Delle’s school was carried on as usual; there was no cessation or holyday when that letter of renouncement came to her. She had lived through and borne nobly sharper griefs than was hers when she read his strange, cold words. With renewed diligence she turned to her occupation—that was not “gone”—but it was a hope that struggled long in her heart, that the recreant would at least write to explain—that he would tell her there was no meaning to his words. Such an explanation never came, however. The school continued, I said, and it continues still; and one would scarcely think, to look on the self-possessed, noble young lady at its head, that she had had such an experience in love matters.
There is another report circulating extensively in our neighborhood just now, relative to Delle’s movements in the coming spring. I will not vouch for its truth. I have not dared ask her if it be true; but people do say that a rich bachelor in our neighborhood, is then to relieve her of that odious name which is now so indisputably hers; and that at that happy time she will take up her abode, with the children who are her constant care, in his beautiful mansion. If this be true, it is hardly necessary for me to ask what kind of wife you think she’ll make. I know your thoughts already on this subject; and if you be a gentleman, I fancy that I hear you “heaving a sigh,” and longing for just such a wife, because you are, of course, far too sensible to think there’s any thing in a name!
Some say this is no love match—that Delle will only marry this bridegroom elect for the purpose of ridding herself of the fatigues of school-teaching, arguing from the fact, I suppose, that he is so unlike Alfred Livingstone in all respects; and that he is so much older than she—and his hair is already tinged with gray; beside he is an odd sort of man, as is usually the case with old bachelors. Be this as it may, whether Delle is so foolish as to marry for love (which generally turns out to be such a delusion) or not, of this thing be convinced, reader, the marriage will be a happy one, for everybody knows he is as “kind as kind can be;” and she—but I’ve already said enough about her; and after all, if she derives but one benefit from the union, it will not be a small one—for will not that name, that horrid name of hers, be merged in partial forgetfulness? Don’t call names trifles! By hers she lost him whom she did truly love, and who, perhaps, was not, strange as it may seem that I should say so, wholly unworthy of her love; for in very deed and truth, he had but one weak side, and that was most mortally pierced by the sharp arrow pointed with her name.
If there be one whose eyes have followed the jottings of my pen thus far, let me say to such an one another word about proper nouns in particular. If with most philosophic indifference you have, after mighty struggles, brought yourself to repeat with the chiefest of bards, on thinking of your own high-sounding misfortune,
“What’s in a name?”
please let me advise you “lay your mouth in the dust,” remembering, my word for it, that there is something “considerable, if not more,” in a name—especially in such an one as Miss Delleparetta Hogg—poets and philosophers “to the contrary notwithstanding,” which I hope and pray for your edification and enlightenment I have satisfactorily proved.
GAME-BIRDS OF AMERICA.—NO. XII.
THE DUNLIN. (Tringa Variabilis. Temminck.)