ROMANTIC MARRIAGES.
Caroline Crofton had completed her course at Vassar, one of its earliest graduates, and one of the most brilliant in her class of thirty odd young New England, graceful, gifted, and generous girls, that have long been noted for their purity of principles and perfection of character. She was smaller than her classmates, an only daughter of Judge Crofton, whose manner and training marked him as a classical, refined, and upright gentleman, and a dignified and just judge.
All that culture could impart, or character add to the graces of nature, was bestowed upon Caroline, who never assumed the fashion of shortening her name by fancy contractions. Carline was the shortest way of calling her, and this was not a favorite with her mother. From her father she inherited the qualities ascribed to her, while her mother, like a clinging vine wound around the oak, was of a trusting, lovable, nature, of darker hair and eyes than the Judge; and the two mingled in the daughter, and formed a slender figure and a graceful form, an ardent, lovable character, as one could easily discover.
Diligent by nature and proud of her progress in early studies, Caroline had entered Vassar’s advanced classes and employed all her energy to excel in each department.
She literally lived in her books for four full years, to the exclusion of modes, society, or even the newspapers; her one ambition seemed ever to be excellence, and when the graduating day arrived, and the long row in white were seated in breathless awe to read their papers and receive their reward, something more than a common interest was awakened.
Such are the days when young men of wealth and ambition, and poorer men with an eye to the beautiful, come in and listen to the overdrawn pictures of school-girls’ first productions.
The theme of Caroline Crofton was “Pioneers;” how they had founded our government in the little log school-houses of New England, in the sixteenth century; how they had established their town meetings and voting precincts; how they had gradually driven back the Indians (“noble redmen”) from the rich, fertile valley of the Mohawk in New York, cleared away the underbrush from the fertile plains of Northern Ohio and Pennsylvania, and boldly evaded the massive pineries of bleak, cold Northern Michigan; dauntlessly, fearlessly, and bravely establishing schools and churches in the very midst of Indian huts and wigwams, taking their lives in their hands, to improve and populate a great and growing nation; and how wonderfully they had all prospered.
In her vivid and graphic picture of a fruitful theme (a theme learned from books and stories), she dwelt on the part that mothers had borne, and brothers were bearing, in this tide of prosperity and improvement, till tear-drops came fast to the earnest eyes of the old gray-haired professors, who were judges, and many a mother’s heart leaped with joyous pride at the mention of brave sons battling with the Western wilderness, for their sons were among them.
Caroline Crofton could feel the hush of silence, always such applause as is irresistible; she could feel the emotion, and conveyed that emotion to her audience; she forgot herself, forgot her hearers, and read with a girlish animation born of deep-seated belief in the grandeur of the theme she advocated. Round after round of applause greeted her conclusion, and she staggered to her seat literally overcome by the brilliant effort which resulted in a handsomely inscribed medal as first of her class of Vassar.
Whether the influence of that essay on the mind of Caroline, or its greater influence on Cyrus Arthur (a newly arrived resident of Vassar) was the most potent means of a quick acquaintance between them, is not well known to the writers; certain it is that an early friendship soon refined into affection, and meagre inquiries into his character being satisfactory to Caroline, he was promptly admitted as a suitor at the dignified household of Judge Crofton, on the banks of the beautiful St. Lawrence. The Judge was led to believe that a long acquaintance had ripened between schoolmates, when in fact it was a love at first sight affair, and on very little consideration.
That these young and ambitious lovers enjoyed all that is allotted to their class is forever a secret, for their after-life reveals but little of its mystery. Their after-life was a struggle for bread first, and position soon after. They really put off living, very foolishly.
Cyrus Arthur was a large, strongly built, dark-haired, handsome fellow, of considerable assurance in the social gatherings, and generally managed to lead off with the dances and parties from his size and commanding way more than from any merit of talent or real goodness in himself; one of the village leaders who gained favor by fine looks and outward appearance; one of the petted class of forenoon brilliants whose afternoons are often more shaded.
There was a smile of serene contentment and half-satisfaction on the haughty face of young Arthur as he offered himself to the Judge’s daughter in that manner assumed by generals in battle. He obtained his prize, and she obtained her ambition. He married beauty, she married a leader. Her highly colored future was a life of intellectual greatness; his first pride was of conquest, then of distinction.
A large man in a small place may be a little man in a large city.
In good season they were married, of course; and of their courtship little need be said, for it was all unromantic.
Arthur’s father was a merchant of limited means, and the younger having high notions of going West to grow up with the country, early settled in a lumber-making city of North Michigan, where he took his fair young companion, who soon realized that her rose-colored romance of brave pioneers was not a living reality.
Dreams are one thing, real life is another; work was scarce in the big overgrown city, but plentiful in the pineries; and after the first day of married life wore into weeks, and living expense came around with painful regularity, the new couple were forced to economize, then look for employment, which they first found in tending store and camp, cooking for a large lumber-ranch; certainly far less refining than the vision of a Vassar schoolgirl’s essay had pictured.
But they prospered, and by dint of close saving, always coming from the wise counsel of the weaker one, they became managers, then owners, of a portable saw-mill and a ranch, and gradually a store building partly paid for.
From the letters home, showing their thrift and economy, gradually came small sums lent to the far-away idol of the staid old Judge’s household. Cyrus was surprised and delighted one day to find a large bill of goods sent on to fill up their store and give them a start in their hard beginning.
It was the work and influence of that little brainy wife, whose tender hands had grown harder by cooking, mending, and working for forty or more robust workmen, and the reward it brought and the encouragement to both. With a well-stocked grocery and comfortable surroundings, Cyrus began to look the world in the face quite complacently, and take matters easier. Meanwhile, the silent ambition of Caroline determined, if growing up with the country meant anything, she would fathom its mystery, and she continued to delve and save, and plan and execute, and encourage her husband in his extensive contracts.
Here was a profit on forty laborers, a margin on their payment in goods, a rise in lumber, and a golden opportunity to buy vast tracts of pine timber at very low figures in cash payments. Drawing on her savings the little wife advised wise investments.