We and Our Neighbors; or, The Records of an Unfashionable Street

by Harriet Beecher Stowe

Alice had been startled and astonished by finding her rector descending from the semi-angelic sphere where she had, in her imagination, placed him, and coming into the ranks of mortal and marrying men. She had seen and handled the engagement ring which sparkled on Angie's finger, and it looked like any other ring that a gentleman of good taste might buy, and she had heard all the comments of the knowing ones thereon. Already there was activity in the direction of a prospective trousseau. Aunt Maria, with her usual alertness, was prizing stuffs and giving records of prices and of cheap and desirable shopping places, and racing from one end of the city to the other in self-imposed pilgrimages of research. There were discussions of houses for the future rectory. Everything was in a whirl of preparation. There was marriage in the very air: and the same style of reflection which occurs when there is a death, is apposite also to the betrothal—"Whose turn shall come next?" "Hodie mihi—cras tibi."

Jim Fellows, the most excitable, sympathetic of all mortal Jims, may well be supposed to have felt something of the general impulse.

Now, Miss Alice was as fine a specimen of young-lady-hood at twenty-two as is ordinarily to be met with in New York or otherwhere. She was well read, well bred, high-minded and high-principled. She was a little inclined to the ultra-romantic in her views, and while living along contentedly, and with a moderate degree of good sense and comfort, with such people as were to be found on earth, was a little prone to indulge dreams of super-celestial people—imaginary heroes and heroines. In the way of friendship, she imagined she liked many of her gentlemen associates; but the man she was to marry was to be a hero—somebody before whom she and every one else should be irresistibly constrained to bow down and worship. She knew nobody of this species as yet.

Harry was all very well; a nice fellow—a bright, lively, wide-awake fellow—a faultless husband—a desirable brother-in-law; but still Harry was not a hero. He was a man subject to domestic discipline for at times littering the parlor table with too many pamphlets, for giving imprudent invitations to dinner on an ill-considered bill of fare, and for confounding solferino with pink when describing colors or matching worsteds. All these things brought him down into the sphere of the actual, and took off the halo. In review of all the married men of her acquaintance, she was constrained to acknowledge that the genus hero was rare. Nobody that she was acquainted with ever had married this kind of being; and, in fact, within her own mind his lineaments were cloudy and indistinct, like the magic looking-glass of Agrippa before the destined image shone out. She only knew of this or that mortal man of her acquaintance, that he was not in the least like this ideal of her dreams.

Meanwhile, Miss Alice was not at all insensible to the charm of having a friend of the other sex wholly and entirely devoted to her.

She thought she had with most exemplary frankness and directness indicated to Jim that they were to be friends and only friends; she had contended for her right to be just as intimate with him as he and she pleased, in the face of Aunt Maria and of all the ranks and orders of good gossips who make the regulation of other people's affairs a specialty; and she flattered herself that she had at last conquered this territory and secured for herself this independent right.

People had almost done telling her they had heard that she was engaged to Jim Fellows, and asking her when it was going to be announced. She plumed herself, in a quiet way, on the independence and spirit she had shown in the matter.

Now, Jim was one of those fellows who, in certain respects, remain a boy forever. The boy in him was certainly booked for as long a mortal journey as the man; and, at threescore years and ten, one ought not to expect to meet in him other than a white-headed, vivacious old boy. He was a driving, industrious, efficient creature. He was, in all respects, ideally fitted to success in the profession he had chosen; the very image and body of the New York press man—lively, versatile, acute, unsleeping, untiring, always wide-awake, up and dressed, and in full command of his faculties, at any hour of day or night, ready for any emergency, overflowing with inconsiderate fun and frolic, and, like the public he served, going for his joke at any price. Since his intimacy with Alice she had assumed to herself the right of looking over his ways and acting the part of an exterior conscience; and Jim had formed the habit of bringing to her his articles for criticism. And Alice flattered herself that she was not altogether selfish in accepting his devotion, but was saving him from many an unwise escapade, and exciting him to higher standards and nobler ways of looking at life.

Of all the Christian and becoming rôles in the great drama of life, there is none that so exactly suits young ladies of a certain degree of gravity and dignity as that of guardian angel.

Now, in respect to Jim, Alice certainly was fitted to sustain this rôle. She was well-poised, decided, sensible and serious in her conceptions of life, truthful and conscientious; and the dash of ideality which pervaded all her views gave to her, in the eyes of the modern New York boy, a sort of sacred prestige, like the halo around a saint.