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It was about seventy years ago; the region, the cotton belt on the west bank of the Mississippi river; the scene, the town of Indiantown and its immediate country surroundings. Indiantown was a very important place, and was well satisfied with itself, for it could prove a population of fifteen hundred. Whites, of course; slaves did not count. You would travel far, up and down the river, before you would find another town as large as that.

It stood upon a perfectly flat and narrow strip of rich black soil; its front was upon the river, whose banks—at low water—were as perpendicular as a wall and forty feet high; immediately at its northern limit, Indian river, curving down from the north, then bending east, emptied into the Mississippi. A single bridge spanned it, at the northwest corner of the village. The natives called it a river, but it was hardly that; properly, it was a rivulet, being not more than half as wide as the Thames at London bridge. For miles, westward and northward, along the sweeping bends of the rivulet, on both sides, stretched the great cotton plantations—owned, not by the many, but by the two or three wealthy men of the region. Their great mansions stood a mile apart upon the west bank of the stream and a little back from the road, each with its hamlet of whitewashed slave-huts grouped in the fields half a mile to the rear of the master's mansion.

It was a wide and pretty valley through which the Indian river [begin page 154] flowed, and was walled-in and protected on both sides by woodsy and rocky hills which in summer were lovely with all the wild woodland graces proper to the generous climate of those latitudes. The valley's surface steadily rose, from its foot to its head, hence it was never afflicted with overflows.

But down where the town lay, the case was different. In June, when the snows melted in the mountains at the head waters of the mighty Missouri river some thousands of miles to the north and west and delivered the result into the Mississippi, it was always an anxious time for Indiantown. The people gathered daily on the bank and gazed out over the mile-wide yellow surface of the raging and swearing flood, with its black freightage of enormous logs and minor driftwood, and watched and considered and noted a couple of details with special and wistful solicitude—the swiftness or slowness of the rise, and the trend of the current. If they found that the current was making up its mind to strike into their bend above their town or abreast it, they were deeply concerned; if they found that the river was rising fast—say six feet in twenty-four hours, the concern was doubled, and they sent to the plantations for ox teams at once. For a six-foot rise meant that the river would be over its banks in a week, and then it would be too late to move the town.

The people would not mind the mere overflow—they were used to that; it happened once a year, and sometimes twice; but if they found that the current, in slanting down from the upper bend on the other side of the river, was striking into their own bend above the town or abreast it, that was a very grave matter: it would bite their bank away and swallow up a street or two of houses at a single meal, and perhaps the rest of the village next day.

This was not a frequent disaster; still, it had happened more than once. Each time the town had been hauled back, house by house, and saved; and each time the river had swallowed up every foot of ground that had been previously occupied by the settlement. After Indiantown's latest retreat there was half a mile of river between its new position and its earliest one.

At the time of which we write it was June, and the rise had begun, and briskly, but there was no scare: the current was striking [begin page 155] below the town. There was a dense forest of great trees there, and there was entertainment for loafers, and for workers who could allow themselves a holiday. It was a stirring thing to see the boiling river snatch away a couple of acres of ground and note how the mass of mighty trees leaned slowly and majestically forward, paused a moment as if in grief and dread, then plunged with a thunder-crash beneath the yellow flood, sending a vast explosion of foam high in the air and leaving a fierce maelstrom tossing where they disappeared.

It was a wooden town, with wide straight streets, unpaved, but with red-brick sidewalks—not in repair—along the main thorough-fare, and plenty of mud or dust in the channel, according to the weather. The dwellings in the town's midst were “frame,” painted white, with green shutters, surrounded by grassy yards within whitewashed palings; the court house, the jail, and several churches were of red brick; at its edges the town fringed off into unadorned log houses.

The people were Presbyterians, Methodists and Baptists, and both sinners and saints were communicants and diligent attendants upon the religious services. For one thing, it was custom; for another, the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone was still the main feature of all sermons and the people were canny and cautious and did not wish to navigate it. This was a prejudice, but not a bigoted one: they could have nominated others for that kind of travel, if invited.

There was no local newspaper. Two or three copies of the National Intelligencer (weekly) came tired from Washington bringing political tidings three weeks old, and were passed from hand to hand and discussed until their contents were become ancient history; several journals of a fresher sort came down from the distant little city of St. Louis and up from the equally distant city of New Orleans.

Dr. Stevens, and other gray gentlemen of the old school, still wore queues tied with a bow of black ribbon, broad hats, formidable “stocks,” broadcloth coats with square and ample tails, wrist-ruffles, bosom-ruffles, black gaiters to the knee, low shoes with silver [begin page 156] buckles; and they carried gold-headed canes and took snuff, and when surprised said “God bless my soul, sir!” In London to-day, viewed from the rear, they would be mistaken for English Bishops.

The town reached to the bridge over Indian river—no further. On the bank of the river not far north of the other end of the bridge stood the mill; close to it on the south side stood a fair-sized log house occupied by the family of the foreman of the mill; close to the mill on the north side stood a much larger log dwelling, the property of the mill's owner.

On the river road, a quarter of a mile north of these buildings stood the country blacksmith shop of Burt Higgins, under a spreading great live-oak, the meeting-place and gossip-exchange of the small farmers who lived here and there and yonder for miles around.

A mile north of the blacksmith shop stood the large mansion of Andrew Harrison, cotton planter; a mile north of that, the great mansion—called “the” mansion—of Squire Fairfax, planter; a mile still further north, the large mansion of Orrin Lloyd Godkin, planter. The plantations of these rich gentlemen extended far away to the hill-ridges on both sides of the river.

Of course the most of the people were of the commonplace sort; of course, also, a few of them had trade-mark characteristics and social positions which perceptibly differentiated them from the general herd. All the whites were free—born so. The Declaration had said it, and it was true. Also, all the whites were equal. The Declaration had said it, and it was true. That is, equal before the law, and not otherwise. It was comical in that day, and it is comical in our day, to see fine European intelligencies struggle gaily and confidently with that innocent phrase, “all men are born equal,” and finally march proud and happy from the field—defeated, but not aware of it. Like Professor Mahaffey; who threw away an hour [begin page 157] or two of time in proving to an American audience at Chautauqua that all men are not born equal in wealth, brains, stature, strength, social position, and so on, and that any Declaration of Independence that tried to create and establish these equalities was attempting the impossible. Inasmuch as the Declaration had made no attempt of the sort, the professor's time was wasted. Courtesy requires that one shall read his well-intended sermon with gravity, but not every one can do it.

Wherever the human race exists, it groups itself more or less definitely into social ranks and grades. Indiantown had its ranks and grades. They were merely the creation of an unwritten common consent—there was no law about it; and a man could go up a grade or down a grade, without (sometimes) quite knowing how it had happened. On the street, and elsewhere in public, the grades disappeared, substantially—at least no very marked prominence was given them ordinarily—but in private there were “sets,” and each set knew its own frontiers and was self-respectingly content to abide within them. However, it may be said that the frontiers were only set up against intimate and familiar daily intercourse between the sets; large private balls and parties broke them down and mingled the ranks together.

At the social summit stood the “quality.” This word was used by the commoner folk of the South and the Southwest, and was the equivalent of “aristocracy.” There were two “quality” grades. In the top one were the Fairfaxes—all alone; in the other one were the Harrisons, the Wilkinsons, and Mr. Orrin Lloyd Godkin. Next after the second grade, and separated from it by a rather faint frontier, came the Gridleys; Judge Bates of the county court; Rev. Mr. Bailey the Presbyterian minister and the other reverends; Mr. Gilbert the principal lawyer; Randall, (by and by District Attorney); Dr. Stevens; Dr. Bradshaw; and several considerable merchants. Next below came Marsh the miser and the rest of the white population. After these, the slaves.1

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Charles Fairfax was called “the Squire.” It was not an official title, but a title of courtesy conferred by the general voice, and was a recognition of his supremacy, his occupation of the summit of the social pyramid. He was the richest planter in that part of the cotton belt; he owned 1200 slaves, and his “nigger quarter” made a considerable village—a neat, orderly whitewashed one, it was, and its tenants were well cared for and comfortable. The Squire was about 35; robustly built and athletic, with a shaven square face and a resolute jaw, but with kindly blue eyes which engagingly modified and mollified the jaw's advertisement. His bearing and manner were rather stately and reserved toward all except his small circle of intimates. His intimates held him in high honor and had a warm regard for him; the rest stood in awe of him, but he was not popular with them. They knew his clothes came from Europe, and they did not like that excess of “style.” They had believed the same of his father's clothes, and that old man had died under that cloud. With his intimates the Squire was like the average man—easy, companionable, interested in what was going on and not reserved in the matter of exhibiting the natural play of his feelings; but he was always likely to chill down and close his shell when an outsider came about. He did not enjoy being unpopular, and would have preferred to have it the other way, but his nature and his heredities had made him what he was, and secretly and at bottom he was a shy man; therefore, to learn popular ways was a thing outside of his possibilities, and he knew it, accepted it, and reconciled himself to it.

He had completed his education in a Virginian college, and later had gone back to Virginia and brought thence a charming young wife. At the time of which we are writing he had been married something more than ten years, and his only child, Helen, was now nine years old.

He was of the Maryland Fairfaxes—a house which could claim the curious distinction of being the only one in America entitled to display the symbols and assume the state and dignity of nobility. His elder brother was the reigning lord, and occupant of the Maryland homestead.

Before his marriage the Squire had been rather wild, and also [begin page 159] rather fond of drink. The drink was bad for his temper, which was a sudden one. When he had had a glass or two it was not well to offend him; his resentment rose in a flash and he went at his work promptly and without counting the odds against him. When perfectly sober he governed his temper well, and got into no difficulties which were fairly avoidable. But in all cases he was a fair fighter; all conceded that. It was also granted, to his credit, that his fights were about as often on other people's account as on his own. It was his natural disposition to accept an invitation where none had been extended, to help a fight out, if there was an underdog in it that needed support. It was this disposition which got him into trouble with Jim Tyler, a visiting desperado from a neighboring town. Tyler was kicking and cuffing a boy, while a crowd looked on, afraid to interfere; Fairfax was passing by; he stopped, and said to the crowd—

“What are you made of? Why do you let him do that?”

Tyler squared himself before Fairfax and said, insolently—while the grateful boy departed—

“Maybe you want to interfere?”

“I do,” said Fairfax, and broke his jaw with his fist. He turned and was walking away, leaving the man in the dust, when some one shouted “Look out, he's coming for you!” At the same moment a bullet whizzed past Fairfax's ear; but he had Tyler in his grip before he could fire the other barrel. He snatched the pistol away and cocked it, and Tyler went down on his knees and began to beg for his life. Fairfax was white with passion, but he restrained himself and said—

“I ought to kill you; and I would, but I know you have a wife and children, and they have done me no harm; for their sakes—” He fired the pistol in the air, then threw it down and said, “Leave the town—at once, and don't ever enter it again.” He said to the crowd, “He shall have half an hour; after that, and for thirty years to come, whoever reports to me that he is in the town can have a hundred dollars and my thanks.”

It proved a permanent riddance of a frequent and dreaded visitor, and for years whenever a group of citizens was sharply criticising Fairfax some one was presently sure to recal that good [begin page 160] service and drop it in, and not without effect, as an extenuating circumstance.

The Fairfax home was called “the mansion,”—as before remarked—and was of great dimensions and pillared and porticoed at the front in the old-fashioned colonial style. Mrs. Fairfax was become a confirmed invalid and did not go out of the house. But her influence over her husband was salutary, constant, and effective. After his marriage he ceased wholly from drinking and fighting.

The Harrisons and Wilkinsons were related families. Andrew Harrison, the head of the house, was a widower of sixty-five, a practical man, scarcely even tinged with sentiment. He was uncompromisingly honest and honorable and truthful, his character was quite above reproach, and he was respected, and one might even say revered, by all. He was not uneducated, but he was not college-bred. He was half as rich as the Squire, and richer than any other man in the region. His plantation was the first one south of the Squire's, and his house was like “the Mansion,” and nearly as large.

At the time of which we write, it had no occupants—barring the servants—except Andrew, his son George, and George's son Tom, aged about 11.

Andrew kept his business in his own hands and name,—for good business reasons—and George only helped. Under limitations.

George was about thirty-five. He was tall and thin, with bristly black hair which stood up unparted; intellectual sharp features; eager, restless, unstable black eyes; quick of movement, carriage not without a certain grace and dignity when with his familiars; abashed and too anxious to please when (as happened at very rare intervals) he found himself in the company of reserved people or strangers. He was over-amiable; his anxiety to please was a great blemish and made some despise him and blinded them to his worth—for in one way, at least, he had worth: he was profoundly and conspicuously honest and honorable. He was much too humble-minded, for a grown person; and his instability and his anxiety to please often betrayed him into dropping his own convictions for the adversary's after the briefest poor fight. The humble-minded are [begin page 161] vain of their humility without suspecting it—the vainest of the vain. George read everything and digested nothing; he was a mine of misinformation and mental confusions. Among other faults, he was as good as the day was long; also, privately vain of his moral invulnerability. Everybody revered his perfect moral character and privately resented the necessity of doing it. He was a result of his mother's careful and watchful training, not his father's. She had been a moral sentimentalist all her life, and her son was the monumental result.

George had fine and lofty ideals, and was always ready to change them for higher ones. He was a temperance advocate. However, what he was today was no indication of what he would be tomorrow, in religion and politics; yet he was adamant in his honesty and honor; for when he changed an opinion it was from honest conviction. He usually deserted his party the day before election and processioned with the other party, furnished its mottoes, made a speech at night—then they stood guard over him and took him to the polls next day to keep him from voting the third ticket if there was one.

He had been a Presbyterian, a Baptist, a Methodist, an Episcopalian, an infidel, a Mohammedan; had been three times forward and back over the course and was now a Presbyterian again and due to rebecome a Baptist in thirteen months.

He was the easiest man to flatter in the world; he swallowed it without chewing, was shamefully grateful for it and ready to worship the flatterer's shoes to get more.

He had been engaged 7 times before his marriage at 23.

The first woman who flattered him wholly without stint turned his head utterly; and yet even she would have failed to bag him if she had taken any foolish chances. But she didn't; she proposed to him on the spot and took him to Mr. Bailey straight off and married him with violence. She was a man. She led him a strict life and a most irksome one, and died six months before the time of which we are writing.

George was a spasmodic man. Twice or thrice in his life he had actually struck out in his own defence valiantly—as people thought, and as he himself thought—but it was not valor, it was [begin page 162] the insane and blind influence of fright. After it was done he didn't know how it had happened, but he was as proud of it as if the impulse had been bravery.

Like most of us his real self was not known to any one—particularly to himself.

The widow Wilkinson was George's sister and exactly like him. Her husband left her fairly well off and was willing to go. Both funerals took place in the same week. There were two children, a boy and a girl.

George and the widow Wilkinson were ready for any new kind of doctrine, or doctoring, or patent medicine, or any other good and lofty diversion that came along.

But in spite of their detestable faults they were dear good generous people, always ready for good works, and people were obliged to like and respect them—and did.

They joined every devilish moral society that was started. George was Knight of Temperance at intervals—in the other intervals he withdrew and drank—a few tablespoonfuls, seldom or never many.

At the time of which we are writing he was not a Knight, but due to rebecome one in 9½ months.

In her anxiety to please, the Widow was never still a moment: “Won't you have some of this? won't you take some of that?—oh, do take this chair, that one is so uncomfortable—come nearer the fire.” No quiet person could endure her. She was small and thin, always and inveterately ungracefully dressed, and had drugged herself with deadly medicines till there was not enough blood in her to blush with. She had doctored herself for every disease under the sun and had never had one of them. She was periodically in an eager enthusiasm over some new fatal nostrum and trying to betray her friends into taking chances in it.

She was honorable and incorruptible; still, she could have been spared and should have been shot.

Her special friend was the widow Pilgrim. Mrs. Pilgrim was a kind-hearted creature who didn't know anything, but didn't know she didn't know anything, and this protected her from embarrassment. As to rank, she was unclassified. She had good instincts and was an ass, and this made her welcome everywhere.

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Mr. Orrin Lloyd Godkin completes the list of the second grade of the “quality.” He was an educated bachelor of forty, and the next richest planter after Andrew Harrison, and had a house in the town and another one on his plantation, which adjoined the Fairfax plantation on the north. No stranger could guess his age by his appearance; on a cloudy day he looked several years older than he was, and in sunny weather five, seven, even ten years younger than he was, according to the grade of intensity of the light. But in any weather the stranger's eye would find him a fascinating object, because he was so unusual a spectacle and so uncanny. It was on account of his complexion, which was ghostly, spectral, ghastly. It was wholly colorless. And that was not all; that was not the marvel—far from it. It was the kind of pallor—that was the miracle; for this was a pallor which had never bleached-out a human face before, either in life or subsequently: it would have added a new terror to death. It was the cold, hard, smooth, polished, opaque, tintless and horrible white of a wax-figure's hands. There was no beard, and there were no eye-brows. Out of this dreadful mask looked a pair of sloe-black eyes; alert, intelligent, searching, wistful, and very human eyes; eyes capable of expressing all the various moods of men, and accustomed to doing it; eyes that could do irony and such things quite well; eyes which could even smile,—of course without the face helping, or betraying consciousness of the act—but the smile was not popular; it seemed startlingly out of place in that death's head, and got on the spectator's nerves, and moved him to say “please don't do that.” We are speaking of the eyes as they appeared at a near view, when one could note their smouldering fires or detect their sparkle and flash; but at the distance of a large room's width they dismally suggested round holes burnt in a shroud.

Instead of trying to ameliorate the influences of his face by the arts of dress, Godkin chose to use those very arts to magnify and aggravate them. Winter and summer he dressed in black. From his chin to his toes he was just a thin black pillar, with no other tint appearing; for he covered his shirt-front with his vest and his wristbands with his sleeves, and he wore turn-down collars of so low a pattern that they were submerged, and hardly showed [begin page 164] even a white line. And he would not wear anything that had a gloss; it must be lustreless and sombre, or he wouldn't have it. He had long thin hands, waxy and dead, and his black sleeves horribly emphasized their corpsy whiteness. He apparently liked to have them naked; perhaps because when he worked the fingers it made people's flesh creep. When he needed to wear gloves he used undressed kid dyed a dismal and rayless black. His hair was thick and black and lustreless, and he wore it clipped so close that at a little distance his skull seemed painted. When he stood at rest in a dim uncertain light he could have been mistaken for a black post with a clown's chalky face on the top of it.

He was a gentleman. His manners were courteous, his ways pleasant, his bearing easy and graceful, and if he had had a human complexion he would have been comely, even handsome. He had never had a love-match and was not expecting to have one and knew he was not likely to have one. He pretended to be sorry about this; not because he minded being lonely, he said, but because he was afraid his complexion would die with him. He could talk any kind of nonsense and get it taken at par, if he so chose, for if he veiled his eyes the rest of his face would not give him away.

All his movements were soft and smooth and gliding; and if you were his friend he would enter your room as noiselessly as a cat, and then wait patiently for you to look up; for he enjoyed the start you gave when your eye wandered around and encountered his ghost-face. In shops and such places he liked to glide up alongside of a stranger—particularly a woman—and wait there for results. Before experience had ripened him he was used to stand ready to grab her and save her from jumping over the counter and breaking her neck when she looked up; but he found that this kindness was a mistake, for the women fought and struggled like maniacs to get free, and one or two of them came near dying in his arms.

One might suppose, by this, that he was not a serious man; but that would be an error; he was a deeply serious man and sincerely so, but he had a frivolous side to his nature, like the rest of us.

He was richer in pet names than any other person in the community. Because of certain theories of his, some called him the [begin page 165] Libeler of the Human Race, or the Enemy of the Human Race; others called him the Ass-Philosopher, others the Ghost, Death's Head, Corpse, and so on; but perhaps the name that had the widest currency was that last one—the Corpse.

He enjoyed his life, for he had plenty of books and was fond of reading; he disliked work and did none, but left it all to his overseer and his factor; and he was a friendly and sociable corpse, ready to entertain and be entertained, and he was always around and interested when anything was going on.

He always spoke in light and airy disparagement of the human race; and also as if it were a species in which he had no personal concern; in fact he isolated himself from the human race by a pregnant phrase, and complacently spoke of its members collectively as “those foreigners.” Invited to explain this attitude, he said he had a superhuman strain in him, and that his line was of loftier origin than any monarch could claim. He pointed out the passage in the Bible which told how the sons of the Gods, attracted by the comeliness of the daughters of men, descended to the earth and chose brides from among them. His line, the Godkins—a word meaning little god, he said, as catkin means little cat and lambkin little lamb—was a result of one of these alliances, and was the oldest in the earth and incomparably the highest and noblest. Asked how he could condescend to associate with the human race, he said it was very simple: to him, men were the same as the other animals—there was no very noticeable difference between them discoverable from the remote summit where he stood—and if men could make friends and comrades of good dogs and horses, within certain limitations, without compromising themselves, he thought he could properly go a step lower and associate with men, and preserve his dignity. Many of the ignorant and unthinking disliked him on account of his attitude toward the human race, and because he made so much of his divine streak and put on so many airs about it, but the judicious and the thoughtful argued that if he was right, as concerned his lineage, his position was justified.

He signed himself “O. Lloyd Godkin,” and in this form the name was a valued convenience to people who wanted to be [begin page 166] profane but did not dare: they turned it into an exclamation and uttered it with fiendish energy when they fell over things in the dark.

In the third rank with the Gridleys came the Bateses. Judge Bates was handsome and statuesque, with a thin, intellectual face, fine black eyes, black hair, and a silky and lustrous full black beard. A full beard was a distinction; very few men wore any beard at all. He was amiable, insinuating, and a flatterer; he was innocently vain of his elegant manners and his elegant language; he was artificial all through, and rather overcharged with mincing and dainty affectations; he was not a reality, even to himself, he was a fine and elaborate artificiality. And his wife was just like him. With this difference, that in the judge there was no harm and no unkindness; he only flattered to please; but his wife's sweetest flatteries usually had a little poison in them, and they left a bad taste in the mouth of the person who swallowed them.

Rev. Mr. Bailey, the Presbyterian minister, was a man whose face was both introduction and passport. The stranger took him into his friendship without asking questions. He was transparently good and fine and trustworthy and genuine, and his wife was like him.

It is not easy to describe David Gridley, there being two of him—the one that God made, and another one. The one that God made was a sufficiently indifferent piece of work, but it was at least not a sham—all its parts were genuine; but the other one was all sham; there was not a genuine fibre in it. It was the work of Mrs. Gridley. It is not to be understood that she made the original Gridley over again, for any one who is not stupid knows that as God makes a man, so he remains; teaching and training can alter the outside of him, but not the inside. The inside is there to stay. It is nature; and nature doesn't change; it can be suppressed, [begin page 167] smothered, hidden, but not abolished. Figuratively speaking, it is a glass of limpid salt water: teaching and training can color it red, blue, green, black, according to the trainer's desire; but none of these disguises, nor all of them mixed together, can abolish the salt; it is indestructible, it is a permanency. Mrs. Gridley did her best to make David Gridley over again, and always believed she was making progress and would in the end succeed—a pathetic error. There are millions of Mrs. Gridleys, sincere and excellent people, and entitled to all charity, and perhaps even praise, since they mean so well. Mrs. Gridley put an entirely new outside on David—a shiny new outside, and fine to consider; and this exterior Gridley was the only one the world knew. And by diligent hard work and watchful pains she kept that exterior one in such good repair that the general world did not even suspect that there was another Gridley and a solider one—a real one. But there it was: he was just a piece of honest kitchen furniture transferred to the drawing-room and glorified and masked from view in gorgeous cloth of gold.

He was himself thoroughly well aware of the bogus Gridley, and detested his holy society; but he was an easy-going, lazy, soft character, and his wife wasn't. Hence the result.

In Susan Gridley's make and character there were no flaws. She was educated, utterly refined, scrupulously high-principled, genuine to the marrow, deeply religious; she had none but high ideals, it was not within the possibilities of her nature to entertain a low one. She was firm and strong, she was as steadfast, as faithful, as trustworthy as the sun and the atmosphere and the fixed stars; she was fastidiously truthful; she was cautious and deliberate about making promises, but a promise once made, she would go to the stake rather than break even the outside edge of it; she was delicate in her feelings, and modestly shrinking, but when courage was required to back a principle, she had it. She had a sound, practical, business head, and in the next compartment of her skull a large group of brain-cells that had a vivid appreciation of the beautiful in nature, art and literature, and an abiding love of it. She was just and fair in her judgments, leaning—if at all—to the generous side always; she was loving and loveable, and although she did not open her heart to every one, or indeed to very many, whosoever entered it [begin page 168] was its guest forever, and content to stay. She never made a friend and lost him; nor one who failed her when she needed him. She was easily the most superior woman in that region, and was so regarded by all.

Granted that David Gridley was an easy-going, lazy, soft character, and that his pride in his wife and his love for her were without limit, it stands to reason that he was but clay in this earnest and able potter's hands. Innocently unaware of what she was really proposing to do, this most genuine of all genuine creatures set herself the task of transforming her husband into a comprehensive, complete and symmetrical humbug; and as far as his outside was concerned she made a master-work of it that would have deceived the elect.

The contrasts between the two Davids were curious, and interesting—to David (the real David); every day and all day long he had the two on private view, and was always examining them and wondering over them. But not in joy; in impotent protest and discontent; for he had no pleasure in being a sham. The real David, the inside David, the hidden David, was of an incurably low tone, and wedded to low ideals; the outside David, Susan Gridley's David, the sham David, was of a lofty tone, with ideals which the angels in heaven might envy. The real David had a native affection for all vulgarities, and his natural speech was at home and happy only when it was mephitic with them; the sham David traded in fine and delicate things only, and delivered them from his tongue aromatic with chaste fragrances. The real David clothed the truth in so many gauds and ruffles and embroideries that its mother couldn't recognise it; the sham David turned it loose on the world naked. The real David couldn't keep his word, the sham one couldn't break it. The real David cared but little whether an inconvenient debt was paid or not; the sham one would settle it with his last shirt. The real David was seldom serious; the sham one was a tombstone. The real David was a Vesuvius boiling to the brim with imprisoned profanity; the sham one was apparently a bland and peaceful extinct crater. The real David was an enthusiastic Sabbath-breaker; the sham one kept a pew in church and was always there to look holy and help do the hymns and pass the plate. [begin page 169] The real David had a cow's appreciation of fine art and high literature; the sham one bowed down to the Old Masters and talked Shakspeare and the others with a devotee's devotion. The real David was born to the gait and manners of a hostler; the sham one was Chesterfield come back. The real David was slovenly, and preferred it; hated clothes of all kinds and the man that invented them; the sham David went gloved and clothed like a gentleman, and had never a speck of dust on him. The real David carried a devil's spasmodic temper inside; the sham one was as serene as moonlight. The real David loathed society and its irksome polish and restraints; the sham one was the society model whom the observing and judicious delighted to pattern after.

Only a strong and steady hand could have kept this chafing rebel straight—and Susan Gridley had that. And by what art? What was the secret of her success? It was simple: by providing the rebel's boiler with a safety-valve. She allowed David to blow off steam at home. Otherwise there would have been explosions in public. There was no way to keep the steam from generating, for its accumulation was a process of nature, and in the course of time Mrs. Gridley was obliged to recognise that fact—to her disappointment and deep regret—and after that she did the next best thing, the one available thing: she allowed the steam to blow off at home, trying to let on, when circumstances permitted, that she didn't know it was happening, and sending the children out of the way as soon as the signs indicated that presently the safety-valve was going to lift and begin to sing.

Did the elaborate sham which she had manufactured with so much labor and pains deceive herself? Possibly; we can fool ourselves with nearly any inviting superstition if we dearly want to.

There is no accounting for a woman's illusions. Every woman has one or more that flatly contradict her whole character, her whole mental and moral make-up. Susan Gridley loved her humbug with all her heart. She even worshiped him, and said so; using that very word, and repeating it daily. Not a day went by that she did not bless the hour that placed her weal and life in the guard and keep of her adored moral half-breed. He did not know why she [begin page 170] adored him; he knew why he adored her, and how to state his reasons and prove them sane and sound; but that she should adore him seemed to him a failure of judgment—that judgment which in all other things was so lucid and so healthy. He wondered if she had reasons. He found that she had. Would he like to hear them? With eyes glowing with feeling, and with all her heart in her words, she set free her eager tongue and it painted his portrait. It was then that he found out that he was an archangel. He had not suspected it before.

She had come from the east or the south or somewhere; he had fallen in love with her at first sight and had begun his love-making instantly. Courtship lifts a young fellow far and away above his common earthly self, and by an impulse natural to those lofty regions he puts on his halo and his heavenly war-paint and plays archangel as if he was born to it. He is working a deception, but is not aware of it. His girl marries the archangel. In the course of time he recognises that his wings and his halo have disappeared, and that he is now no longer in the business; but it is a hundred to one that the wife, be she wise or be she otherwise, will keep her beautiful delusion all her life and always believe that the radiant outfit is still there. From time to time she will notice that it is getting a little out of repair, but that is nothing, it does not trouble her: she keeps a constant and admiring eye on it, and dusts it off, and tinkers it up, and re-paints it, re-gilds it, and so long as she lives is ever more and more pleased and satisfied with the stunning effects which she gets out of her restorations.

David Gridley knew that there were things in his make-up which could distress this dear unworldly young creature whom he had married if they should fall under her notice, therefore he walked cautiously and watched himself. And so, during three years none but unimportant impairments came to light—perhaps seventy-five, but not more than ninety, in any case—but at last there was an accident, and a very serious dilapidation was disclosed. Susan Gridley overheard her archangel swearing—swearing like a demon. The shock of it took her breath away. When she got it back, she listened, to make sure, for she was doubting the loyalty of her ears. The thing seemed too terrible, too ghastly, to be true. She [begin page 171] did not faint, and she did not fall—couldn't, indeed, for she was in bed. She had wakened out of a peaceful sleep, then she noticed that the archangel was gone from her side, next she heard fervent words which she recognised as pulpit specialties, and she said admiringly, “dear good heart, he is praying;” and next she changed her mind.

The archangel had left her sleeping and gone into his dressing-room to make his toilet, and had left the door a little ajar through heedlessness and thinking about other things—a mistake which he had never made before, for toilet-making was always a perilous time with him, and required the strictest privacy.

All through his bathing and shaving he said the usual and necessary things in a low and cautious mumble; then he put on a shirt, and found a button gone; took it off and threw it out of the window—with language; put on another and found a button gone, and threw that one out, with increased language; put on a third shirt, found a button gone; threw it out, then began to throw out boots, hats, soap, toothbrushes—anything and everything he could get his frantic hands on, with always abler and abler language, delivered in an ever mounting key—and at last happened to notice that the door was a-crack. The strength went from him, and he sat down pale and sick with the sense of the magnitude of his disaster.

What should he do? What should he say? He did not know. Would it answer to explain that he was only quoting—memorising a piece which had interested him in a book? That seemed a plausible way out. . . . But no—that wouldn't do: she was bright, and there was a flavor of originality about this piece which she. . . . No, it wouldn't work. . . . Maybe she didn't hear—maybe she wasn't awake. . . . No—oh, no, she was a light sleeper, and he hadn't been whispering. There was but one poor little comfort—such as it was: he said to himself, “Some of that language couldn't get through a crack like that.” He was greatly depressed; he realized that as an archangel he was compromised. Then he had a promising idea: there were two doors to the bedroom—he would pass out at the furthest one and so would not have to meet her eye; and he would go quickly—as if on business— [begin page 172] urgent business—business which had been forgotten and must be attended to at once.

He dressed softly, passed softly into the bedroom, then had the idea that the best way would be to go along deliberately and absorbed in thought, and looking like a person who has not been doing anything. This worked very well, until he was half way through; then he was gratefully cheered by the deep silence of the place; was she asleep? A mysterious magnetism forced him to turn and steal a glance. Then his heart sank, and he knew the misery a convict feels. There she lay, gazing at him with snapping eyes. His own sank, under that accusing gaze, and he bent his head and waited for the deserved reproach. It would be dear and sweet and gentle, but charged with heart-break, and how was he going to bear it? There was a pause, a desolating stillness, then from those pure lips came this word, impressively delivered—

“D-a-m—nation!”

Gridley was shocked, and beyond expression astonished. Then came the natural reaction: he saw the ludicrous side of the thing—a side which was heightened and enriched by the gravity of the intention—and was not able to keep his countenance. He turned his back, hoping his throes would pass for sobs, for he did not wish to make matters worse for himself than they already were; but his wife said indignantly—

“David, you are not deceiving me; you are laughing, and there is nothing to laugh about.”

But laughter which cannot be suppressed is catching. Sooner or later it washes away our defences, and undermines our dignity, and we join in it—ashamed of our weakness, and embittered against the cause of its exposure, but no matter, we have to join in, there is no help for it. It was what happened to the young wife. A blessed thing, and a gracious and benignant reconciler, is an unrestrained discharge of innocent and foolish and whole-hearted laughter. It eases the pain of many a hurt that is beyond the surgery of argument and reproach. When Gridley stole a wistful glance and saw that his wife was silently shaking, he knew that he was saved; and when he kissed her and told her how beautiful she looked [begin page 173] when she laughed, he was aware that he was ahead of the game now. He sat down on the bedside and began to chat, and ask questions, and enjoy his escape from what had promised to be a disastrous business.

“What did you do it for, Susy—what was your idea?”

Her face assumed a gentle and reproachful gravity, and she said—

“It was for your good, David. I wanted you to see just how it sounded.”

“I judged so. When I say it, does it sound like that?”

She glanced at his face, but got no information from it.

“Doesn't it?” she said.

“I hope not, Susy.”

She inspected his face again—with definite suspicion, this time.

“David, I believe you are teasing me. Why do you hope not?”

He took her hand in his, and began to explain—with a gentle deference and a yearning solicitude in his voice and manner which were well calculated to deepen the impressiveness of his words—

“Because it would pain me to think that when I swear it sounds like that. And—”

“Would it, David?” she interrupted, anxiously. “Why?”

“Well, you see, dear, swearing is like any other music, and—”

“Music?”

“Yes. If it is not done well, if it is not done with a fine and discriminating art, and vitalized with gracious and heartborn feeling, it lacks beauty, it lacks charm, it lacks expression, it lacks nobleness, it lacks majesty, it lacks—”

“I think it is odious! David, you are making fun of me.”

“Peace—and listen. What must I feel? Have you no humanity? After the patient years, the study, the practice, the tireless industry which I have devoted to this great art. . . . Susy, you are ignorant, and not to blame. I am not blaming you, dear; but think—to take that volcanic word, that stormy great word, and pipe it hesitatingly out in a scared insipid squeak—flat, poor, expressionless, ashy, thin, flabby, sick, ashamed, the fire all gone, the [begin page 174] inflections misplaced. . . . Susy, you didn't want to hurt me, dear, but oh, you can't think how it made me feel to hear you intimate that when I said it it sounded like that; and I—”

“Now David, you can go along—I don't want to hear anymore about it.”

“I am not blaming you, dear, you did the best you could, with your loose education and want of practice; but you see how it is, yourself—you only know the words, you don't know the tune. Now in any fine and delicate or lofty and noble music, of course the mere words—”

He passed out of the room talking, and the rest of it was lost.

The taming of her archangel kept Susan Gridley busy and happy and interested and proud, all the time, as the years drifted along; and when her little girls got big enough to notice things they were interested in her work, too—more interested in it than she approved of, sometimes, for she wanted them to think he was perfect, and she often found this a delicate and difficult business to put through, satisfactorily. For the most of his perfections were of such a peculiar and unusual sort that they required a world of explaining before the children could see them; and then, often, after all her explaining, she had the pain of perceiving that the children had doubts; or if they hadn't, that they liked the perfections better before they were explained than afterwards. They had a great admiration for their father, and she rejoiced at that; but upon examination it turned out, as often as not, that they were admiring something in him which she was doing her level best to edit out of him. It was very discouraging. And it was having a curious and devilish effect; for admiration begets imitation; and so in the course of time they developed double personalities: half the time they were the flawless nice children of her training, the other half—well the other half they were different.

When Mrs. Gridley wrote a letter, it was fair and blemishless to the eye: no blots, no erasures, no interlineations; if she discovered a mistake in it, she wrote the whole letter over again. And she edited David's letters for him, but not by request. Usually they had fire and brimstone and thunder and lightning in them when they reached her hands, but they were reserved and courteous and as [begin page 175] tranquil as moonlight when she got done taming them. Sometimes he wrote literature for the eastern press—fierce and bloody Indian tales—and again she edited. He complained that he sent his Indians out on the war-path and she ambushed them and sent them to Sunday school. She wouldn't let him make an impromptu speech. He had to write his speeches out, then she tamed them and made him memorise them; and she made it a point to be present at the delivery, and within reach of his coat-tail, so that she could twitch it when he forgot himself and tried to introduce new matter. He fretted and fumed over these harassments, as he called them, but her hand was steady and firm, and he submitted, and found profit in it in the long run.

If unwatched he would try to escape from the house unbrushed and with his pockets bulging with unnecessary things; but she generally caught him on the wing, and brushed him, and picked stray bits of thread and such things from his clothes, and unloaded his pockets and sent him forth exasperatingly trim and elegant.

At dinner parties he was for a long time a difficult and troublesome feature. Sometimes he would be in great spirits, and would crowd everybody down and do all the talking himself; sometimes he would talk only to the lady on his left; sometimes only to the lady on his right—always neglecting the stupid one, the commonplace one, the one he couldn't abide; sometimes, when out of spirits, he moped and didn't talk at all. His wife was helpless; he saw none of her signs; she had to sit still and suffer. When the company was gone he would catch an informing light in her eye, and wake up to his condition, and say with a sigh—

“I know it. Go on—dust me off.”

Then she detailed his delinquencies. The children took a deep interest in the dusting off, and never missed it if they could help it. They were greatly disappointed when he had committed no crimes and the dusting took the form of praises. Once, after one of his worst failures, he said—

“But Susy, it doesn't do any good to dust me after it is all over, because I forget it all before next time. If you would dust me off beforehand—”

That was reasonable, and the idea was adopted. When it was [begin page 176] applied, it worked; when the wife forgot it in the press of business, David relapsed. But a scheme was finally contrived by which the dusting could be done at the dinner table without the guests suspecting, and this succeeded to admiration. After that, David was a model. In the midst of the meal the wife would say—

“David, I found that date for you to-day—it was the tenth.”

That meant, “Do talk to the lady on your left a little.”

By and by—

“No, I was wrong, David, it was the eleventh.”

Then David would talk to the lady on his right. Later there might be another correction—the date was the twelfth. This meant, “Don't do all the talking!” David would quiet down; and perhaps so entirely as presently to fetch out the final date—the thirteenth; then he would stop moping and become conversational again. If the company betrayed curiosity concerning these elusive dates, David explained without conveying information, and the secret of the matter remained undamaged.