After the curtain fell on this brilliant spectacle, Mrs. Dewey assumed a stately air, showing, on all occasions, a conscious superiority that was offensive to our really best people. There are in all communities a class who toady to the rich; and we had a few of these in S——. They flattered the Deweys, and basked in the sunshine of their inflated grandeur.
I was not one towards whom Mrs. Dewey put on superior airs. My profession brought me into a kind of relation to her that set aside all pretence. Very soon after her removal to S——, my services were required in the family, one of her two children having been attacked with measles. On the occasion of my first call, I referred, naturally, to the fact of her removal from New York, and asked how she liked the change.
“I don't like it all, Doctor,” she replied, in a dissatisfied tone.
“Could heart desire more of elegance and comfort than you possess?” I glanced around the richly decorated apartment in which we were seated.
“Gilded misery, Doctor!” She emphasized her words.
I looked at her without speaking. She understood my expression of surprise.
“I need not tell you, Doctor, that a fine house and fine furniture are not everything in this world.”
I thought her waking up to a better state of mind, through the irrepressible yearnings of a soul that could find no sustenance amid the husks of this outer life.
“They go but a little way towards making up the aggregate of human happiness,” said I.
“All well enough in their place. But, to my thinking, sadly out of place here. We must have society, Doctor.”