Fresh Leaves
PREFACE
Every writer has his parish. To mine, I need offer no apology for presenting,
First, a new story which has never before appeared in print;
Secondly, the “hundred-dollar-a-column story,” respecting the remuneration of which, skeptical paragraphists have afforded me so much amusement. (N. B. – My banker and I can afford to laugh!) This story having been published when “The New York Ledger” was in the dawn of its present unprecedented circulation, and never having appeared elsewhere, will, of course, be new to many of my readers;
Thirdly, I offer them my late fugitive pieces, which have often been requested, and which, with the other contents of this volume, I hope will cement still stronger our friendly relations.
A BUSINESS MAN’S HOME; OR, A STORY FOR HUSBANDS
CHAPTER I
“There’s your father, children.”
The piano was immediately closed by the young performer, and the music-stool put carefully away, that the new-comer might have an unrestricted choice of seats; a wide space was immediately cleared before the grate which had been carefully replenished with coal but half an hour before; a stray cricket was hastily picked up and pushed beneath the sofa, and an anxious glance was thrown around the room by Mrs. Wade as her husband entered the room.
“Too much light here,” said the latter, as he turned down the gas burner. “I hate such a glare. Waste of coal, too; fire enough to roast an ox, and coal seven dollars a ton;” and Mr. Wade seized the poker and gave the grate a vindictive poke.
Mrs. Wade sighed – she had too long been accustomed to such scenes to do any thing else. It was not the first time, nor the second, nor the hundredth, that her unwearied endeavors to make home cheerful had been met with a similar repulse; the young people, so gay but a moment before, skipped, one by one, out of the room, closing the door noiselessly behind them as culprit-like they glided away.
“Heigh-ho,” muttered Mr. Wade, as he threw himself down, boots and all, on the sofa, “heigh-ho.”
“Does your head ache?” asked his patient wife.
“I want my tea,” growled Mr. Wade, without deigning a reply.
Mrs. Wade might have answered – most women would – that it had been ready this half-hour. She might also have said that she had just come up from the kitchen, where she had been to see that his favorite dish of toast was prepared to his liking. She might also have said that she did not like to order tea till he had signified his wish for it – but as I said before, Mrs. Wade had been too long in school not to have learned her lesson well. So she merely touched her forefinger to the bell, for Betty to bring in the tea.
It was strong and hot – Mr. Wade could not deny it; – the milk was sweet; so was the butter, the toast was unexceptionable, and enough of it; the cake light, and the sweetmeats unfermented. Poor, ill-used Mr. Wade – he was in that most provoking of all dilemmas to a petulant temper, there was nothing to fret about.
“There’s the door bell,” he exclaimed, inwardly relieved at the idea of an escape-valve; “now I suppose I shall be talked deaf by that silly Mrs. Jones and her daughter, or bored by that stupid Mr. Forney; it’s very strange that a man can not enjoy his family one evening free from interruption.”
No such thing – Mr. Wade was cheated out of a fresh growl; the new arrival being a carpet-bag, and its accessory, Mr. John Doe, a brother-growler, whom Mr. Wade would rather have seen, if possible, than a new gold dollar. Mr. John Doe, as sallow as a badly-preserved pickle, and about as sweet – a man all nerves and frowns – a walking thunder-cloud, muttering vengeance against any thing animate, or inanimate, which had the temerity to bask in the sunshine. Mr. John Doe, a worse drug than any in his apothecary’s shop, who believed in the eternal destruction of little dead babies; turned the world into one vast charnel-house, and reversed the verdict of Him who pronounced it “very good.”
“Ah – how d’ye do – how dy’e do?” said Mr. Wade, with an impromptu lugubrious whine, as Mr. Doe ran his fingers through his grizzled locks, and deposited his time-worn carpet-bag in the corner; “it is pleasant to see a friend.”
“Thank you, thank you,” replied Mr. Doe, lowering himself as carefully into his chair as if he was afraid his joints would become unriveted; “there’s no knowing how many more times you may have to say that; these sudden changes of weather are dreadful underminers of a man’s constitution. Traveling, too, racks me to pieces; I can’t sleep in a strange bed, nor get any thing I can eat when I wake, my appetite is so delicate; – sometimes I think it don’t make much difference – we are poor creatures – begin to die as soon as we are born – how do you do, Mr. Wade? You look to me like a man who is going to have the jaundice, eye-balls yellow, etc. – any appetite?”
“Not much,” said Mr. Wade, unbuttoning his lower vest button, under which were snugly stowed away a pile of buttered toast, three cups of tea, and preserved peaches enough to make a farmer sick – “not much; – a man who works as hard as I do, gets too exhausted to eat when it comes night, or if he does, his food does not digest; how’s your family?”
“So, so,” muttered Doe, with an expressive shrug; “children are a great care, Mr. Wade, a great care – my John don’t take that interest in the drug business that I wish he did; he always has some book or other on hand, reading; I am afraid he never will be good for any thing; your book-worms always go through the world, knocking their heads against facts. I shouldn’t wonder, after all my care, if he turned out a poor miserable author; sometimes I think what is to be, will be, and there’s no use trying.”
“Is not that fatalism?” quietly interposed Mrs. Wade, blushing the next moment that she had so far departed from “The Married Woman’s Guide,” as to question an opinion which her husband had indorsed by his silence. “Children are a great care, ’tis true, but it always seemed to me that the care brought its own sweet reward.”
Mr. Doe wheeled round to look in the face this meek wife, whose disappointed heart, turning to her children for that comfort which she had in vain looked for from her husband, could ill brook that the value of this coveted treasure should have such depreciating mention.
“Pshaw! what signify words?” said her husband. “I hate argument; besides, women can’t argue – every body knows that; and every body knows that if a man wants his children to do, or be, one thing, they are sure to do, or be, just the opposite. I’ve no doubt it will turn out just so with ours; there is no counting on ’em. In my day, if a man was a farmer, his son was a farmer after him, and never thought of being any thing else. Nowadays, children have to be consulted as to ‘their bent.’ Fudge – fiddlestick; their bent is for mischief and dodging work, and a tight rein and a good smart rod is the best cure for it.”
Just at this point Mr. Doe gave a dismal groan, and doubled himself up like a jack-knife. “A touch of my old complaint,” said he, holding on to his waist-band. “Rheumatism – it will carry me off some day. Mrs. Wade, if you will be so good as to look in my carpet-bag, you will find a plaster which I never travel without; and I will trouble you, Mrs. Wade, to have my bed warmed, and a fire in the room where you intend I should sleep; and if there should be any cracks in the windows, will you have the goodness to nail up a blanket over them? and I would like a very warm comforter, if you please, and a jug of hot water at my feet, if it would not be too much trouble.”
“Of course not,” said Mr. Wade, settling himself very comfortably down into his ample easy-chair; “of course not; Mrs. Wade, won’t you attend to it?”
“And, Mrs. Wade, if you’d be so kind as to put the feather bed uppermost, and give me cotton sheets instead of linen; I should also prefer a hair to a feather pillow: I consider feathers too heating for my head; I am obliged to be careful of my head.”
“Certainly,” repeated Mr. Wade. “Mrs. Wade will see to it.” And as she moved out of the room to execute these orders, these two despondent Siamese drew their chairs closer together, to bemoan the short-comings of two of the most long-suffering wives who ever wore themselves to skeletons, trying to please husbands who were foreordained not to be