| | 1 | Author: | Curtis
George William
1824-1892 | Requires cookie* | | | Title: | Trumps  | | | | Published: | 2003 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | University of Virginia Library, Early American Fiction, 1789-1875 | UVA-LIB-EarlyAmFict1789-1875 | | | | Description: | Forty years ago Mr. Savory Gray was a prosperous merchant.
No gentleman on 'Change wore more spotless linen
or blacker broadcloth. His ample white cravat had an air of
absolute wisdom and honesty. It was so very white that his
fellow-merchants could not avoid a vague impression that he
had taken the church on his way down town, and had so purified
himself for business. Indeed a white cravat is strongly
to be recommended as a corrective and sedative of the public
mind. Its advantages have long been familiar to the clergy;
and even, in some desperate cases, politicians have found a resort
to it of signal benefit. There are instructive instances,
also, in banks and insurance offices of the comfort and value
of spotless linen. Combined with highly-polished shoes, it is
of inestimable mercantile advantage. “My dear Abel,—You have now nearly reached the age
at which, by your grandfather's direction, you were to leave
school and enter upon active life. Your grandfather, who
had known and respected Mr. Gray in former years, left you,
as you know, a sum sufficient for your education, upon condition
of your being placed at Mr. Gray's until your nineteenth
birthday. That time is approaching. Upon your nineteenth
birthday you will leave school. Mr. Gray gives me the best
accounts of you. My plans for you are not quite settled.
What are your own wishes? It is late for you to think of
college; and as you will undoubtedly be a business man, I see
no need of your learning Greek or writing Latin poetry. At
your age I was earning my own living. Your mother and
the family are well. Your affectionate father, “Dear Abel,—I am very glad to hear from Mr. Gray of
your fine progress in study, and your general good character
and deportment. I trust you give some of your leisure to
solid reading. It is very necessary to improve the mind.
I hope you attend to religion. It will help you if you keep a
record of Dr. Peewee's texts, and write abstracts of his sermons.
Grammar, too, and general manners. I hear that you
are very self-possessed, which is really good news. My friend
Mrs. Beacon was here last week, and she says you bow beautifully!
That is a great deal for her to admit, for her son
Bowdoin is one of the most elegant and presentable young men
I have ever seen. He is very gentlemanly indeed. He and
Alfred Dinks have been here for some time. My dear son,
could you not learn to waltz before you come home? It is
considered very bad by some people, because you have to put
your arm round the lady's waist. But I think it is very foolish
for any body to set themselves up against the customs of
society. I think if it is permitted in Paris and London, we
needn't be so very particular about it in New York. Mr.
Dinks and Mr. Beacon both waltz, and I assure you it is very
distingué indeed. But be careful in learning. Your sister
Fanny says the Boston young men stick out their elbows
dreadfully when they waltz, and look like owls spinning on invisible
teetotums. She declares, too, that all the Boston girls
are dowdy. But she is obliged to confess that Mr. Beacon
and Mr. Dinks are as well dressed and gentlemanly and dance
as well as our young men here. And as for the Boston ladies,
Mr. Dinks tells Fanny that he has a cousin, a Miss Wayne,
who lives in Delafield, who might alter her opinion of the
dowdiness of Boston girls. It seems she is a great heiress,
C
and very beautiful; and it is said here (but you know how
idle such gossip is) that she is going to marry her cousin, Alfred
Dinks. He does not deny it. He merely laughs and
shakes his head—the truth is, he hasn't much to say for himself.
Bless me! I've got to take another sheet. “Dear Sir,—I trust you will pardon this intrusion. It is a
long time since I have had the honor of writing to you; but I
thought you would wish to know that Miss Wayne will be in
New York, for the first time, within a day or two after you
receive this letter. She is with her aunt, Mrs. Dinks, who
will stay at Bunker's. “Dear Aunty,—We're about going away, and we have
been so gay that you would suppose I had had `society'
enough. Do you remember our talk? There have been a
great many people here from every part of the country; and
it has been nothing but bowling, walking, riding, dancing,
dining at the lake, and listening to music in the moonlight, all
the time. Aunt Dinks has been very kind, but although I
have met a great many people I have not made many friends.
I have seen nobody whom I like as much as Amy Waring or
Mr. Lawrence Newt, of whom I wrote you from New York,
and they have neither of them been here. I think of Pinewood
a great deal, but it seems to me long and long ago that
I used to live there. It is strange how much older and different
I feel. But I never forget you, dearest Aunty, and I should
like this very moment to stand by your side at your window
as I used to, and look out at the hills, or, better still, to lie in
your lap or on my bed, and hear you sing one of the dear old
hymns. I thought I had forgotten them until lately. But I
remember them very often now. I think of Pinewood a great
deal, and I love you dearly; and yet somehow I do not feel
as if I cared to go back there to live. Isn't that strange?
Give my love to Grandpa, and tell him I am neither engaged
to a foreign minister, nor a New York merchant, nor a Southern
planter—nor to any body else. But he must keep up
heart, for there's plenty of time yet. Good-by, dear Aunty.
I seem to hear you singing,
`Oh that I now the rest might know!'
Do you know how often you used to sing that? Good-by. “My dear Mr. Newt,—Mrs. Simcoe writes me that grandfather
has had a stroke of paralysis, and lies very ill. Aunt
Dinks has, therefore, resolved to leave on Monday, and I shall
go with her. She seems very much affected, indeed, by the
news. Mrs. Simcoe writes that the doctor says grandfather
will hardly live more than a few days, and she wishes you
could go on with us. I know that you have some kind of
association with Pinewood—you have not told me what. In
this summer weather you will find it very beautiful; and you
know how glad I shall be to have you for my guest. My
guest, I say; for while grandfather lies so dangerously ill I
must be what my mother would have been—mistress of the
house. I shall hardly feel more lonely than I always did when
he was active, for we had but little intercourse. In case of his
death, which I suppose to be very near, I shall not care to live
at the old place. In fact, I do not very clearly see what I am
to do. But there is One who does; and I remember my dear
old nurse's hymn, `On Thee I cast my care.' Come, if you can. “My dear Belch,—B. Newt, Son, & Co. have stopped.
We do not hear of an assignment, so desire you to take steps
at once to secure judgment upon the inclosed account. “My dear Sir,—I have just heard of your misfortunes.
Don't be dismayed. In the shindy of life every body must
have his head broken two or three times, and in our country
'tis a man's duty to fall on his feet. Such men as Abel Newt
are not made to fail. I want to see you immediately. “Fellow-Citizens, — Deeply grateful for the honorable
trust you have so long confided to me, nothing but the imperative
duty of attending to my private affairs, seriously injured
by my public occupations, would induce me to resign it into
your hands. But while his country may demand much of
every patriot, there is a point, which every honest man feels,
at which he may retire. I should be deeply grieved to take
this step did I not know how many abler representatives you
can find in the ranks of that constituency of which any man
may be proud. I leave the halls of legislation at a moment
when our party is consolidated, when its promise for the future
was never more brilliant, and when peace and prosperity
seem to have taken up their permanent abode in our happy
country, whose triumphant experiment of popular institutions
makes every despot shake upon his throne. Gentlemen, in
bidding you farewell I can only say that, should the torch of
the political incendiary ever be applied to the sublime fabric
of our system, and those institutions which were laid in our
father's struggles and cemented with their blood, should totter
and crumble, I, for one, will be found going down with the
ship, and waving the glorious flag of our country above the
smouldering ruins of that moral night. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
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