I find that Alice is not alone in her wretchedness. It appears that our friends Lawyer Miles and Mr. Redleigh and their families are at present engaged in the momentous task of getting the name of the street in which they live changed from Cemetery Avenue to Sportland Place. And our other friends two blocks west of us are greatly agitated just now because the name of their aristocratic thoroughfare has, by a whim of the municipal authorities, been changed from Alexander Avenue to Osgood Street. I have mentioned these facts to Alice, but no sense of that sympathy which is said to arise from the companionship of misery seems to reconcile my dear wife to the plebeian association which the mere mention of Mush Street suggests.
The Sunday morning after we had actually bought the Schmittheimer place the city newspapers made a record of the event in their "society column," and added that it was "understood that in their beautiful new home Prof. and Mrs. Baker would entertain lavishly." I was inclined to take exception to this item, which I regarded as a vulgar parade of our private affairs; moreover, the innuendo was wholly untruthful. Alice and I did not intend to "entertain" at all; we could not afford to "entertain." What would Mr. Black say if by chance he were to get hold of a copy of any of those Sunday morning newspapers and read that mendacious paragraph? He would not only lament the one thousand dollars which he had just advanced; worse than that, he would forever shut down on those other acts of similar generosity which, I am free to say, Alice and I counted among the pleasing probabilities of the near future.
I repeat that this untruthful notoriety through the medium of the "society column" displeased me, and I am sure I should have spoken my mind very freely about it if I had not heard Alice reading the item with evident gusto to her sister Adah. My amazement was increased when Alice asked me to secure a dozen extra papers for her, as she wished to send marked copies to certain fashionable society acquaintances and to several other relatives in Maine! I can picture the rural astonishment with which Cousin Jabez Fothergill of Biddeford Pool and the Strattons of North Moosehead will read of our good fortune. I more than half suspect that in a moment of triumphant revenge and in a spirit of cruel malice Alice sent a copy of the paper to Miss Mears at Pocatapaug. Miss Mears is little to me now, but once I called her Hepsival, and even after these many years of separation I would fain undo any act of spite which her successful rival, Alice, might attempt.
The Monday following the publication of this strangely malevolent item was an unusually busy day with me. I seemed suddenly to have become the target of every man who had anything to sell. I was waited upon by fruit-tree venders, lightning-rod agents, fire underwriters, plumbers, gas-fitters, painters, and an innumerable army of persons having horses, cows, pigs, chickens, shade trees, patent hitching posts, smoke-consumers, Pasteur filters, shrubbery, lawn statuary, fancy poultry, garden utensils, and patent paving to dispose of. I really cannot realize how I got rid of them all, for a more affable and persuasive lot of gentlemen I never before had met with. Come to think of it, I have not got rid of them. They continue to cultivate my acquaintance and on account of their attentions (polite but persistent) I have been compelled to lay aside temporarily my investigation into the character of the atmosphere around Aldebaran, a most delicate work upon which I am hoping to rear the superstructure of my fame.
I admit that these attentions rather flatter me; it is possible that after a time—say a year or two—I may weary of the courteous gentleman who is now seeking to sell me a dozen apple-trees, one-third cash, balance in ten years. I may, in the lapse of time, become indifferent to the blandishments of him who daily for the last two months has been trying to convince me that I cannot reach the summum bonum of human happiness until I have invested four dollars in Perkins' patent automatic garden rake and step-ladder combination. The gentleman who has the smoke-consumer, the gentleman who deals in shrubbery, the gentleman who advocates lightning rods, and the other gentlemen who represent the tantamount interests of lawn statuary, fancy poultry, patent paving, etc., etc., etc.—I may, in the flight of years, become insensible to their charms, for there is no change that is not rendered possible by the capricious offices of Time. But at present I can hardly realize how these people can ever be other than they now are—near to me, as I know, and dear to me, as I feel.
I did not suspect, before I became a householder, that the mere possession of property was capable of making a man an object of such unflagging interest to his fellow creatures. I find it very pleasing—the solicitude with which these newly-made acquaintances (the venders, agents, and other polite gentlemen) regard me, and attend upon me, and seek to gain my approval. It is sweet to be beloved.
In the very height of this enjoyment, however, there are considerations which serve to cause me feelings of disquietude. My conscience constantly reproves me for the deception which I am practising upon these people. It occurred to me several weeks ago that I had no right to pose as the proprietor of our new house. The new house and its circumadjacent real estate belong not to me, but to Alice and to her heirs and assigns forever. I have no proprietary rights in that house or upon that expansive lawn; If I am there, it is simply as a piece of furniture, like the stove, or the clock, or the centre-table. I am simply tolerated, perhaps as an object of ornament, perhaps as an object of use. This is a humiliating confession; the thought that it is actually true pains me poignantly.
I never supposed I was a moral coward, but I must be; otherwise I would weeks ago have called an open-air mass-meeting of the apple-tree agents, the fire-underwriters, the patent pavers and the others, and confessed to them that their attentions were misdirected, and that I was not in fact the fortunate being whose lot they sought to better.
A strangely craven consideration withheld me from this manly course. I suspected that as soon as I divulged the truth I would be forsaken by this troupe—this retinue of unctuous courtiers. In my imaginings I beheld myself deserted and alone, while the vast army of my quondam attendants and flatterers tagged after and surrounded and fawned upon Alice, the real purchaser and actual owner of our new place!
I make a candid exposition of these things, not more for the purpose of relieving my conscience of its long pent-up misery than for the purpose of disclosing that which may happily serve as a warning to my fellow-beings. I long ago discovered that one of the compensations of human folly is the example which that folly affords for the discreet guidance of others.