THE LONG INHERITANCE
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THE LONG INHERITANCE
I
My niece, Desire Withacre, wished to divorce her husband, Dr. Arnold Ackroyd,--the young Dr. Arnold, you understand,--to the end that she might marry a more interesting man.
Other men than I have noticed that in these latter days we really do not behave any better than other people when it comes to certain serious issues of life, notably the marital. "We" means to me people of an heredity and a training like my own,--Americans of the old stock, with a normal Christian upbringing, who presumably inherit from their forebears a reasonable susceptibility to high ideals of living. I grew {54} up with the impression that such a birth and rearing were a kind of moral insurance against the grosser human blunders and errors. Without vanity, I certainly did
"Thank the goodness and the grace
That on my birth had smiled."
It puzzled me for a long while, the light-hearted, careless way in which some of the younger Withacres, Greenings, Raynies, Fordhams, and so on (I name them out of many, because they are all kin to me) kicked over the traces of their family responsibilities. I could understand it in others but not in them.
It was little Desire Withacre who finally illuminated the problem for me. I am about to tell what I know of Desire's fling. If it seems to be a story with an undue amount of moral, I must {55} refer the responsibility of that to Providence. The tale is of its making, not of mine.