“Well, then,” I said, “it seems high time you had a home of your own. There is something more than life at the hotels and boarding houses, in spite of its freedom. You ought to marry and settle down. You have a good income and could support a wife not only comfortably, but in luxury.”
Perhaps I was jesting with myself while talking in this strain; but very soon I got in sober earnest, and began to believe I had made up my mind to become a benedict.
I ran over a list of my lady friends. I knew a vast number of them casually, but was surprised to find with how few I had taken time to become more than incidentally acquainted. The list was not long, and I did not remember a single one that I would care to make my partner for life.
Should it be Sally Jones, Martha White or Jane Smith? Gertie Thompson, Maggie Brown, Annie Dawson, Kate Jackson or Lizzie Moore? They all had their good qualities, or I would not have been apt to give them more than passing notice; but they had their defects, and having noticed them I argued that I had less interest in them than a man should have in a lady he expects to make his wife. I considered further.
Are the objections serious enough to stand in the way? Let me see.
“Sally Jones has red hair, and probably a bad temper must be under it. Martha White has a host of relations, and I might be expected to marry all of them; otherwise, she might do. Jane Smith is afflicted in the same manner. Gertie Thompson is mild-eyed and even-tempered, but hasn’t enough spunk to take her own part—she’s too good for me. Maggie Brown has a tyrant of a mother, whom I could not endure for a mother-in-law, and four young lady sisters who take after the maternal pattern. Annie Dawson and Kate Jackson are beauties, but are too full of frivolity and coquettishness, while Lizzie Cleopatra Moore (that is her full name) is broad-shouldered and masculine in build, and has pronounced views on the equal rights question.
“No. None of these ladies have the qualities I wish my wife to possess.
“But who else do I know?
“By jove, I have it.
“Miss Mattie Higbie, of course; the girl I made the subject of my first and only practice as a corn doctor. I owe that girl something for what I made her suffer, and if she lives, and is single, and seems to fill the bill, I’ll make honorable amends by offering myself in payment of the debt.”