The Wedding Guest Part 3

"How shockingly poor Mary is looking!"

"Shockingly! Why, I expected you would say she was so pretty!"

"Pretty! My dear Anne, the roses on your cheek are worth all the beauty that is left in her pale face. What have they done to her?

When you were children, she was at robust, round little thing--and so strong and cheerful--you could hear her voice half a mile, ringing like a bell; and now it's 'Hark from the tomb a doleful sound!' When I last saw her--let me see--four years ago--she was--not perhaps a Hebe--but a wholesome-looking girl."

"Julius!--what an expression!"

"Well, my dear, it conveys my meaning, and, therefore, is a good expression. What has been the matter? Has she had a fever? Is she diseased?"

"Julius! No! Is that the way the Western people talk about young ladies?--Mary is in poor health--rather delicate; but she does not look so different from the rest of our girls--I, you know, am an exception."

"Thank Heaven, you are, my dear Anne, and thank our dear, sensible mother, who understands the agents and means of health."

"But Mary's mother is a sensible woman too."

"Not in her treatment of Mary, I am sure. Tell me how she lives.

What has she been about since I was here?"

"Why, soon after you went away, you know, I wrote to you that she had gone to the--School. You know her parents are willing to do everything for her--and Mary was very ambitious. They are hard students at that school. Mary told me she studied from eight to ten hours a day. She always got sick before examination, and had to send home for lots of pills. I remember Mrs. Marvel once sending her four boxes of Brandreth's at a time. But she took the first honours. At the end of her first term, she came home, looking, as you say, as if she had had a fever."

"And they sent her back?"

"Why, yes, certainly--term after term--for two years. You know Mary was always persevering; and so was her mother. And now they have their reward. There is not a girl anywhere who surpa.s.ses Mary for scholars.h.i.+p."

"Truly, they have their reward--infatuated people!" murmured Hasen.

"Have they taken any measures to restore her health, Anne?"

"Oh, yes. Mrs. Marvel does not permit her to do any hard work. She does not even let her sweep her own room; they keep a domestic, you know; and, last winter, she had an air-tight stove in her room, and it was kept constantly warm, day and night. The draft was opened early; and Mrs. Marvel let Mary remain in bed as long as she pleased; and, feeling weak, she seldom was inclined to rise before nine or ten."

"Go on, Anne. What other sanitary measures were pursued?"

"Just such as we all take, when we are ill. She doctors, if she is more unwell than usual; and she rides out almost every pleasant day.

There is nothing they won't do for her. There is no kind of pie or cake, sweetmeat or custard, that Mrs. Marvel does not make to tempt her appet.i.te. If she wants to go to 'the plain,' Mr. Marvel harnesses, and drives over. You know, father would think it ridiculous to do it for me."

"Worse than ridiculous, Anne!--What does the poor girl do? How does she amuse herself?"

"I do believe, Julius, you are interested in Mary Marvel!"

"I am. I was always curious as to the different modes of suicide people adopt. Has she any occupation--any pleasure?"

"Oh, yes; she reads for ever, and studies; she is studying German now."

"Poor Mary!"

"What in the world makes you pity Mary, Julius?"

"Because, Anne, she hag been deprived of nature's best gift--defrauded of her inheritance: a sound const.i.tution from temperate, active parents. One may have all the gifts, graces, charms, accomplishments, under Heaven, and, if they have not health, of what use or enjoyment are they? If that little, frail body of Mary Marvel's contained all that I have enumerated, it would be just the reverse of Pandora's box--having every good, but one curse that infected all."

"Dear Julius, I cannot bear to hear you talk so of Mary. I expected you would like her so much. I--I--hoped--. She is so pretty, so Lovely--she is fit for Heaven."

"She may be, Anne,--I do not doubt it; but she is very unfit for earth. What has her good, devoted, sensible, well-informed mother been about? If Mary had been taught the laws of health, and obeyed them, it would have been worth infinitely more to her than all she has got at your famous boarding-school, Ignorance of these laws is culpable in the mothers--disastrous, fatal to the daughters. It is a _disgrace_ to our people. The young women now coming on, will be as nervous, as weak, as wretched, as their unhappy mothers--languis.h.i.+ng embodiments of diseases--mementos of doctors and pill-boxes, dragging out life in air-tight rooms, religiously struggling to perform their duties, and dying before they have half finished the allotted term of life. They have no life--no true enjoyment of life!"

"What a tirade, Julius! Any one would think you were a cross old bachelor!"

"On the contrary, my dear Anne, it is because I am a young bachelor and desire not to be a much older one, that I am so earnest on this subject. I have been travelling now for two months in rail-cars and steamers, and I could fill a medical journal with cases of young women, married and single, whom I have met from town and country, with every ill that flesh is heir to. I have been an involuntary auditor of their charming little confidences of 'chronic headaches,'

nervous feelings,' 'weak-backs,' 'neuralgia,' and Heaven knows what all!"

"Oh, Julius! Julius!"

"It is true, Anne. And their whole care is, gentle and simple, to avoid the air; never to walk when they can ride; never to use cold water when they can get warm; never to eat bread when they can get cake, and so on, and so on, through the chapter. In the matter of eating and drinking, and such little garnitures as smoking and chewing, the men are worse. Fortunately, their occupations save most of them from the invalidism of the women. You think Mary Marvel beautiful?"

"No--not beautiful, perhaps,--but very, very pretty, and so loveable!"

"Well," rejoined Julius, coldly, after some hesitation, "Mary is pretty; her eye is beautiful; her whole face intelligent, but so pale, so thin--her lips so colourless--her hands so transparent, that I cannot look at her with any pleasure. I declare to you, Anne, when I see a woman with a lively eye, a clear, healthy skin, that shows the air of Heaven visits it daily--it may be, roughly--if it pleases, Heaven to roughen the day,--an elastic, vigorous step, and a strong, cheerful voice, I am ready to fall down and do her homage!"

Julius Hasen was sincere and zealous in his theory, but he is not the first man whose theories Love has overthrown. "Love laughs at locksmiths." and mischievously mocks at the stoutest bars and bolts of resolution.

Hasen pa.s.sed the summer in his native town. He renewed his intimacy with his old neighbours. He perceived in Mary graces and qualities that made him feel the heavenly and forget the earthly; and, in spite of his wise, well-considered resolution, in three months he had impressed on her "pale cheek" the kiss of betrothal, and slipt an the third finger of her "transparent hand," the "engagement ring!"

But, we must do Julius Hasen justice. When his laughing sister rallied him on his inconsistency, he said--

"You are right, Anne; but I adhere to my text, though I must now uphold it as a beacon--not as an example. I must say with the Turk--'It was written.'"

He was true to himself and true to his wife; and, at the risk of shocking our young lady readers, we must betray that, after the wedding-ring, Hasen's first gift to Mary was--"The Principles of Physiology applied to the Preservation of Health, and the Improvement of Physical and Mental Education; by Andrew Combe, M.

D." This book (which should be studied by every Mother in the United States) he accompanied by a solemn adjuration, that she would study and apply it. He did not stop here. After his marriage, he bought two riding-horses--mounted his bride on one and himself on the other, and thus performed the greater part of the journey to Indiana--only taking a rail-car for convenience, or a steamer for repose!

And, arrived at his Western home, and with the hearty acquiescence of his wife, who only needed to know the right, to pursue it, she began a physical life in obedience to the laws laid down by the said oracle, Andrew Combe.

Last fall, six years since his marriage, he brought his wife and two children to visit his Eastern friends. In reply to compliments on all hands, on his wife's improved health and beauty, he laughingly proposed to build, on the site of the old Indian dwelling, a quadrangular Temple, dedicated to the Four Ministers to Health--Air, Water, Exercise, and Regimen!

THE YOUNG HOUSEKEEPER.

"I HOPE, Emily, that you don't think I expect you to work--to spend the bright morning hours in the kitchen, when we commence keeping house," said George Brenton to his young wife.

This remark was made as he left the room, in reply to something which Emily had been saying relative to their projected plan of housekeeping. Mrs. Anderson, her mother, entered the parlour at one door, as her son-in-law left it by another. "And I hope," said she, "that, for your own sake as well as your husband's, you will not think of fulfilling his expectations--that is, strictly speaking."

"And why not? George is always pleased to have any suggestion of his attended to, however indirectly it may be made."

"He would not be pleased, if on trial it should compromise any of his customary enjoyments. George's income, as yet, is not sufficient to authorize you to keep more than one girl, who must be the maid-of-all-work; and even if you should be so fortunate as to procure one who understands the different kinds of household labour, there will be times when it will be necessary for you to perform some part of it yourself--much more to superintend it."

"But, mother, you know how I always hated the kitchen."

"This is a dislike which necessity will, or at least ought to overcome. You have never felt that there was much responsibility attached to the performance of such household tasks as I have always required of you, and in truth there never has been, as I could always have very well dispensed with them. I required them for your own good, rather than my own. Before habits of industry are formed, necessity is the only thing which will overcome our natural propensity to indulge in indolence."