To my daughter, the Baroness Von Eulaw.
Dearly Beloved Child: In these revolutionary times, the air thick with maledictions and curses, “the putrid breath of poverty, and the beetling brow of labor,” to quote the press, hot with greed for the ground they are slowly but surely losing—in these times I say, I am thankful that you, my child, are resting in the security of strong and wise rule.
There seems to be no end to the vindictiveness of the common people here. Your father, as you are aware, is president of the new Aerial Navigation Company, and, although, as he says, his policy is unaggressive, and his weight of counsel unswervingly in the direction of the interests of the poor and the laboring classes, they seem determined to make the breach as wide as possible, and go so far as even to demand a division of the proceeds of every enterprise, based upon the labor of either brawn or brain, and insolently propose to tax the companies to the extent of what they call their “labor investment.”
What nonsense! It makes me so mad I don’t know what to do. Papa says—he is always so conservative, you know—that the poor fellow who effected the invention of air navigation, really ought to have been paid better for it, but that he was a genius, with no common sense—none of them have, you know—and nearly starved, at that; that there is a man out West, whose name I have not heard, who is going to make it very warm for men concerned in such transactions as this, which he denounces as highway robbery, and in a short speech, wherein he maintained that labor was as much a factor and an investment as capital, in all successful enterprise, he called one Jack Spratt, and the other Jack Spratt’s wife, which simile pleased me immensely. We don’t know where it is going to end, but hope for the best.
Now, my darling, I want to say how gratified I am at the contents of your last letter. In it I discern a spirit of what Christians call humility, very consistent and very encouraging, considering the noble personage whom you are so lucky as to have captured by your charms and graces alone, for of course your fortune had nothing whatever to do with it.
If your husband were an American, I would advise you to stand up for your rights. American husbands, uxorious though they are, and they have earned the name, bring you no title, have no legitimate entrée to foreign courts, and even the most stupendous fortunes only inoculate and leave a scar. Really, the only clean business is an out and out marriage, love or no love, though, for the matter of that, one must feel toward the dear baron as the hero-worshiping woman said concerning the wife of Henry Ward Beecher, that she ought to be proud to bow her head and allow the great divine to pluck every individual hair out by the roots. “A most touching test of devotion,” I hear you say.
Do write, my dear, and tell me all the court gossip. Since the California practice of shooting obnoxious editors has been introduced in Boston, there has grown up a virtual censorship of the press hereabouts, and the newspapers are as dull as death. Every woman’s character is kept in a glass case, and one would suppose the men graduated from a meetinghouse. In fact, the reading public who lived upon scandals are dying of ennui, hence, I have no news to write you to-day. Present me with continued assurance of high respect to the baron, and receive, yourself, my undying love.
As ever,
Perces Thornton.