suppose the true woman to be, — a bundle of blind
instincts; and among these the strongest was that of
property in her husband, and power over him. She had
lived in her power over men; it was her field of ambition.
She knew them thoroughly. Women are called ivy;
and the ivy has a hundred little fingers in every inch of
its length, that strike at every flaw and crack and weak
place in the strong wall they mean to overgrow; and
so had Lillie. She saw, at a glance, that the sober,
thoughtful, Christian life of Springdale was wholly opposed
to the life she wanted to lead, and in which John
was to be her instrument. She saw that, if such
women as Grace and Rose had power with him, she
should not have; and her husband should be hers alone.
He should do her will, and be her subject, — so she

[figure description] Page 085.[end figure description]

thought, smiling at herself as she looked in the looking-glass,
and then curled herself peacefully and languidly
down in the corner of the sofa, and drew forth the
French novel that was her usual Sunday companion.

Lillie liked French novels. There was an atmosphere
of things in them that suited her. The young
married women had lovers and admirers; and there
was the constant stimulus of being courted and adored,
under the safe protection of a good-natured “mari.”

In France, the flirting is all done after marriage, and
the young girl looks forward to it as her introduction
to a career of conquest. In America, so great is our
democratic liberality, that we think of uniting the two
systems. We are getting on in that way fast. A
knowledge of French is beginning to be considered as
the pearl of great price, to gain which, all else must be
sold. The girls must go to the French theatre, and
be stared at by French débauchées, who laugh at them
while they pretend they understand what, thank
Heaven, they cannot. Then we are to have series of
French novels, carefully translated, and puffed and
praised even by the religious press, written by the
corps of French female reformers, which will show them
exactly how the naughty French women manage their
cards; so that, by and by, we shall have the latest
phase of eclecticism, — the union of American and
French manners. The girl will flirt till twenty à
l'Américaine, and then marry and flirt till forty à la
Française. This was about Lillie's plan of life. Could
she hope to carry it out in Springdale?

p706-101 CHAPTER VIII. SPINDLEWOOD.

[figure description] Page 086.[end figure description]

IT seemed a little like old times to Grace, to be once
more going with Rose and John over the pretty
romantic road to Spindlewood.

John did not reflect upon how little she now saw of
him, and how much of a trial the separation was; but
he noticed how bright and almost gay she was, when
they were by themselves once more. He was gay too.
In the congenial atmosphere of sympathy, his confidence
in himself, and his own right in the little controversy
that had occurred, returned. Not that he said a
word of it; he did not do so, and would not have done
so for the world. Grace and Rose were full of anecdotes
of this, that, and the other of their scholars; and
all the particulars of some of their new movements
were discussed. The people had, of their own accord,
raised a subscription for a library, which was to be
presented to John that day, with a request that he
would select the books.

“Gracie, that must be your work,” said John; “you
know I shall have an important case next week.”

[figure description] Page 087.[end figure description]

“Oh, yes! Rose and I will settle it,” said Grace.
“Rose, we 'll get the catalogues from all the book-stores,
and mark the things.”

“We 'll want books for the children just beginning
to read; and then books for the young men in John's
Bible-class, and all the way between,” said Rose. “It
will be quite a work to select.”

“And then to bargain with the book-stores, and
make the money go `far as possible,'” said Grace.

“And then there 'll be the covering of the books,”
said Rose. “I 'll tell you. I think I 'll manage to
have a lawn tea at our house; and the girls shall all
come early, and get the books covered, — that 'll be
charming.”

“I think Lillie would like that,” put in John.

“I should be so glad!” said Rose. “What a lovely
little thing she is! I hope she 'll like it. I wanted to
get up something pretty for her. I think, at this time
of the year, lawn teas are a little variety.”

“Oh, she 'll like it of course!” said John, with
some sinking of heart about the Sunday-school books.

There were so many pressing to shake hands with
John, and congratulate him, so many histories to tell,
so many cases presented for consultation, that it was
quite late before they got away; and tea had been
waiting for them more than an hour when they
returned.

Lillie looked pensive, and had that indescribable air
of patient martyrdom which some women know how
to make so very effective. Lillie had good general

[figure description] Page 088.[end figure description]

knowledge of the science of martyrdom, — a little spice
and flavor of it had been gently infused at times into
her demeanor ever since she had been at Springdale.
She could do the uncomplaining sufferer with the happiest
effect. She contrived to insinuate at times how
she didn't complain, — how dull and slow she found
her life, and yet how she endeavored to be cheerful.

“I know,” she said to John when they were by
themselves, “that you and Grace both think I 'm a
horrid creature.”

“Why, no, dearest; indeed we don't.”

“But you do, though; oh, I feel it! The fact is,
John, I haven't a particle of constitution; and, if I
should try to go on as Grace does, it would kill me in a
month. Ma never would let me try to do any thing;
and, if I did, I was sure to break all down under it:
but, if you say so, I 'll try to go into this school.”

“Oh, no, Lillie! I don't want you to go in. I know,
darling, you could not stand any fatigue. I only
wanted you to take an interest, — just to go and see
them for my sake.”

“Well, John, if you must go, and must keep it up, I
must try to go. I 'll go with you next Sunday. It will
make my head ache perhaps; but no matter, if you
wish it. You don't think badly of me, do you?” she
said coaxingly, playing with his whiskers.

“No, darling, not the least.”

“I suppose it would be a great deal better for you if
you had married a strong, energetic woman, like your
sister. I do admire her so; but it discourages me.”

[figure description] Page 089.[end figure description]

“Darling, I 'd a thousand times rather have you
what you are,” said John; for —

“O John! come, you ought to be sincere.”

“Sincere, Lillie! I am sincere.”

“You really would rather have poor, poor little me
than a woman like Gracie, — a great, strong, energetic
woman?” And Lillie laid her soft cheek down on his
arm in pensive humility.

“Yes, a thousand million times,” said John in his
enthusiasm, catching her in his arms and kissing her.
“I wouldn't for the world have you any thing but the
darling little Lillie you are. I love your faults more
than the virtues of other women. You are a thousand
times better than I am. I am a great, coarse block-head,
compared to you. I hope I didn't hurt your feelings
this noon; you know, Lillie, I 'm hasty, and apt to
be inconsiderate. I don't really know that I ought to
let you go over next Sunday.”

“O John, you are so good! Certainly if you go I
ought to; and I shall try my best.” Then John told
her all about the books and the lawn tea, and Lillie
listened approvingly.

So they had a lawn tea at the Fergusons that week,
where Lillie was the cynosure of all eyes. Mr. Mathews,
the new young clergyman of Springdale, was
there. Mr. Mathews had been credited as one of the
admirers of Rose Ferguson; but on this occasion he

[figure description] Page 090.[end figure description]

promenaded and talked with Lillie, and Lillie alone,
with an exclusive devotion.

“What a lovely young creature your new sister is!”
he said to Grace. “She seems to have so much religious
sensibility.”

“I say, Lillie,” said John, “Mathews seemed to be
smitten with you. I had a notion of interfering.”

“Did you ever see any thing like it, John? I
couldn't shake the creature off. I was so thankful when
you came up and took me. He 's Rose's admirer, and
he hardly spoke a word to her. I think it 's shameful.”

The next Sunday, Lillie rode over to Spindlewood
with John and Rose and Mr. Mathews.

Never had the picturesque of religion received more
lustre than from her presence. John was delighted to
see how they all gazed at her and wondered. Lillie
looked like a first-rate French picture of the youthful
Madonna, — white, pure, and patient. The day was
hot, and the hall crowded; and John noticed, what he
never did before, the close smell and confined air, and
it made him uneasy. When we are feeling with the
nerves of some one else, we notice every roughness and
inconvenience. John thought he had never seen his
school appear so little to advantage. Yet Lillie was an
image of patient endurance, trying to be pleased; and
John thought her, as she sat and did nothing, more of
a saint than Rose and Grace, who were laboriously
sorting books, and gathering around them large classes
of factory boys, to whom they talked with an exhausting
devotedness.

[figure description] Page 091.[end figure description]

When all was over, Lillie sat back on the carriage-cushions,
and smelled at her gold vinaigrette.

“You are all worn out, dear,” said John, tenderly.

“It 's no matter,” she said faintly.

“O Lillie darling! does your head ache?”

“A little, — you know it was close in there. I 'm
very sensitive to such things. I don't think they affect
others as they do me,” said Lillie, with the voice of a
dying zephyr.

“Lillie, it is not your duty to go,” said John; “if you
are not made ill by this, I never will take you again;
you are too precious to be risked.”

“How can you say so, John? I 'm a poor little
creature, — no use to anybody.”

Hereupon John told her that her only use in life was
to be lovely and to be loved, — that a thing of beauty
was a joy forever, &c., &c. But Lillie was too much
exhausted, on her return, to appear at the tea-table.
She took to her bed at once with sick headache, to the
poignant remorse of John. “You see how it is, Gracie,”
he said. “Poor dear little thing, she is willing enough,
but there 's nothing of her. We mustn't allow her to
exert herself; her feelings always carry her away.”

The next Sunday, John sat at home with Lillie, who
found herself too unwell to go to church, and was in
a state of such low spirits as to require constant soothing
to keep her quiet.

“It is fortunate that I have you and Rose to trust
the school with,” said John; “you see, it 's my first duty
to take care of Lillie.”

p706-107 CHAPTER IX. A CRISIS.

[figure description] Page 092.[end figure description]

ONE of the shrewdest and most subtle modern
French writers has given his views of womankind
in the following passage: —

“There are few women who have not found themselves,
at least once in their lives, in regard to some
incontestable fact, faced down by precise, keen, searching
inquiry, — one of those questions pitilessly put by
their husbands, the very idea of which gives a slight
chill, and the first word of which enters the heart like a
stroke of a dagger. Hence comes the maxim, Every
woman lies — obliging lies — venial lies — sublime lies—
horrible lies — but always the obligation of lying.

“This obligation once admitted, must it not be a necessity
to know how to lie well? In France, the women
lie admirably. Our customs instruct them so well in
imposture. And woman is so naïvely impertinent, so
pretty, so graceful, so true, in her lying! They so well
understand its usefulness in social life for avoiding
those violent shocks which would destroy happiness, —
it is like the cotton in which they pack their jewelry.

“Lying is to them the very foundation of language,

[figure description] Page 093.[end figure description]

and truth is only the exception; they speak it, as they
are virtuous, from caprice or for a purpose. According
to their character, some women laugh when they lie,
and some cry; some become grave, and others get
angry. Having begun life by pretending perfect insensibility
to that homage which flatters them most,
they often finish by lying even to themselves. Who
has not admired their apparent superiority and calm, at
the moment when they were trembling for the mysterious
treasures of their love? Who has not studied their
ease and facility, their presence of mind in the midst
of the most critical embarrassments of social life?
There is nothing awkward about it; their deception
flows as softly as the snow falls from heaven.

“Yet there are men that have the presumption to
expect to get the better of the Parisian woman! — of
the woman who possesses thirty-seven thousand ways
of saying `No,' and incommensurable variations in saying
`Yes.'”

This is a Frenchman's view of life in a country where
women are trained more systematically for the mere
purposes of attraction than in any other country, and
where the pursuit of admiration and the excitement of
winning lovers are represented by its authors as constituting
the main staple of woman's existence. France,
unfortunately, is becoming the great society-teacher of
the world. What with French theatres, French operas,
French novels, and the universal rush of American
women for travel, France is becoming so powerful on

[figure description] Page 094.[end figure description]

American fashionable society, that the things said of
the Parisian woman begin in some cases to apply to
some women in America.

Lillie was as precisely the woman here described as
if she had been born and bred in Paris. She had all
the thirty-seven thousand ways of saying “No,” and
the incommensurable variations in saying “Yes,” as completely
as the best French teaching could have given it.
She possessed, and had used, all that graceful facility,
in the story of herself that she had told John in the
days of courtship. Her power over him was based on
a dangerous foundation of unreality. Hence, during
the first few weeks of her wedded life, came a critical
scene, in which she was brought in collision with one
of those “pitiless questions” our author speaks of.

Her wedding-presents, manifold and brilliant, had
remained at home, in the charge of her mother, during
the wedding-journey. One bright day, a few weeks
after her arrival in Springdale, the boxes containing
the treasures were landed there; and John, with all
enthusiasm, busied himself with the work of unpacking
these boxes, and drawing forth the treasures.

Now, it so happened that Lillie's maternal grandfather,
a nice, pious old gentleman, had taken the
occasion to make her the edifying and suggestive
present of a large, elegantly bound family Bible.

The binding was unexceptionable; and Lillie assigned
it a proper place of honor among her wedding-gear.
Alas! she had not looked into it, nor seen what
dangers to her power were lodged between its leaves.

[figure description] Page 095.[end figure description]

But John, who was curious in the matter of books,
sat quietly down in a corner to examine it; and on the
middle page, under the head “Family Record,” he
found, in a large, bold hand, the date of the birth of
“Lillie Ellis” in figures of the most uncompromising
plainness; and thence, with one flash of his well-trained
arithmetical sense, came the perception that, instead of
being twenty years old, she was in fact twenty-seven,—
and that of course she had lied to him.

It was a horrid and a hard word for an American
young man to have suggested in relation to his wife,
If we may believe the French romancer, a Frenchman
would simply have smiled in amusement on detecting

[figure description] Page 096.[end figure description]

this petty feminine ruse of his beloved. But American
men are in the habit of expecting the truth from respectable
women as a matter of course; and the want
of it in the smallest degree strikes them as shocking.
Only an Englishman or an American can understand
the dreadful pain of that discovery to John.

The Anglo-Saxon race have, so to speak, a worship
of truth; and they hate and abhor lying with an energy
which leaves no power of tolerance.

The Celtic races have a certain sympathy with
deception. They have a certain appreciation of the
value of lying as a fine art, which has never been more
skilfully shown than in the passage from De Balzac we
have quoted. The woman who is described by him as
lying so sweetly and skilfully is represented as one of
those women “qui ont je ne sais quoi de saint et de
sacré, qui inspirent tant de respect que l'amour,” — “a
woman who has an indescribable something of holiness
and purity which inspires respect as well as love.” It
was no detraction from the character of Jesus, according
to the estimate of Renan, to represent him as
consenting to a benevolent fraud, and seeming to work
miracles when he did not work them, by way of increasing
his good influence over the multitude.

But John was the offspring of a generation of men
for hundreds of years, who would any of them have
gone to the stake rather than have told the smallest
untruth; and for him who had been watched and
guarded and catechised against this sin from his cradle,
till he was as true and pure as a crystal rock, to have

[figure description] Page 097.[end figure description]

his faith shattered in the woman he loved, was a terrible
thing.

As he read the fatal figures, a mist swam before
his eyes, — a sort of faintness came over him. It
seemed for a moment as if his very life was sinking
down through his boots into the carpet. He threw
down the book hastily, and, turning, stepped through
an open window into the garden, and walked quickly
off.

“Where in the world is John going?” said Lillie,
running to the door, and calling after him in imperative
tones.

“John, John, come back. I haven't done with you
yet;” but John never turned his head.

“How very odd! what in the world is the matter
with him?” she said to herself.

John was gone all the afternoon. He took a long,
long walk, all by himself, and thought the matter over.
He remembered that fresh, childlike, almost infantine
face, that looked up into his with such a bewitching air
of frankness and candor, as she professed to be telling
all about herself and her history; and now which or
what of it was true? It seemed as if he loathed her;
and yet he couldn't help loving her, while he despised
himself for doing it.

When he came home to supper, he was silent and
morose. Lillie came running to meet him; but he
threw her off, saying he was tired. She was frightened;
she had never seen him look like that.

“John, what is the matter with you?” said Grace at

[figure description] Page 098.[end figure description]

the tea-table. “You are upsetting every thing, and
don't drink your tea.”

“Nothing — only — I have some troublesome business
to settle,” he said, getting up to go out again. “You
needn't wait for me; I shall be out late.”

“What can be the matter?”

Lillie, indeed, had not the remotest idea. Yet she
remembered his jumping up suddenly, and throwing
down the Bible; and mechanically she went to it, and
opened it. She turned it over; and the record met
her eye.

“Provoking!” she said. “Stupid old creature! must
needs go and put that out in full.” Lillie took a paper-folder,
and cut the leaf out quite neatly; then folded
and burned it.

She knew now what was the matter. John was
angry at her; but she couldn't help wondering that he
should be so angry. If he had laughed at her, teased
her, taxed her with the trick, she would have understood
what to do. But this terrible gloom, this awful
commotion of the elements, frightened her.

She went to her room, saying that she had a headache,
and would go to bed. But she did not. She
took her French novel, and read till she heard him
coming; and then she threw down her book, and began
to cry. He came into the room, and saw her leaning
like a little white snow-wreath over the table, sobbing
as if her heart would break. To do her justice,
Lillie's sobs were not affected. She was lonesome and
thoroughly frightened; and, when she heard him

[figure description] Page 099.[end figure description]

coming, her nerves gave out. John's heart yearned towards
her. His short-lived anger had burned out; and he
was perfectly longing for a reconciliation. He felt as if
he must have her to love, no matter what she was. He
came up to her, and stroked her hair. “O Lillie!” he
said, “why couldn't you have told me the truth?
What made you deceive me?”

“I was afraid you wouldn't like me if I did,” said
Lillie, in her sobs.

“O Lillie! I should have liked you, no matter
how old you were, — only you should have told me
the truth.”

“I know it — I know it — oh, it was wrong of me!”
and Lillie sobbed, and seemed in danger of falling into
convulsions; and John's heart gave out. He gathered
her in his arms. “I can't help loving you; and I can't
live without you,” he said, “be you what you may!”

Lillie's little heart beat with triumph under all her
sobs: she had got him, and should hold him yet.

“There can be no confidence between husband and
wife, Lillie,” said John, gravely, “unless we are perfectly
true with each other. Promise me, dear, that
you will never deceive me again.”

Lillie promised with ready fervor. “O John!” she
said, “I never should have done so wrong if I had only
come under your influence earlier. The fact is, I have
been under the worst influences all my life. I never
had anybody like you to guide me.”

John may of course be excused for feeling that
his flattering little penitent was more to him than

[figure description] Page 100.[end figure description]

ever; and as to Lillie, she gave a sigh of relief. That
was over, “anyway;” and she had him not only safe,
but more completely hers than before.

A generous man is entirely unnerved by a frank
confession. If Lillie had said one word in defence,
if she had raised the slightest shadow of an argument,
John would have roused up all his moral principle
to oppose her; but this poor little white water-sprite,
dissolving in a rain of penitent tears, quite washed
away all his anger and all his heroism.

The next morning, Lillie, all fresh in a ravishing
toilet, with field-daisies in her hair, was in a condition
to laugh gently at John for his emotion of yesterday.
She triumphed softly, not too obviously, in her power.
He couldn't do without her, — do what she might, —
that was plain.

“Now, John,” she said, “don 't you think we poor
women are judged rather hardly? Men, you know,
tell all sorts of lies to carry on their great politics and
their ambition, and nobody thinks it so dreadful of
them.”

“I do — I should,” interposed John.

“Oh, well! you — you are an exception. It is not
one man in a hundred that is so good as you are.
Now, we women have only one poor little ambition, —
to be pretty, to please you men; and, as soon as
you know we are getting old, you don't like us. And
can you think it 's so very shocking if we don't come
square up to the dreadful truth about our age? Youth
and beauty is all there is to us, you know.”

[figure description] Page 101.[end figure description]

“O Lillie! don't say so,” said John, who felt the
necessity of being instructive, and of improving the
occasion to elevate the moral tone of his little elf.
“Goodness lasts, my dear, when beauty fades.”

“Oh, nonsense! Now, John, don't talk humbug.
I 'd like to see you following goodness when beauty
is gone. I 've known lots of plain old maids that were
perfect saints and angels; and yet men crowded and
jostled by them to get the pretty sinners. I dare
say now,” she added, with a bewitching look over
her shoulder at him, “you 'd rather have me than
Miss Almira Carraway, — hadn't you, now?”

And Lillie put her white arm round his neck, and
her downy cheek to his, and said archly, “Come, now,
confess.”

Then John told her that she was a bad, naughty girl;
and she laughed; and, on the whole, the pair were
more hilarious and loving than usual.

But yet, when John was away at his office, he
thought of it again, and found there was still a sore
spot in his heart.

She had cheated him once; would she cheat him
again? And she could cheat so prettily, so serenely,
and with such a candid face, it was a dangerous talent.

No: she wasn't like his mother, he thought with a
sigh. The “je ne sais quoi de saint et de sacré,”
which had so captivated his imagination, did not cover
the saintly and sacred nature; it was a mere outward
purity of complexion and outline. And then Grace, —
she must not be left to find out what he knew about

[figure description] Page 102.[end figure description]

Lillie. He had told Grace that she was only twenty, —
told it on her authority; and now must he become an
accomplice? If called on to speak of his wife's age,
must he accommodate the truth to her story, or must
he palter and evade? Here was another brick laid on
the wall of separation between his sister and himself.
It was rising daily. Here was another subject on which
he could never speak frankly with Grace; for he must
defend Lillie, — every impulse of his heart rushed to
protect her.

But it is a terrible truth, and one that it will not hurt
any of us to bear in mind, that our judgments of our
friends are involuntary.

We may long with all our hearts to confide; we may
be fascinated, entangled, and wish to be blinded; but
blind we cannot be. The friend that has lied to us
once, we may long to believe; but we cannot. Nay,
more; it is the worse for us, if, in our desire to hold the
dear deceiver in our hearts, we begin to chip and hammer
on the great foundations of right and honor, and
to say within ourselves, “After all, why be so particular?”
Then, when we have searched about for all the
reasons and apologies and extenuations for wrong-doing,
are we sure that in our human weakness we shall not
be pulling down the moral barriers in ourselves? The
habit of excusing evil, and finding apologies, and wishing
to stand with one who stands on a lower moral
plane, is not a wholesome one for the soul.

As fate would have it, the very next day after this
little scene, who should walk into the parlor where

[figure description] Page 103.[end figure description]

Lillie, John, and Grace were sitting, but that terror of
American democracy, the census-taker. Armed with
the whole power of the republic, this official steps with
elegant ease into the most sacred privacies of the family.
Flutterings and denials are in vain. Bridget and
Katy and Anne, no less than Seraphina and Isabella,
must give up the critical secrets of their lives.

John took the paper into the kitchen. Honest old
Bridget gave in her age with effrontery as “twintyfive.”
Anne giggled and flounced, and declared on her
word she didn't know, — they could put it down as they
liked. “But, Anne, you must tell, or you may be sent
to jail, you know.”

Anne giggled still harder, and tossed her head:
“Then it 's to jail I 'll have to go; for I don't know.”

“Dear me,” said Lillie, with an air of edifying
candor, “what a fuss they make! Set down my age
`twenty-seven,' John,” she added.

Grace started, and looked at John; he met her eye,
and blushed to the roots of his hair.

“Why, what 's the matter?” said Lillie, “are you
embarrassed at telling your age?”

“Oh, nothing!” said John, writing down the numbers
hastily; and then, finding a sudden occasion to
give directions in the garden, he darted out. “It 's so
silly to be ashamed of our age!” said Lillie, as the
census-taker withdrew.

“Of course,” said Grace; and she had the humanity
never to allude to the subject with her brother.

p706-119 CHAPTER X. CHANGES.

[figure description] Page 104.[end figure description]

Scene. — A chamber at the Seymour House. Lillie discovered weeping.
John rushing in with empressment.

“LILLIE, you shall tell me what ails you.”

“Nothing ails me, John.”

“Yes, there does; you were crying when I came in.”

“Oh, well, that 's nothing!”

“Oh, but it is a great deal! What is the matter?
I can see that you are not happy.”

“Oh, pshaw, John! I am as happy as I ought to be,
I dare say; there isn't much the matter with me, only
a little blue, and I don't feel quite strong.”

“You don't feel strong! I 've noticed it, Lillie.”

“Well, you see, John, the fact is, that I never have
got through this month without going to the sea-side.
Mamma always took me. The doctors told her that
my constitution was such that I couldn't get along
without it; but I dare say I shall do well enough in
time, you know.”

“But, Lillie,” said John, “if you do need sea-air,
you must go. I can't leave my business; that 's the
trouble.”

[figure description] Page 105.[end figure description]

“Oh, no, John! don't think of it. I ought to make
an effort to get along. You see, it 's very foolish in me,
but places affect my spirits so. It 's perfectly absurd
how I am affected.”

“Well, Lillie, I hope this place doesn't affect you
unpleasantly,” said John.

“It 's a nice, darling place, John, and it 's very silly in
me; but it is a fact that this house somehow has a depressing
effect on my spirits. You know it 's not like
the houses I 've been used to. It has a sort of old look;
and I can't help feeling that it puts me in mind of those
who are dead and gone; and then I think I shall be dead
and gone too, some day, and it makes me cry so. Isn't
it silly of me, John?”

“Poor little pussy!” said John.

“You see, John, our rooms are lovely; but they
are n't modern and cheerful, like those I 've been accustomed
to. They make me feel pensive and sad all the
time; but I 'm trying to get over it.”

“Why, Lillie!” said John, “would you like the rooms
refurnished? It can easily be done if you wish it.”

“Oh, no, no, dear! You are too good; and I 'm sure
the rooms are lovely, and it would hurt Gracie's feelings
to change them. No: I must try and get over it.
I know just how silly it is, and I shall try to overcome
it. If I had only more strength, I believe I could.”

“Well, darling, you must go to the sea-side. I shall
have you sent right off to Newport. Gracie can go
with you.”

“Oh, no, John! not for the world. Gracie must stay,

[figure description] Page 106.[end figure description]

and keep house for you. She 's such a help to you,
that it would be a shame to take her away. But I
think mamma would go with me, — if you could take me
there, and engage my rooms and all that, why, mamma
could stay with me, you know. To be sure, it would
be a trial not to have you there; but then if I could
get up my strength, you know,” —

“Exactly, certainly; and, Lillie, how would you like
the parlors arranged if you had your own way?”

“Oh, John! don't think of it.”

“But I just want to know for curiosity. Now, how
would you have them if you could?”

“Well, then, John, don't you think it would be
lovely to have them frescoed? Did you ever see the
Folingsbees' rooms in New York? They were so
lovely! — one was all in blue, and the other in crimson,
opening into each other; with carved furniture, and
those marquetrie tables, and all sorts of little French
things. They had such a gay and cheerful look.”

“Now, Lillie, if you want our rooms like that, you
shall have them.”

“O John, you are too good! I couldn't ask such
a sacrifice.”

“Oh, pshaw! it isn't a sacrifice. I don't doubt I
shall like them better myself. Your taste is perfect,
Lillie; and, now I think of it, I wonder that I thought
of bringing you here without consulting you in every
particular. A woman ought to be queen in her own
house, I am sure.”

“But, Gracie! Now, John, I know she has

[figure description] Page 107.[end figure description]

associations with all the things in this house, and it would
be cruel to her,” said Lillie, with a sigh.

“Pshaw! Gracie is a good, sensible girl, and ready
to make any rational change. I suppose we have been
living rather behind the times, and are somewhat rusty,
that 's a fact; but Gracie will enjoy new things as
much as anybody, I dare say.”

“Well, John, since you are set on it, there 's Charlie
Ferrola, one of my particular friends; he 's an architect,
and does all about arranging rooms and houses
and furniture. He did the Folingsbees', and the Hortons',
and the Jeromes', and no end of real nobby
people's houses; and made them perfectly lovely. People
say that one wouldn't know that they weren't in
Paris, in houses that he does.”

Now, our John was by nature a good solid chip of
the old Anglo-Saxon block; and, if there was any thing
that he had no special affinity for, it was for French
things. He had small opinion of French morals, and
French ways in general; but then at this moment he
saw his Lillie, whom, but half an hour before, he found
all pale and tear-drenched, now radiant and joyous,
sleek as a humming-bird, with the light in her eyes, and
the rattle on the tip of her tongue; and he felt so
delighted to see her bright and gay and joyous, that he
would have turned his house into the Jardin Mabille, if
that were possible.

Lillie had the prettiest little caressing tricks and
graces imaginable; and she perched herself on his
knee, and laughed and chatted so gayly, and pulled his

[figure description] 706EAF. Page 108. In-line Illustration. Image of a girl sitting in a man's lap with one are around his neck and the other hand on his cheek. The caption reads, "She perched herself in his knee."[end figure description]

whiskers so saucily, and then, springing up, began arraying
herself in such an astonishing daintiness of device,
and fluttering before him with such a variety of well-assorted
plumage, that John was quite taken off his feet.
He did not care so much whether what she willed to
do were, “Wisest, virtuousest, discreetest, best,” as feel
that what she wished to do must be done at any rate.

“Why, darling!” he said in his rapture; “why
didn't you tell me all this before? Here you have
been growing sad and blue, and losing your vivacity
and spirits, and never told me why!”

[figure description] Page 109.[end figure description]

“I thought it was my duty, John, to try to bear it,”
said Lillie, with the sweet look of a virgin saint. “I
thought perhaps I should get used to things in time;
and I think it is a wife's duty to accommodate herself
to her husband's circumstances.”

“No, it 's a husband's duty to accommodate himself
to his wife's wishes,” said John. “What 's that
fellow's address? I 'll write to him about doing our
house, forthwith.”

“But, John, do pray tell Gracie that it 's your wish.
I don't want her to think that it 's I that am doing
this. Now, pray do think whether you really want it
yourself. You see it must be so natural for you to like
the old things! They must have associations, and
I wouldn't for the world, now, be the one to change
them; and, after all, how silly it was of me to feel
blue!”

“Don't say any more, Lillie. Let me see, — next
week,” he said, taking out his pocket-book, and looking
over his memoranda, — “next week I 'll take you down
to Newport; and you write to-day to your mother to
meet you there, and be your guest. I 'll write and
engage the rooms at once.”

“I don't know what I shall do without you, John.”

“Oh, well, I couldn't stay possibly! But I may run
down now and then, for a night, you know.”

“Well, we must make that do,” said Lillie, with
a pensive sigh.

Thus two very important moves on Miss Lillie's
checker-board of life were skilfully made. The house

[figure description] Page 110.[end figure description]

was to be refitted, and the Newport precedent established.

Now, dear friends, don't think Lillie a pirate, or a
conspirator, or a wolf-in-sheep's-clothing, or any thing
else but what she was, — a pretty little, selfish woman;
undeveloped in her conscience and affections, and strong
in her instincts and perceptions; in a blind way using
what means were most in her line to carry her purposes.
Lillie had always found her prettiness, her littleness,
her helplessness, and her tears so very useful in carrying
her points in life that she resorted to them as
her lawful stock in trade. Neither were her blues
entirely shamming. There comes a time after marriage,
when a husband, if he be any thing of a man,
has something else to do than make direct love to
his wife. He cannot be on duty at all hours to fan her,
and shawl her, and admire her. His love must express
itself through other channels. He must be a full man
for her sake; and, as a man, must go forth to a whole
world of interests that takes him from her. Now
what in this case shall a woman do, whose only life lies
in petting and adoration and display?

Springdale had no beau monde, no fashionable circle,
no Bois de Boulogne, and no beaux, to make amends
for a husband's engrossments. Grace was sisterly and
kind; but what on earth had they in common to
talk about? Lillie's wardrobe was in all the freshness
of bridal exuberance, and there was nothing more to be
got, and so, for the moment, no stimulus in this line.
But then where to wear all these fine French dresses?

[figure description] Page 111.[end figure description]

Lillie had been called on, and invited once to little
social evening parties, through the whole round of
old, respectable families that lived under the elm-arches
of Springdale; and she had found it rather stupid.
There was not a man to make an admirer of, except the
young minister, who, after the first afternoon of seeing
her, returned to his devotion to Rose Ferguson.

You know, ladies, Æsop has a pretty little fable as
follows: A young man fell desperately in love with
a cat, and prayed to Jupiter to change her to a woman
for his sake. Jupiter was so obliging as to grant his
prayer; and, behold, a soft, satin-skinned, purring,
graceful woman was given into his arms.

But the legend goes on to say that, while he was
delighting in her charms, she heard the sound of mice
behind the wainscot, and left him forthwith to rush
after her congenial prey.

Lillie had heard afar the sound of mice at Newport,
and she longed to be after them once more. Had
she not a prestige now as a rich young married lady?
Had she not jewels and gems to show? Had she
not any number of mouse-traps, in the way of ravishing
toilets? She thought it all over, till she was sick
with longing, and was sure that nothing but the sea-air
could do her any good; and so she fell to crying, and
kissing her faithful John, till she gained her end, like a
veritable little cat as she was.

p706-127 CHAPTER XI. NEWPORT; OR, THE PARADISE OF NOTHING TO DO.

[figure description] Page 112.[end figure description]

BEHOLD, now, our Lillie at the height of her
heart's desire, installed in fashionable apartments
at Newport, under the placid chaperonship of dear
mamma, who never saw the least harm in any earthly
thing her Lillie chose to do.

All the dash and flash and furbelow of upper-tendom
were there; and Lillie now felt the full power and glory
of being a rich, pretty, young married woman, with
oceans of money to spend, and nothing on earth to do
but follow the fancies of the passing hour.

This was Lillie's highest ideal of happiness; and
didn't she enjoy it?

Wasn't it something to flame forth in wondrous
toilets in the eyes of Belle Trevors and Margy Silloway
and Lottie Cavers, who were not married; and
before the Simpkinses and the Tomkinses and the
Jenkinses, who, last year, had said hateful things about
her, and intimated that she had gone off in her looks,
and was on the way to be an old maid?

And wasn't it a triumph when all her old beaux
came flocking round her, and her parlors became a

[figure description] Page 113.[end figure description]

daily resort and lounging-place for all the idle swains,
both of her former acquaintance and of the newcomers,
who drifted with the tide of fashion? Never
had she been so much the rage; never had she been
declared so “stunning.” The effect of all this good
fortune on her health was immediate. We all know
how the spirits affect the bodily welfare; and hence,
my dear gentlemen, we desire it to be solemnly impressed
on you, that there is nothing so good for a
woman's health as to give her her own way.

Lillie now, from this simple cause, received enormous
accessions of vigor. While at home with plain,
sober John, trying to walk in the quiet paths of domesticity,
how did her spirits droop! If you only could have
had a vision of her brain and spinal system, you would
have seen how there was no nervous fluid there, and
how all the fine little cords and fibres that string the
muscles were wilting like flowers out of water; but
now she could bathe the longest and the strongest of any
one, could ride on the beach half the day, and dance
the German into the small hours of the night, with
a degree of vigor which showed conclusively what a
fine thing for her the Newport air was. Her dancing-list
was always over-crowded with applicants; bouquets
were showered on her; and the most superb
“turn-outs,” with their masters for charioteers, were
at her daily disposal.

All this made talk. The world doesn't forgive success;
and the ancients informed us that even the gods
were envious of happy people. It is astonishing to see

[figure description] Page 114.[end figure description]

the quantity of very proper and rational moral reflection
that is excited in the breast of society, by any
sort of success in life. How it shows them the vanity
of earthly enjoyments, the impropriety of setting one's
heart on it! How does a successful married flirt
impress all her friends with the gross impropriety of
having one's head set on gentlemen's attentions!

“I must say,” said Belle Trevors, “that dear Lillie
does astonish me. Now, I shouldn't want to have that
dissipated Danforth lounging in my rooms every day,
as he does in Lillie's: and then taking her out driving
day after day; for my part, I don't think it 's respectable.”

“Why don't you speak to her?” said Lottie Cavers.

“Oh, my dear! she wouldn't mind me. Lillie always
was the most imprudent creature; and, if she goes on
so, she 'll certainly get awfully talked about. That
Danforth is a horrid creature; I know all about him.”

As Miss Belle had herself been driving with the
“horrid creature” only the week before Lillie came, it
must be confessed that her opportunities for observation
were of an authentic kind.

Lillie, as queen in her own parlor, was all grace and
indulgence. Hers was now to be the sisterly rôle,
or, as she laughingly styled it, the maternal. With a
ravishing morning-dress, and with a killing little cap
of about three inches in extent on her head, she
enacted the young matron, and gave full permission to
Tom, Dick, and Harry to make themselves at home in
her room, and smoke their cigars there in peace. She

[figure description] 706EAF. Page 115. In-line Illustration. Image of a woman sitting and smoking a ciggarette. The caption reads, "And would sometimes smoke one purely for good company."[end figure description]

“adored the smell;” in fact, she accepted the present
of a fancy box of cigarettes from Danforth with graciousness,
and would sometimes smoke one purely for
good company. She also encouraged her followers to
unveil the tender secrets of their souls confidentially
to her, and offered gracious mediations on their behalf
with any of the flitting Newport fair ones. When they,
as in duty bound, said that they saw nobody whom
they cared about now she was married, that she was
the only woman on earth for them, — she rapped
their knuckles briskly with her fan, and bid them
mind their manners. All this mode of proceeding
gave her an immense success.

[figure description] Page 116.[end figure description]

But, as we said before, all this was talked about; and
ladies in their letters, chronicling the events of the
passing hour, sent the tidings up and down the country;
and so Miss Letitia Ferguson got a letter from
Mrs. Wilcox with full pictures and comments; and she
brought the same to Grace Seymour.

“I dare say,” said Letitia, “these things have been
exaggerated; they always are: still it does seem desirable
that your brother should go there, and be with
her.”

“He can't go and be with her,” said Grace, “without
neglecting his business, already too much neglected.
Then the house is all in confusion under the hands of
painters; and there is that young artist up there, —
a very elegant gentleman, — giving orders to right
and left, every one of which involves further confusion
and deeper expense; for my part, I see no end to it.
Poor John has got `the Old Man of the Sea' on his
back in the shape of this woman; and I expect she 'll
be the ruin of him yet. I can't want to break up his
illusion about her; because, what good will it do? He
has married her, and must live with her; and, for
Heaven's sake, let the illusion last while it can! I 'm
going to draw off, and leave them to each other;
there 's no other way.”

“You are, Gracie?”

“Yes; you see John came to me, all stammering and
embarrassment, about this making over of the old
place; but I put him at ease at once. `The most
natural thing in the world, John,' said I. `Of course

[figure description] Page 117.[end figure description]

Lillie has her taste; and it 's her right to have the
house arranged to suit it.' And then I proposed to
take all the old family things, and furnish the house
that I own on Elm Street, and live there, and let John
and Lillie keep house by themselves. You see there is
no helping the thing. Married people must be left
to themselves; nobody can help them. They must
make their own discoveries, fight their own battles,
sink or swim, together; and I have determined that
not by the winking of an eye will I interfere between
them.”

“Well, but do you think John wants you to go?”

“He feels badly about it; and yet I have convinced
him that it 's best. Poor fellow! all these changes
are not a bit to his taste. He liked the old place as
it was, and the old ways; but John is so unselfish. He
has got it in his head that Lillie is very sensitive
and peculiar, and that her spirits require all these
changes, as well as Newport air.”

“Well,” said Letitia, “if a man begins to say A in
that line, he must say B.”

“Of course,” said Grace; “and also C and D, and
so on, down to X, Y, Z. A woman, armed with sick-headaches,
nervousness, debility, presentiments, fears,
horrors, and all sorts of imaginary and real diseases,
has an eternal armory of weapons of subjugation.
What can a man do? Can he tell her that she is lying
and shamming? Half the time she isn't; she can actually
work herself into about any physical state she
chooses. The fortnight before Lillie went to Newport,

[figure description] Page 118.[end figure description]

she really looked pale, and ate next to nothing; and
she managed admirably to seem to be trying to keep
up, and not to complain, — yet you see how she can go
on at Newport.”

“It seems a pity John couldn't understand her.”

“My dear, I wouldn't have him for the world. Whenever
he does, he will despise her; and then he will be
wretched. For John is no hypocrite, any more than I
am. No, I earnestly pray that his soap-bubble may not
break.”

“Well, then,” said Letitia, “at least, he might go
down to Newport for a day or two; and his presence
there might set some things right: it might at least
check reports. You might just suggest to him that
unfriendly things were being said.”

“Well, I 'll see what I can do,” said Grace.

So, by a little feminine tact in suggestion, Grace despatched
her brother to spend a day or two in Newport.

His coming and presence interrupted the lounging
hours in Lillie's room; the introduction to “my husband”
shortened the interviews. John was courteous
and affable; but he neither smoked nor drank, and
there was a mutual repulsion between him and many
of Lillie's habitués.

“I say, Dan,” said Bill Sanders to Danforth, as they
were smoking on one end of the veranda, “you are
driven out of your lodgings since Seymour came.”

“No more than the rest of you,” said Danforth.

“I don't know about that, Dan. I think you might

[figure description] Page 119.[end figure description]

have been taken for master of those premises. Look
here now, Dan, why didn't you take little Lill yourself?
Everybody thought you were going to last
year.”

“Didn't want her; knew too much,” said Danforth.
“Didn't want to keep her; she 's too cursedly extravagant.
It 's jolly to have this sort of concern on hand;
but I 'd rather Seymour 'd pay her bills than I.”

“Who thought you were so practical, Dan?”

“Practical! that I am; I 'm an old bird. Take my
advice, boys, now: keep shy of the girls, and flirt with
the married ones, — then you don't get roped in.”

“I say, boys,” said Tom Nichols, “isn't she a case,
now? What a head she has! I bet she can smoke
equal to any of us.”

“Yes; I keep her in cigarettes,” said Danforth;
“she 's got a box of them somewhere under her ruffles
now.”

“What if Seymour should find them?” said Tom.

“Seymour? pooh! he 's a muff and a prig. I bet
you he won't find her out; she 's the jolliest little humbugger
there is going. She 'd cheat a fellow out of
the sight of his eyes. It 's perfectly wonderful.”

“How came Seymour to marry her?”

“He? Why, he 's a pious youth, green as grass
itself; and I suppose she talked religion to him. Did
you ever hear her talk religion?”

A roar of laughter followed this, out of which Danforth
went on. “By George, boys, she gave me a
prayer-book once! I 've got it yet.”

[figure description] Page 120.[end figure description]

“Well, if that isn't the best thing I ever heard!”
said Nichols.

“It was at the time she was laying siege to me, you
see. She undertook the part of guardian angel, and
used to talk lots of sentiment. The girls get lots of
that out of George Sand's novels about the holiness
of doing just as you 've a mind to, and all that,” said
Danforth.

“By George, Dan, you oughtn't to laugh. She may
have more good in her than you think.”

“Oh, humbug! don't I know her?”

“Well, at any rate she 's a wonderful creature to
hold her looks. By George! how she does hold out!
You'd say, now, she wasn't more than twenty.”

“Yes; she understands getting herself up,” said Danforth,
“and touches up her cheeks a bit now and then.”

“She don't paint, though?”

“Don't paint! Don't she? I 'd like to know if she
don't; but she does it like an artist, like an old master,
in fact.”

“Or like a young mistress,” said Tom, and then
laughed at his own wit.

Now, it so happened that John was sitting at an
open window above, and heard occasional snatches of
this conversation quite sufficient to impress him disagreeably.
He had not heard enough to know exactly
what had been said, but enough to feel that a set of
coarse, low-minded men were making quite free with
the name and reputation of his Lillie; and he was
indignant.

[figure description] Page 121.[end figure description]

“She is so pretty, so frank, and so impulsive,” he
said. “Such women are always misconstrued. I 'm
resolved to caution her.”

“Lillie,” he said, “who is this Danforth?”

“Charlie Danforth — oh! he 's a millionnaire that I
refused. He was wild about me, — is now, for that
matter. He perfectly haunts my rooms, and is always
teasing me to ride with him.”

“Well, Lillie, if I were you, I wouldn't have any
thing to do with him.”

“John, I don't mean to, any more than I can help.
I try to keep him off all I can; but one doesn't want
to be rude, you know.”

“My darling,” said John, “you little know the
wickedness of the world, and the cruel things that men
will allow themselves to say of women who are meaning
no harm. You can't be too careful, Lillie.”

“Oh! I am careful. Mamma is here, you know, all
the while; and I never receive except she is present.”

John sat abstractedly fingering the various objects
on the table; then he opened a drawer in the same
mechanical manner.

“Why, Lillie! what 's this? what in the world are
these?”

“O John! sure enough! well, there is something I
was going to ask you about. Danforth used always to
be sending me things, you know, before we were married, —
flowers and confectionery, and one thing or
other; and, since I have been here now, he has done
the same, and I really didn't know what to do about

[figure description] Page 122.[end figure description]

it. You know I didn't want to quarrel with him, or
get his ill-will; he 's a high-spirited fellow, and a man
one doesn't want for an enemy; so I have just passed it
over easy as I could.”

“But, Lillie, a box of cigarettes! — of course, they
can be of no use to you.”

“Of course: they are only a sort of curiosity that he
imports from Spain with his cigars.”

“I 've a great mind to send them back to him myself,”
said John.

“Oh, don't, John! why, how it would look! as if
you were angry, or thought he meant something
wrong. No; I 'll contrive a way to give 'em back
without offending him. I am up to all such little
ways.”

“Come, now,” she added, “don't let 's be cross just
the little time you have to stay with me. I do wish
our house were not all torn up, so that I could go home
with you, and leave Newport and all its bothers behind.”

“Well, Lillie, you could go, and stay with me at
Gracie's,” said John, brightening at this proposition.

“Dear Gracie, — so she has got a house all to herself;
how I shall miss her! but, really, John, I think she
will be happier. Since you would insist on revolutionizing
our house, you know” —

“But, Lillie, it was to please you.”

“Oh, I know it! but you know I begged you not to.
Well, John, I don't think I should like to go in and
settle down on Grace; perhaps, as I am here, and the

[figure description] Page 123.[end figure description]

sea-air and bathing strengthens me so, we may as well
put it through. I will come home as soon as the house
is done.”

“But perhaps you would want to go with me to
New York to select the furniture?”

“Oh, the artist does all that! Charlie Ferrola will
give his orders to Simon & Sauls, and they will do
every thing up complete. It 's the way they all do —
saves lots of trouble.”

John went home, after three days spent in Newport,
feeling that Lillie was somehow an injured fair one, and
that the envious world bore down always on beauty
and prosperity.

But incidentally he heard and overheard much that
made him uneasy. He heard her admired as a “bully”
girl, a “fast one;” he heard of her smoking, he overheard
something about “painting.”

The time was that John thought Lillie an embryo
angel, — an angel a little bewildered and gone astray,
and with wings a trifle the worse for the world's wear,—
but essentially an angel of the same nature with his
own revered mother.

Gradually the mercury had been falling in the tube
of his estimation. He had given up the angel; and
now to himself he called her “a silly little pussy,” but
he did it with a smile. It was such a neat, white,
graceful pussy; and all his own pussy too, and purred
and rubbed its little head on no coat-sleeve but
his, — of that he was certain. Only a bit silly. She
would still fib a little, John feared, especially when he

[figure description] Page 124.[end figure description]

looked back to the chapter about her age, — and then,
perhaps, about the cigarettes.

Well, she might, perhaps, in a wild, excited hour,
have smoked one or two, just for fun, and the thing had
been exaggerated. She had promised fairly to return
those cigarettes, — he dared not say to himself that he
feared she would not. He kept saying to himself that
she would. It was necessary to say this often to make
himself believe it.

As to painting — well, John didn't like to ask her,
because, what if she shouldn't tell him the truth?
And, if she did paint, was it so great a sin, poor little
thing? he would watch, and bring her out of it. After
all, when the house was all finished and arranged, and
he got her back from Newport, there would be a long,
quiet, domestic winter at Springdale; and they would
get up their reading-circles, and he would set her to
improving her mind, and gradually the vision of this
empty, fashionable life would die out of her horizon,
and she would come into his ways of thinking and
doing.

But, after all, John managed to be proud of her.
When he read in the columns of “The Herald” the
account of the Splandangerous ball in Newport, and of
the entrancingly beautiful Mrs. J. S., who appeared in
a radiant dress of silvery gauze made à la nuage, &c.,
&c., John was rather pleased than otherwise. Lillie
danced till daylight, — it showed that she must be getting
back her strength, — and she was voted the belle
of the scene. Who wouldn't take the comfort that is

[figure description] Page 125.[end figure description]

to be got in any thing? John owned this fashionable
meteor, — why shouldn't he rejoice in it?

Two years ago, had anybody told him that one day
he should have a wife that told fibs, and painted, and
smoked cigarettes, and danced all night at Newport,
and yet that he should love her, and be proud of
her, he would have said, Is thy servant a dog? He
was then a considerate, thoughtful John, serious and
careful in his life-plans; and the wife that was to be
his companion was something celestial. But so it is.
By degrees, we accommodate ourselves to the actual
and existing. To all intents and purposes, for us it is
the inevitable.

p706-141 CHAPTER XII. HOME À LA POMPADOUR.

[figure description] Page 126.[end figure description]

WELL, Lillie came back at last; and John conducted
her over the transformed Seymour mansion,
where literally old things had passed away, and
all things become new.

There was not a relic of the past. The house was
furbished and resplendent — it was gilded — it was
frescoed — it was à la Pompadour, and à la Louis
Quinze and Louis Quatorze, and à la every thing
Frenchy and pretty, and gay and glistening. For,
though the parlors at first were the only apartments
contemplated in this renaissance, yet it came to pass
that the parlors, when all tricked out, cast such invidious
reflections on the chambers that the chambers felt
themselves old and rubbishy, and prayed and stretched
out hands of imploration to have something done for
them!

So the spare chamber was first included in the glorification
programme; but, when the spare chamber was
once made into a Pompadour pavilion, it so flouted
and despised the other old-fashioned Yankee chambers,

[figure description] Page 127.[end figure description]

that they were ready to die with envy; and, in short,
there was no way to produce a sense of artistic unity,
peace, and quietness, but to do the whole thing over,
which was done triumphantly.

The French Emperor, Louis Napoleon, who was a
shrewd sort of a man in his day and way, used to talk
a great deal about the “logic of events;” which language,
being interpreted, my dear gentlemen, means a
good deal in domestic life. It means, for instance, that
when you drive the first nail, or tear down the first
board, in the way of alteration of an old house, you
will have to make over every room and corner in it,
and pay as much again for it as if you built a new one.

John was able to sympathize with Lillie in her childish
delight in the new house, because he loved her, and
was able to put himself and his own wishes out of the
question for her sake; but, when all the bills connected
with this change came in, he had emotions with which
Lillie could not sympathize: first, because she knew
nothing about figures, and was resolved never to know
any thing; and, like all people who know nothing about
them, she cared nothing; — and, second, because she
did not love John.

Now, the truth is, Lillie would have been quite astonished
to have been told this. She, and many other
women, suppose that they love their husbands, when,
unfortunately, they have not the beginning of an idea
what love is. Let me explain it to you, my dear lady.
Loving to be admired by a man, loving to be petted by
him, loving to be caressed by him, and loving to be

[figure description] Page 128.[end figure description]

praised by him, is not loving a man. All these may be
when a woman has no power of loving at all, — they
may all be simply because she loves herself, and loves
to be flattered, praised, caressed, coaxed; as a cat likes
to be coaxed and stroked, and fed with cream, and have
a warm corner.

But all this is not love. It may exist, to be sure,
where there is love; it generally does. But it may
also exist where there is no love. Love, my dear
ladies, is self-sacrifice; it is a life out of self and in
another. Its very essence is the preferring of the comfort,
the ease, the wishes of another to one's own, for
the love we bear them. Love is giving, and not receiving.
Love is not a sheet of blotting-paper or a sponge,
sucking in every thing to itself; it is an out-springing
fountain, giving from itself. Love's motto has been
dropped in this world as a chance gem of great price
by the loveliest, the fairest, the purest, the strongest of
Lovers that ever trod this mortal earth, of whom it is
recorded that He said, “It is more blessed to give than
to receive.” Now, in love, there are ten receivers to one
giver. There are ten persons in this world who like to
be loved and love love, where there is one who knows
how to love. That, O my dear ladies, is a nobler attainment
than all your French and music and dancing.
You may lose the very power of it by smothering it
under a load of early self-indulgence. By living just as
you are all wanting to live, — living to be petted, to be
flattered, to be admired, to be praised, to have your
own way, and to do only that which is easy and

[figure description] Page 129.[end figure description]

agreeable, — you may lose the power of self-denial and self-sacrifice;
you may lose the power of loving nobly and
worthily, and become a mere sheet of blotting-paper
all your life.

You will please to observe that, in all the married
life of these two, as thus far told, all the accommodations,
compliances, changes, have been made by John
for Lillie.

He has been, step by step, giving up to her his
ideal of life, and trying, as far as so different a nature
can, to accommodate his to hers; and she accepts
all this as her right and due.

She sees no particular cause of gratitude in it, — it is
what she expected when she married. Her own specialty,
the thing which she has always cultivated, is
to get that sort of power over man, by which she
can carry her own points and purposes, and make
him flexible to her will; nor does a suspicion of the
utter worthlessness and selfishness of such a life ever
darken the horizon of her thoughts.

John's bills were graver than he expected. It is
true he was rich; but riches is a relative term. As
related to the style of living hitherto practised in
his establishment, John's income was princely, and left
a large balance to be devoted to works of general
benevolence; but he perceived that, in this year, that
balance would be all absorbed; and this troubled him.

Then, again, his establishment being now given up
by his sister must be reorganized, with Lillie at its
head; and Lillie declared in the outset that she could

[figure description] Page 130.[end figure description]

not, and would not, take any trouble about any
thing.

“John would have to get servants; and the servants
would have to see to things:” she “was resolved, for one
thing, that she wasn't going to be a slave to housekeeping.”

By great pains and importunity, and an offer of high
wages, Grace and John retained Bridget in the establishment,
and secured from New York a seamstress and
a waitress, and other members to make out a domestic
staff.

This sisterhood were from the isle of Erin, and not
an unfavorable specimen of that important portion
of our domestic life. They were quick-witted, well-versed
in a certain degree of household and domestic
skill, guided in well-doing more by impulsive good
feeling than by any very enlightened principle. The
dominant idea with them all appeared to be, that they
were living in the house of a millionnaire, where money
flowed through the establishment in a golden stream,
out of which all might drink freely and rejoicingly,
with no questions asked. Mrs. Lillie concerned herself
only with results, and paid no attention to ways and
means. She wanted a dainty and generous table to
be spread for her, at all proper hours, with every
pleasing and agreeable variety; to which she should
come as she would to the table of a boarding-house,
without troubling her head where any thing came from
or went to. Bridget, having been for some years under
the training and surveillance of Grace Seymour, was

[figure description] Page 131.[end figure description]

more than usually competent as cook and provider;
but Bridget had abundance of the Irish astuteness,
which led her to feel the genius of circumstances, and
to shape her course accordingly.

With Grace, she had been accurate, saving, and
economical; for Miss Grace was so. Bridget had felt,
under her sway, the beauty of that economy which
saves because saving is in itself so fitting and so
respectable; and because, in this way, a power for a
wise generosity is accumulated. She was sympathetic
with the ruling spirit of the establishment.

But, under the new mistress, Bridget declined in
virtue. The announcement that the mistress of a
family isn't going to give herself any trouble, nor
bother her head with care about any thing, is one
the influence of which is felt downward in every
department. Why should Bridget give herself any
trouble to save and economize for a mistress who took
none for herself? She had worked hard all her life,
why not take it easy? And it was so much easier
to send daily a basket of cold victuals to her cousin on
Vine Street than to contrive ways of making the most
of things, that Bridget felt perfectly justified in doing
it. If, once in a while, a little tea and a paper of
sugar found their way into the same basket, who would
ever miss it?

The seamstress was an elegant lady. She kept all
Lillie's dresses and laces and wardrobe, and had something
ready for her to put on when she changed her
toilet every day. If this very fine lady wore her

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mistress's skirts and sashes, and laces and jewelry, on
the sly, to evening parties among the upper servant
circles of Springdale, who was to know it? Mrs. John
Seymour knew nothing about where her things were,
nor what was their condition, and never wanted to
trouble herself to inquire.

It may therefore be inferred that when John began
to settle up accounts, and look into financial matters,
they seemed to him not to be going exactly in the
most promising way.

He thought he would give Lillie a little practical
insight into his business, — show her exactly what his
income was, and make some estimates of his expenses,
just that she might have some little idea how things
were going.

So John, with great care, prepared a nice little
account-book, prefaced by a table of figures, showing
the income of the Spindlewood property, and the income
of his law business, and his income from other sources.
Against this, he placed the necessary out-goes of his
business, and showed what balance might be left. Then
he showed what had hitherto been spent for various
benevolent purposes connected with the schools and
his establishments at Spindlewood. He showed what
had been the bills for the refitting of the house, and
what were now the running current expenses of the
family.

He hoped that he had made all these so plain and
simple, that Lillie might easily be made to understand
them, and that thus some clear financial boundaries

[figure description] 706EAF. Page 133. In-line Illustration. Image of a man sitting in front of a woman trying to show her an open book he is holding. The woman has her hand to her forehead and is waving him away with her other hand. The caption reads, "I never had the least head for figures."[end figure description]

might appear in her mind. Then he seized a favorable
hour, and produced his book.

“Lillie,” he said, “I want to make you understand a
little about our expenditures and income.”

“Oh, dreadful, John! don't, pray! I never had any
head for things of that kind.”

“But, Lillie, please let me show you,” persisted John.
“I've made it just as simple as can be.”

“O John! now — I just — can't — there now! Don't
bring that book now; it'll just make me low-spirited
and cross. I never had the least head for figures;

[figure description] Page 134.[end figure description]

mamma always said so; and if there is any thing
that seems to me perfectly dreadful, it is accounts. I
don't think it 's any of a woman's business — it 's all
man's work, and men have got to see to it. Now,
please don't,” she added, coming to him coaxingly,
and putting her arm round his neck.

“But, you see, Lillie,” John persevered, in a pleading
tone, — “you see, all these alterations that have been
made in the house have involved very serious expenses;
and then, too, we are living at a very different rate
of expense from what we ever lived before” —

“There it is, John! Now, you oughtn't to reproach
me with it; for you know it was your own idea. I didn't
want the alterations made; but you would insist on it.
I didn't think it was best; but you would have them.”

“But, Lillie, it was all because you wanted them.”

“Well, I dare say; but I shouldn't have wanted
them if I thought it was going to bring in all this
bother and trouble, and make me have to look over old
accounts, and all such things. I 'd rather never have
had any thing!” And here Lillie began to cry.

“Come, now, my darling, do be a sensible woman,
and not act like a baby.”

“There, John! it 's just as I knew it would be; I
always said you wanted a different sort of a woman for
a wife. Now, you knew when you took me that I
wasn't in the least strong-minded or sensible, but a
poor little helpless thing; and you are beginning to
get tired of me already. You wish you had married a
woman like Grace, I know you do.”

[figure description] Page 135.[end figure description]

“Lillie, how silly! Please do listen, now. You
have no idea how simple and easy what I want to
explain to you is.”

“Well, John, I can't to-night, anyhow, because I
have a headache. Just this talk has got my head to
thumping so, — it 's really dreadful! and I 'm so low-spirited!
I do wish you had a wife that would suit
you better.” And forthwith Mrs. Lillie dissolved in
tears; and John stroked her head, and petted her, and
called her a nice little pussy, and begged her pardon
for being so rough with her, and, in short, acted like a
fool generally.

“If that woman was my wife now,” I fancy I hear
some youth with a promising moustache remark, “I 'd
make her behave!”

Well, sir, supposing she was your wife, what are you
going to do about it?

What are you going to do when accounts give your
wife a sick headache, so that she cannot possibly attend
to them? Are you going to enact the Blue Beard, and
rage and storm, and threaten to cut her head off?
What good would that do? Cutting off a wrong little
head would not turn it into a right one. An ancient
proverb significantly remarks, “You can't have more
of a cat than her skin,” — and no amount of fuming and
storming can make any thing more of a woman than
she is. Such as your wife is, sir, you must take her,
and make the best of it. Perhaps you want your own
way. Don't you wish you could get it?

But didn't she promise to obey? Didn't she? Of

[figure description] Page 136.[end figure description]

course. Then why is it that I must be all the while
yielding points, and she never? Well, sir, that is for
you to settle. The marriage service gives you authority;
so does the law of the land. John could lock up
Mrs. Lillie till she learned her lessons; he could do any
of twenty other things that no gentleman would ever
think of doing, and the law would support him in it.
But, because John is a gentleman, and not Paddy from
Cork, he strokes his wife's head, and submits.

We understand that our brethren, the Methodists,
have recently decided to leave the word “obey” out of
the marriage-service. Our friends are, as all the world
knows, a most wise and prudent denomination, and
guided by a very practical sense in their arrangements.
If they have left the word “obey” out, it is because
they have concluded that it does no good to put it in,—
a decision that John's experience would go a long
way to justify.

p706-152 CHAPTER XIII. JOHN'S BIRTHDAY.

[figure description] Page 137.[end figure description]

“MY dear Lillie,” quoth John one morning, “next
week Wednesday is my birthday.”

“Is it? How charming! What shall we do?”

“Well, Lillie, it has always been our custom —
Grace's and mine — to give a grand fête here to all our
work-people. We invite them all over en masse, and
have the house and grounds all open, and devote ourselves
to giving them a good time.”

Lillie's countenance fell.

“Now, really, John, how trying! what shall we do?
You don't really propose to bring all those low, dirty,
little factory children in Spindlewood through our elegant
new house? Just look at that satin furniture, and
think what it will be when a whole parcel of freckled,
tow-headed, snubby-nosed children have eaten bread
and butter and doughnuts over it! Now, John, there
is reason in all things; this house is not made for a
missionary asylum.”

John, thus admonished, looked at his house, and was
fain to admit that there was the usual amount of that

[figure description] Page 138.[end figure description]

good, selfish, hard grit — called common sense — in
Lillie's remarks.

Rooms have their atmosphere, their necessities, their
artistic proprieties. Apartments à la Louis Quatorze
represent the ideas and the sympathies of a period
when the rich lived by themselves in luxury, and the
poor were trodden down in the gutter; when there was
only aristocratic contempt and domination on one side,
and servility and smothered curses on the other. With
the change of the apartments to the style of that past
era, seemed to come its maxims and morals, as artistically
indicated for its completeness. So John walked
up and down in his Louis Quinze salon, and into his
Pompadour boudoir, and out again into the Louis
Quatorze dining-rooms, and reflected. He had had
many reflections in those apartments before. Of all illadapted
and unsuitable pieces of furniture in them, he
had always felt himself the most unsuitable and illadapted.
He had never felt at home in them. He
never felt like lolling at ease on any of those elegant
sofas, as of old he used to cast himself into the motherly
arms of the great chintz one that filled the recess. His
Lillie, with her smart paraphernalia of hoops and puffs
and ruffles and pinkings and bows, seemed a perfectly
natural and indigenous production there; but he himself
seemed always to be out of place. His Lillie might
have been any of Balzac's charming duchesses, with
their “thirty-seven thousand ways of saying `Yes;'”
but, as to himself, he must have been taken for her
steward or gardener, who had accidentally strayed in,

[figure description] Page 139.[end figure description]

and was fraying her satin surroundings with rough
coats and heavy boots. There was not, in fact, in all
the reorganized house, a place where he felt himself to
be at all the proper thing; nowhere where he could
lounge, and read his newspaper, without a feeling of
impropriety; nowhere that he could indulge in any
of the slight Hottentot-isms wherein unrenewed male
nature delights, — without a feeling of rebuke.

John had not philosophized on the causes of this.
He knew, in a general and unconfessed way, that he
was not comfortable in his new arrangements; but
he supposed it was his own fault. He had fallen into
rusty, old-fashioned, bachelor ways; and, like other
things that are not agreeable to the natural man, he
supposed his trim, resplendent, genteel house was good
for him, and that he ought to like it, and by grace
should attain to liking it, if he only tried long enough.

Only he took long rests every day while he went to
Grace's, on Elm Street, and stretched himself on the
old sofa, and sat in his mother's old arm-chair, and told
Grace how very elegant their house was, and how much
taste the architect had shown, and how much Lillie
was delighted with it.

But this silent walk of John's, up and down his brilliant
apartments, opened his eyes to another troublesome
prospect. He was a Christian man, with a high
aim and ideal in life. He believed in the Sermon on
the Mount, and other radical preaching of that nature;
and he was a very honest man, and hated humbug in
every shape. Nothing seemed meaner to him than to

[figure description] Page 140.[end figure description]

profess a sham. But it began in a cloudy way to appear
to him that there is a manner of arranging one's
houses that makes it difficult — yes, well-nigh impossible—
to act out in them any of the brotherhood principles
of those discourses.

There are houses where the self-respecting poor, or
the honest laboring man and woman, cannot be made
to enter or to feel at home. They are made for the
selfish luxury of the privileged few. Then John
reflected, uneasily, that this change in his house had
absorbed that whole balance which usually remained
on his accounts to be devoted to benevolent purposes,
and with which this year he had proposed to erect a
reading-room for his work-people.

“Lille,” said John, as he walked uneasily up and
down, “I wish you would try to help me in this thing.
I always have done it, — my father and mother did it
before me, — and I don't want all of a sudden to depart
from it. It may seem a little thing, but it does a great
deal of good. It produces kind feeling; it refines and
educates and softens them.”

“Oh, well, John! if you say so, I must, I suppose,”
said Lillie, with a sigh. “I can have the carpets and
furniture all covered, I suppose; it 'll be no end of
trouble, but I 'll try. But I must say, I think all this
kind of petting of the working-classes does no sort of
good; it only makes them uppish and exacting: you
never get any gratitude for it.”

“But you know, dearie, what is said about doing
good, `hoping for nothing again,'” said John.

[figure description] Page 141.[end figure description]

“Now, John, please don't preach, of all things.
Haven't I told you that I 'll try my best? I am going
to, — I 'll work with all my strength, — you know that
isn't much, — but I shall exert myself to the utmost if
you say so.”

“My dear, I don't want you to injure yourself!”

“Oh! I don't mind,” said Lillie, with the air of a
martyr. “The servants, I suppose, will make a fuss
about it; and I shouldn't wonder if it was the means
of sending them every one off in a body, and leaving
me without any help in the house, just as the Follingsbees
and the Simpkinses are coming to visit us.”

“I didn't know that you had invited the Follingsbees
and Simpkinses,” said John.

“Didn't I tell you? I meant to,” said Mrs. Lillie,
innocently.

“I don't like those Follingsbees, Lillie. He is a man
I have no respect for; he is one of those shoddy upstarts,
not at all our sort of folks. I 'm sorry you asked
him.”

“But his wife is my particular friend,” said Lillie,
“and they were very polite to mamma and me at Newport;
and we really owe them some attention.”

“Well, Lillie, since you have asked them, I will be
polite to them; and I will try and do every thing
to save you care in this entertainment. I 'll speak to
Bridget myself; she knows our ways, and has been
used to managing.”

And so, as John was greatly beloved by Bridget, and
as all the domestic staff had the true Irish fealty to the

[figure description] Page 142.[end figure description]

man of the house, and would run themselves off their
feet in his service any day, — it came to pass that the
fête was holden, as of yore, in the grounds. Grace was
there and helped, and so were Letitia and Rose Ferguson;
and all passed off better than could be expected.
But John did not enjoy it. He felt all the while that
he was dragging Lillie as a thousand-pound weight
after him; and he inly resolved that, once out of that
day's festival, he would never try to have it again.

Lillie went to bed with sick headache, and lay two
days after it, during which she cried and lamented incessantly.
She “knew she was not the wife for John;”
she “always told him he wouldn't be satisfied with her,
and now she saw he wasn't; but she had tried her very
best, and now it was cruel to think she should not succeed
any better.”

“My dearest child,” said John, who, to say the truth,
was beginning to find this thing less charming than it
used to be, “I am satisfied. I am much obliged to
you. I 'm sure you have done all that could be asked.”

“Well, I 'm sure I hope those folks of yours were
pleased,” quoth Lillie, as she lay looking like a martyr,
with a cloth wet in ice-water bound round her head.
“They ought to be; they have left grease-spots all over
the sofa in my boudoir, from one end to the other; and
cake and raisins have been trodden into the carpets;
and the turf around the oval is all cut up; and they
have broken my little Diana; and such a din as there
was! — oh, me! it makes my head ache to think of it.”

“Never mind, Lillie, I 'll see to it, and set it all right.”

[figure description] 706EAF. Page 143. In-line Illustration. Image of a woman lying in bed with a cloth on her head. She is talking to a man standing next to the bed. The caption reads, "Oh, me! it makes my head ache to think of it."[end figure description]

“No, you can't. One of the children broke that
model of the Leaning Tower too. I found it. You
can't teach such children to let things alone. Oh, dear
me! my head!”

“There, there, pussy! only don't worry,” said John,
in soothing tones.

“Don't think me horrid, please don't,” said Lillie, piteously.
“I did try to have things go right; didn't I?”

“Certainly you did, dearie; so don't worry. I 'll get
all the spots taken out, and all the things mended, and
make every thing right.”

[figure description] Page 144.[end figure description]

So John called Rosa, on his way downstairs. “Show
me the sofa that they spoiled,” said he.

“Sofa?” said Rosa.

“Yes; I understand the children greased the sofa in
Mrs. Seymour's boudoir.”

“Oh, dear, no! nothing of the sort; I 've been putting
every thing to rights in all the rooms, and they
look beautifully.”

“Didn't they break something?”

“Oh, no, nothing! The little things were good as
could be.”

“That Leaning Tower, and that little Diana,” suggested
John.

“Oh, dear me, no! I broke those a month ago, and
showed them to Mrs. Seymour, and promised to mend
them. Oh! she knows all about that.”

“Ah!” said John, “I didn't know that. Well, Rosa,
put every thing up nicely, and divide this money among
the girls for extra trouble,” he added, slipping a bill into
her hand.

“I 'm sure there 's no trouble,” said Rosa. “We all
enjoyed it; and I believe everybody did; only I 'm
sorry it was too much for Mrs. Seymour; she is very
delicate.”

“Yes, she is,” said John, as he turned away, drawing
a long, slow sigh.

That long, slow sigh had become a frequent and unconscious
occurrence with him of late. When our ideals
are sick unto death; when they are slowly dying and

[figure description] Page 145.[end figure description]

passing away from us, we sigh thus. John said to himself
softly, — no matter what; but he felt the pang of
knowing again what he had known so often of late,
that his Lillie's word was not golden. What she said
would not bear close examination. Therefore, why
examine?

“Evidently, she is determined that this thing shall
not go on,” said John. “Well, I shall never try again;
it 's of no use;” and John went up to his sister's, and
threw himself down upon the old chintz sofa as if it had
been his mother's bosom. His sister sat there, sewing.
The sun came twinkling through a rustic frame-work of
ivy which it had been the pride of her heart to arrange
the week before. All the old family pictures and heirlooms,
and sketches and pencillings, were arranged in
the most charming way, so that her rooms seemed a
reproduction of the old home.

“Hang it all!” said John, with a great flounce as he
turned over on the sofa. “I 'm not up to par this
morning.”

Now, Grace had that perfect intuitive knowledge of
just what the matter was with her brother, that women
always have who have grown up in intimacy with
a man. These fine female eyes see farther between the
rough cracks and ridges of the oak bark of manhood
than men themselves. Nothing would have been easier,
had Grace been a jealous exigeante woman, than to have
passed a fine probe of sisterly inquiry into the weak
places where the ties between John and Lillie were
growing slack, and untied and loosened them more and

[figure description] Page 146.[end figure description]

more. She could have done it so tenderly, so conscientiously,
so pityingly, — encouraging John to talk and to
complain, and taking part with him, —till there should
come to be two parties in the family, the brother and
sister against the wife.

How strong the temptation was, those may feel who
reflect that this one subject caused an almost total
eclipse of the life-long habit of confidence which had
existed between Grace and her brother, and that her
brother was her life and her world.

But Grace was one of those women formed under
the kindly severe discipline of Puritan New England,
to act not from blind impulse or instinct, but from
high principle. The habit of self-examination and self-inspection,
for which the religious teaching of New
England has been peculiar, produced a race of women
who rose superior to those mere feminine caprices
and impulses which often hurry very generous and
kindly-natured persons into ungenerous and dishonorable
conduct. Grace had been trained, by a father and
mother whose marriage union was an ideal of mutual
love, honor, and respect, to feel that marriage was the
holiest and most awful of obligations. To her, the idea
of a husband or a wife betraying each other's weaknesses
or faults by complaints to a third party seemed
something sacrilegious; and she used all her womanly
tact and skill to prevent any conversation that might
lead to such a result.

“Lillie is entirely knocked up by the affair yesterday;
she had a terrible headache this morning,” said John.

[figure description] Page 147.[end figure description]

“Poor child! She is a delicate little thing,” said
Grace.

“She couldn't have had any labor,” continued John,
“for I saw to every thing and provided every thing
myself; and Bridget and Rosa and all the girls entered
into it with real spirit, and Lillie did the best she could,
poor girl! but I could see all the time she was worrying
about her new fizgigs and folderols in the house. Hang
it! I wish they were all in the Red Sea!” burst out
John, glad to find something to vent himself upon.
“If I had known that making the house over was going
to be such a restraint on a fellow, I would never have
done it.”

“Oh, well! never mind that now,” said Grace.
“Your house will get rubbed down by and by, and
the new gloss taken off; and so will your wife, and
you will all be cosey and easy as an old shoe. Young
mistresses, you see, have nerves all over their house at
first. They tremble at every dent in their furniture,
and wink when you come near it, as if you were going
to hit it a blow; but that wears off in time, and they
they learn to take it easy.”

John looked relieved; but after a minute broke out
again: —

“I say, Gracie, Lillie has gone and invited the Simpkinses
and the Follingsbees here this fall. Just think
of it!”

“Well, I suppose you expect your wife to have the
right of inviting her company,” said Grace.

“But, you know, Gracie, they are not at all our sort

[figure description] Page 148.[end figure description]

of folks,” said John. “None of our set would ever
think of visiting them, and it 'll seem so odd to see
them here. Follingsbee is a vulgar sharper, who has
made his money out of our country by dishonest contracts
during the war. I don't know much about his
wife. Lillie says she is her intimate friend.”

“Oh, well, John! we must get over it in the quietest
way possible. It wouldn't be handsome not to make
the agreeable to your wife's company; and if you don't
like the quality of it, why, you are a good deal nearer
to her than any one else can be, — you can gradually
detach her from them.”

“Then you think I ought to put a good face on their
coming?” said John, with a sigh of relief.

“Oh, certainly! of course. What else can you do?
It 's one of the things to be expected with a young
wife.”

“And do you think the Wilcoxes and the Fergusons
and the rest of our set will be civil?”

“Why, of course they will,” said Grace. “Rose and
Letitia will, certainly; and the others will follow suit.
After all, John, perhaps we old families, as we call ourselves,
are a little bit pharisaical and self-righteous, and
too apt to thank God that we are not as other men are.
It 'll do us good to be obliged to come a little out of
our crinkles.”

“It isn't any old family feeling about Follingsbee,”
said John. “But I feel that that man deserves to
be in State's prison much more than many a poor
dog that is there now.”

[figure description] Page 149.[end figure description]

“And that may be true of many another, even in
the selectest circles of good society,” said Grace; “but
we are not called on to play Providence, nor pronounce
judgments. The common courtesies of life do not
commit us one way or the other. The Lord himself
does not express his opinion of the wicked, but allows
all an equal share in his kindliness.”

“Well, Gracie, you are right; and I 'll constrain
myself to do the thing handsomely,” said John.

“The thing with you men,” said Grace, “is, that you
want your wives to see with your eyes, all in a minute,
what has got to come with years and intimacy, and the
gradual growing closer and closer together. The husband
and wife, of themselves, drop many friendships
and associations that at first were mutually distasteful,
simply because their tastes have grown insensibly to
be the same.”

John hoped it would be so with himself and Lillie;
for he was still very much in love with her; and it
comforted him to have Grace speak so cheerfully, as if
it were possible.

“You think Lillie will grow into our ways by and
by?” — he said inquiringly.

“Well, if we have patience, and give her time. You
know, John, that you knew when you took her that she
had not been brought up in our ways of living and
thinking. Lillie comes from an entirely different set of
people from any we are accustomed to; but a man
must face all the consequences of his marriage honestly
and honorably.”

[figure description] Page 150.[end figure description]

“I know it,” said John, with a sigh. “I say, Gracie,
do you think the Fergusons like Lillie? I want her to
be intimate with them.”

“Well, I think they admire her,” said Grace, evasively,
“and feel disposed to be as intimate as she will
let them.”

“Because,” said John, “Rose Ferguson is such a
splendid girl; she is so strong, and so generous, and
so perfectly true and reliable, — it would be the
joy of my heart if Lillie would choose her for a
friend.”

“Then, pray don't tell her so,” said Grace, earnestly;
“and don't praise her to Lillie, — and, above all things,
never hold her up as a pattern, unless you want your
wife to hate her.”

John opened his eyes very wide.

“So!” said he, slowly, “I never thought of that.
You think she would be jealous?” and John smiled, as
men do at the idea that their wives may be jealous, not
disliking it on the whole.

“I know I shouldn't be in much charity with a
woman my husband proposed to me as a model; that
is to say, supposing I had one,” said Grace.

“That reminds me,” said John, suddenly rising up
from the sofa. “Do you know, Gracie, that Colonel
Sydenham has come back from his cruise?”

“I had heard of it,” said Grace, quietly. “Now,
John, don't interrupt me. I 'm just going to turn this
corner, and must count, — `one, two, three, four, five,
six,'” —

[figure description] Page 151.[end figure description]

John looked at his sister. “How handsome she
looks when her cheeks have that color!” he thought.
“I wonder if there ever was any thing in that affair
between them.”

p706-167 CHAPTER XIV. A GREAT MORAL CONFLICT.

[figure description] Page 152.[end figure description]

“NOW, John dear, I have something very particular
that I want you to promise me,” said Mrs.
Lillie, a day or two after the scenes last recorded. Our
Lillie had recovered her spirits, and got over her headache,
and had come down and done her best to be
delightful; and when a very pretty woman, who has all
her life studied the art of pleasing, does that, she
generally succeeds.

John thought to himself he “didn't care what she
was, he loved her;” and that she certainly was the
prettiest, most bewitching little creature on earth. He
flung his sighs and his doubts and fears to the wind,
and suffered himself to be coaxed, and cajoled, and led
captive, in the most amiable manner possible.

His fair one had a point to carry, — a point that
instinct told her was to be managed with great adroitness.

“Well,” said John, over his newspaper, “what is this
something so very particular?”

“First, sir, put down that paper, and listen to me,”
said Mrs. Lillie, coming up and seating herself on his

[figure description] Page 153.[end figure description]

knee, and sweeping down the offending paper with
an air of authority.

“Yes 'm,” said John, submissively. “Let 's see, —
how was that in the marriage service? I promised
to obey, didn't I?”

“Of course you did; that service is always interpreted
by contraries, — ever since Eve made Adam
mind her in the beginning,” said Mrs. Lillie, laughing.

“And got things into a pretty mess in that way,”
said John; “but come, now, what is it?”

“Well, John, you know the Follingsbees are coming
next week?”

“I know it,” said John, looking amiable and conciliatory.

“Well, dear, there are some things about our establishment
that are not just as I should feel pleased
to receive them to.”

“Ah!” said John; “why, Lillie, I thought we were
fine as a fiddle, from the top of the house to the
bottom.”

“Oh! it 's not the house; the house is splendid. I
shouldn't be in the least ashamed to show it to anybody;
but about the table arrangements.”

“Now, really, Lillie, what can one have more than
real old china and heavy silver plate? I rather pique
myself on that; I think it has quite a good, rich, solid
old air.”

“Well, John, to say the truth, why do we never have
any wine? I don't care for it, — I never drink it; but
the decanters, and the different colored glasses, and all

[figure description] Page 154.[end figure description]

the apparatus, are such an adornment; and then the
Follingsbees are such judges of wine. He imports his
own from Spain.”

John's face had been hardening down into a firm,
decided look, while Lillie, stroking his whiskers and
playing with his collar, went on with this address.

At last he said, “Lillie, I have done almost every
thing you ever asked; but this one thing I cannot do, —
it is a matter of principle. I never drink wine, never
have it on my table, never give it, because I have
pledged myself not to do it.”

“Now, John, here is some more of your Quixotism,
isn't it?”

“Well, Lillie, I suppose you will call it so,” said
John; “but listen to me patiently. My father and I
labored for a long time to root out drinking from
our village at Spindlewood. It seemed, for the time, as
if it would be the destruction of every thing there.
The fact was, there was rum in every family; the
parents took it daily, the children learned to love
and long after it, by seeing the parents, and drinking
little sweetened remains at the bottoms of tumblers.
There were, every year, families broken up and destroyed,
and fine fellows going to the very devil, with
this thing; and so we made a movement to form a
temperance society. I paid lecturers, and finally lectured
myself. At last they said to me: `It 's all very
well for you rich people, that have twice as fine houses
and twice as many pleasures as we poor folks, to pick on
us for having a little something comfortable to drink in

[figure description] Page 155.[end figure description]

our houses. If we could afford your fine nice wines,
and all that, we wouldn't drink whiskey. You must all
have your wine on the table; whiskey is the poor
man's wine.'”

“I think,” said Lillie, “they were abominably impertinent
to talk so to you. I should have told them so.”

“Perhaps they thought I was impertinent in talking
to them about their private affairs,” said John; “but I
will tell you what I said to them. I said, `My good fellows,
I will clear my house and table of wine, if you will
clear yours of rum.' On this agreement I formed a
temperance society; my father and I put our names at
the head of the list, and we got every man and boy
in Spindlewood. It was a complete victory; and, since
then, there hasn't been a more temperate, thrifty set of
people in these United States.”

“Didn't your mother object?”

“My mother! no, indeed; I wish you could have
known my mother. It was no small sacrifice to her
and father. Not that they cared a penny for the wine
itself; but the poetry and hospitality of the thing,
the fine old cheery associations connected with it,
were a real sacrifice. But when we told my mother
how it was, she never hesitated a moment. All our
cellar of fine old wines was sent round as presents
to hospitals, except a little that we keep for sickness.”

“Well, really!” said Lillie, in a dry, cool tone, “I
suppose it was very good of you, perfectly saintlike
and all that; but it does seem a great pity. Why
couldn't these people take care of themselves? I

[figure description] Page 156.[end figure description]

don't see why you should go on denying yourself, just
to keep them in the ways of virtue.”

“Oh, it 's no self-denial now! I 'm quite used to
it,” said John, cheerily. “I am young and strong, and
just as well as I can be, and don't need wine; in fact,
I never think of it. The Fergusons, who are with
us in the Spindlewood business, took just the same
view of it, and did just as we did; and the Wilcoxes
joined us; in fact, all the good old families of our set
came into it.”

“Well, couldn't you, just while the Follingsbees are
here, do differently?”

“No, Lillie; there 's my pledge, you see. No: it 's
really impossible.”

Lillie frowned and looked disconsolate.

“John, I really do think you are selfish; you don't
seem to have any consideration for me at all. It 's
going to make it so disagreeable and uncomfortable for
me. The Follingsbees are accustomed to wine every
day. I 'm perfectly ashamed not to give it to them.”

“Do 'em good to fast awhile, then,” said John,
laughing like a hard-hearted monster. “You 'll see
they won't suffer materially. Bridget makes splendid
coffee.”

“It 's a shame to laugh at what troubles me, John.
The Follingsbees are my friends, and of course I want
to treat them handsomely.”

“We will treat them just as handsomely as we treat
ourselves,” said John, “and mortal man or woman
ought not to ask more.”

[figure description] Page 157.[end figure description]

“I don't care,” said Lillie, after a pause. “I hate
all these moral movements and society questions. They
are always in the way of people's having a good time;
and I believe the world would wag just as well as
it does, if nobody had ever thought of them. People
will call you a real muff, John.”

“How very terrible!” said John, laughing. “What
shall I do if I am called a muff? and what a jolly little
Mrs. Muff you will be!” he said, pinching her cheek.

“You needn't laugh, John,” said Lillie, pouting.
“You don't know how things look in fashionable circles.
The Follingsbees are in the very highest circle.
They have lived in Paris, and been invited by the
Emperor.”

“I haven't much opinion of Americans who live
in Paris and are invited by the Emperor,” said John.
“But, be that as it may, I shall do the best I can
for them, and Mr. Young says, `angels could no more;'
so, good-by, puss: I must go to my office; and don't
let 's talk about this any more.”

And John put on his cap and squared his broad
shoulders, and, marching off with a resolute stride,
went to his office, and had a most uncomfortable morning
of it. You see, my dear friends, that though
Nature has set the seal of sovereignty on man, in broad
shoulders and bushy beard; though he fortify and incase
himself in rough overcoats and heavy boots, and walk
with a dashing air, and whistle like a freeman, we all
know it is not an easy thing to wage a warfare with a

[figure description] Page 158.[end figure description]

pretty little creature in lace cap and tiny slippers, who has
a faculty of looking very pensive and grieved, and making
up a sad little mouth, as if her heart were breaking.

John never doubted that he was right, and in the
way of duty; and yet, though he braved it out so
stoutly with Lillie, and though he marched out from
her presence victoriously, as it were, with drums beating
and colors flying, yet there was a dismal sinking
of heart under it.

“I 'm right; I know I am. Of course I can't give
up here; it 's a matter of principle, of honor,” he
said over and over to himself. “Perhaps if Lillie
had been here I never should have taken such a pledge;
but as I have, there 's no help for it.”

Then he thought of what Lillie had suggested about
it 's looking niggardly in hospitality, and was angry
with himself for feeling uncomfortable. “What do
I care what Dick Follingsbee thinks?” said he to
himself: “a man that I despise; a cheat, and a swindler, —
a man of no principle. Lillie doesn't know the
sacrifice it is to me to have such people in my house at
all. Hang it all! I wish Lillie was a little more like
the women I 've been used to, — like Grace and Rose
and my mother. But, poor thing, I oughtn't to blame
her, after all, for her unfortunate bringing up. But
it 's so nice to be with women that can understand
the grounds you go on. A man never wants to fight a
woman. I 'd rather give up, hook and line, and let
Lillie have her own way in every thing. But then
it won't do; a fellow must stop somewhere. Well,

[figure description] Page 159.[end figure description]

I 'll make it up in being a model of civility to these
confounded people that I wish were in the Red Sea.
Let 's see, I 'll ask Lillie if she don't want to give
a party for them when they come. By George! she
shall have every thing her own way there, — send to
New York for the supper, turn the house topsy-turvy,
illuminate the grounds, and do any thing else she
can think of. Yes, yes, she shall have carte blanche
for every thing!”

All which John told Mrs. Lillie when he returned to
dinner and found her enacting the depressed wife in a
most becoming lace cap and wrapper that made her
look like a suffering angel; and the treaty was sealed
with many kisses.

“You shall have carte blanche, dearest,” he said, “for
every thing but what we were speaking of; and that
will content you, won't it?”

“And Lillie, with lingering pensiveness, very graciously
acknowledged that it would; and seemed so touchingly
resigned, and made such a merit of her resignation,
that John told her she was an angel; in fact, he
had a sort of indistinct remorseful feeling that he was a
sort of cruel monster to deny her any thing. Lillie had
sense enough to see when she could do a thing, and
when she couldn't. She had given up the case when
John went out in the morning, and so accepted the
treaty of peace with a good degree of cheerfulness; and
she was soon busy discussing the matter. “You see,
we 've been invited everywhere, and haven't given any
thing,” she said; “and this will do up our social

[figure description] Page 160.[end figure description]

obligations to everybody here. And then we can show off
our rooms; they really are made to give parties in.”

“Yes, so they are,” said John, delighted to see her
smile again; “they seem adapted to that, and I don't
doubt you 'll make a brilliant affair of it, Lillie.”

“Trust me for that, John,” said Lillie. I 'll show the
Follingsbees that something can be done here in
Springdale as well as in New York.” And so the great
question was settled.