"It was all done with a good motive. You were not born to endure a life of privation, but to shine the ornament of an elegant and refined circle. I hope you will not love me the less when you learn that I am worth nearly half a million—that's the melancholy fact, and I can't help it."
"O Frank!" cried the beautiful girl, and hid her face in his bosom.
She presided with grace at the elegant festivities of Belmont Hall, and seemed to support her husband's wealth and luxurious style of living with the greatest fortitude and resignation, never complaining of her comforts, nor murmuring a wish for living in a cottage.
THE CAREER OF AN ARTIST.
I woke up one morning and found myself famous.—Byron.
Julian Montfort was a farmer's boy; bred up to the plough handle and cart tail. His father and mother were plain, honest people, of hard-working habits and limited ideas, and without the slightest dash of romance in their temperaments. Their house, their lands were unprepossessing in appearance. The soil was impoverished by long and illiberal culture; and old Montfort had a true old-fashioned prejudice against trees. Instead of smiling hedgerows, with here and there a weeping elm or plumy evergreen to cast their graceful shadows upon the pasture land, his acres were enclosed with harsh stone walls, or an unpicturesque Virginia fence with its zigzag of rude rails. The farmer had an equal prejudice against books, "book larnin', and book-larned men." Of course, with these ideas, Julian's education was limited to a few quarters' schooling under an old pedagogue, whose native language was Dutch, and who never took very kindly to the English tongue. Besides, teaching was only an episode with him; for his vocation was that of a clergyman, and he held forth on Sundays in alternate Dutch and English to his little congregation—as is still the custom in many of the small agricultural parishes in New York State, where the scene of our veritable story lies.
Our hero, young Julian, early began to show a restiveness under the training he received, which sadly perplexed his plain matter-of-fact father. The latter could not conceive why the boy should sometimes leave his plough in the furrow, and sit upon a hillock, gazing curiously and admiringly upon a simple wild flower. He knew not why the youth should stand with his eyes fixed upon the western sky when it was pavilioned with crimson, and gold, and purple; or later yet, when, one by one, the stars came timidly forth and took their places in the darkening heaven. He shook his head at these manifestations, and confidently informed his help-mate that he feared the boy was "not right"—significantly touching, as he spoke, that portion of his anatomy where he fondly imagined a vast quantity of brain of very superior quality was safely stowed away, guarded by a sufficient quantity of skull to protect it against any accident. Neither he nor the good wife imagined, for a moment, that Julian was a genius, and that his talent, circumscribed by circumstances, was struggling for an outlet for its development.
At last the divine spark within him was kindled into flame. An itinerant portrait painter came round, with his tools of trade, and did the dominie in brown and red, and the squire's daughter in vermilion and flake white, and set the whole village agog with his marvellous achievements. Julian cultivated his acquaintance, received some secret instructions in the A B C of art, and bargained for some drawing and painting materials. His aspirations had at length found an object. Long and painfully he labored in secret; but his advances were rapid, for he took nature as a model. At last he ventured to display his latest achievement—a small portrait of his father. It was first shown to his mother, and filled her with astonishment and delight. It is the privilege of woman, however circumstanced, to appreciate and applaud true genius. Of course, Moliere's housekeeper occurs to the reader as an illustration. The picture was next shown to the old man. He gazed at it with a sort of silent horror, puffing the smoke from his pipe in short, spasmodic jerks, and slowly shaking his head before he spoke.