THE RUIN OF ME.
(TOLD BY A YOUNG MARRIED MAN.)
I am Poverty scuffing about in old shoes and rubbers. I was one of those who, at a good salary, think up smart things to put around in the corners of the Chicago Times. When every newspaper, from the London Punch down, was making jokes about Elihu Burritt's Sanskrit for the Fireside, it was I who beat them all by saying in solid nonpareil, "The best way to learn Sanskrit is to board in a family of Sanskritters." It was I who said, "Let the Communists carry pistols: they may shoot each other;" and, "Sara Bernhardt's children are articles of virtu."
O quam me delectat Sara Bernhardt! I love such diversified, such picturesque gifts. Sculpture, painting, acting, writing! This is why I loved Lydia, who was an adept at numberless arts and accomplishments. She was a brunette with a clear, cream-tinged skin, red cheeks, rolling black eyes, ripe velvety lips, and hair of a beautiful hue and rich lustre—raven black, yet purple as the pigeon's wing in the sun. I believe it is true that dark people belong to the pre-historic races: centuries of sunlight are fused in their glowing complexion. Blondes are beautiful—both the rosy ones with pinkish eyelids and warm golden locks, and the pale ones with ash-colored hair, gray eyes and dark brows and lashes—but a florid brunette excels them all.
In seeing Lydia you would make the mistake that you usually make in judging girls: entering among them, you think their attitudes proclaim their traits. For instance, you take the most giggling one for a simpleton, but afterward learn that she is a good scholar and has accepted the Greek chair in a Western college, and looking again you see she has a strong frame, a capable head and large bright eyes. Lydia dressed in the mode, wore the high-heeled shoes that give such a dainty look to the foot and gait, and came into a room with a great effusion of fashionableness; yet she was not in the least what she seemed. She had a great deal of what is more pleasing than mere appearance, and that is character. She was ambitious and energetic. She did tatting when she did nothing else—said it concealed her lack of repose and liability to fidget. She was able to draw la quintessence de tout: she could make a mountain-spring of a mole-hill. She also had a touch of temper: those who are perfectly amiable are nothing else.
I was a youth blue-eyed and fair of face, tall, thin and having a complying spirit that has been—But let me not anticipate. The race after fashion ever wearied me—I shall stop early at some standing-collar or heavy-neckcloth period—and I never cared much for money—could live with it or without it, desiring "this man's art or that man's scope" rather than his cash. There is such a great majority of poor folks, I expected to be one of them; still, I had a taste for honesty, asked favors of nobody, considered the least debt a degradation, and thought myself better than most rich people. I was of the family and the religion of Plato, who peddled oil to pay his expenses while travelling in Egypt.
We discover in others what they most wish to hide: therefore I early discovered that Lydia's mother, who had a large girl-family, and who knew that the supply of some one to love greatly exceeds the demand, was anxious to secure me as a son-in-law. I was glad of it, for, let poets and novelists say what they will, the young fellow who marries with the approval of friends drifts happily on, while the rash boy who weds against the good sense of his elders is dragged bleeding along a rough way. So I married Lydia, and began life in gladness and content. I liked her family and they liked me. It puzzles me to see how the English mother-in-law, who is a grum-voiced, dogmatic and belligerent person with a jointure to bequeath, came to be engrafted on our literature. The inoffensive delicacy of an American elderly woman forbids her the rôle of her British sister. Our mother-in-law troubles are mostly confined to our low foreign population. Neither have we a character similar to the silly, spiteful, dried-up old maid of English literature and its American imitations, our spinsters being generally stout and jolly personages and rather over-fond of children. My mother-in-law was very nice, and we were the best of friends.
Rich relations, as a general thing, are abominable: the mere possession of one sometimes makes a person disagreeable. Show the person with a rich cousin the most secluded cot among mountains, and, "Oh, you should see my cousin's house on Michigan Avenue!" is the reply; or a beautiful room speaking the noble quality of its occupant, and, "Call that nice? You should see my cousin's house on Michigan Avenue!" is remarked. But Lydia's rich relations, the Stenes of Chicago, appeared to be exceptions. They were very clannish people, fond of their own kin to the last degree. They came from Michigan, and were of the old colony stock, regular Yankee-Doodle folks, the older ones and many of the younger ones still using New England idioms and quaint phrases that came long ago from the East—yes, from the holts of old England's Suffolk perhaps. You could not persuade one of them to call jelly anything but "jell" or a repast anything but a "meal of victuals," and they said "dooty" and "roomor" and "noos" and "clawg," and sometimes would pop out "his'n" and "her'n." Several of the Stenes had been in business thirty years in metropolitan Chicago, yet they spoke in the twang of a Yankee hill-country. The women of the family were famous housekeepers—too neat to keep a cat lest there might be a cat hair on the carpet, and never liking visitors unless there was a dreadful note of preparation, and then they received grandly. To show Lydia their good-will, they gave her profuse wedding-presents and a splendid trousseau. On my side I bought a neat cottage, paying cash down—all the money I had. It was one of a square of cottages principally occupied by young married people having plenty of children, and a joyous crew they were. Our street had a broad roadway and flagged sidewalks edged with neat turf in which fine trees were growing, and was lined with beautiful homes of varied architecture, suggesting charming interiors. A row of tall, "high-stoop" New York houses with dark stone trimmings stood next to a row of English basements of tuck-pointed brick, and next to them was a range of houses of light, cheerful Joliet stone, with awnings at the windows and carriage-steps as clean as gravestones. Then came an old cottage fixed up nobby, then a comfortable old wooden mansion, then a splendid dwelling in the style of the fifteenth century, and after that the palace of a railway grandee. Here and there on a corner stood a Gothic church. All day well-dressed people trod our pavements and beautiful carriages rolled by our windows. Our cottage was my ideal of perfection: it had few rooms, but those spacious. We had no sitting-room. Let me see: what does that word suggest to my mind? A table heaped with stale newspapers, a stand piled with sewing, a darned carpet, scratched furniture and fly-specked wall-paper.
Lydia's presents filled our house. All were Eastlake and in good taste, the colors sage-green, pumpkin-yellow and ginger-brown, dashed with splashes of peacock feathers and Japanese fans. The vases were straddle-legged and pot-bellied Asiatic shapes. Dragons in bronze and ivory, sticky-looking faïence and glittering majolica, stood in the corners. Silk embroideries representing the stork—a scrawny bird with a scalp-lock at the back of its neck, looking like a mosquito when flying—and porcelain landscapes out of drawing, like a child's first attempts, peopled by individuals with the expression of having their hair pulled, hung 'twixt our dados and friezes. Lydia's young-lady friends gave her their works in oil or water-colors done in a fine, free-hand style that may one day form a school of its own. Our Chicago girls are people of nous. Their talk is "fluent as the flight of a swallow:" their manners are delightful—American manners must be excellent, so many Englishmen marry American girls. Their playing makes us glad the seven poor strings of the old musicians have been multiplied to seven times seven: no Chicago girl is a musician unless she has the masters at her finger-tips. And they are readers too. You would suppose, judging from the papers, that our Chicagoans are inordinately fond of reading about the indiscretions of rustic wives, and are given to a perusal of the news in startling headlines: but such is not the fact. We are great readers of the distinguished magazines and of first-rate books, and our taste for art is keen. When we go abroad we don't care so much for mountains and rivers—they are like potatoes and pork to a man who is visiting: we have them at home—but we are after art. Ruskin says no people can be great in art unless it lives among beautiful natural objects; which is hard on us Chicago folks. If we had any mountainous or rocky tracts we should not live in them. If we possessed a Mount Vesuvius we should use it for getting up bogus eruptions to draw tourists to our hotels, and we should tap the foot of the mountain to draw off the lava for our streets.
Lydia's finery had a subduing effect upon me, who had bounded my aspirations to what was distinctly within my grasp—namely, things