| | 1 | Author: | Curtis
George William
1824-1892 | Add | | | Title: | The Potiphar papers  | | | | 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: | It is surely unnecessary to call the attention
of so astute an observer, and so austere a critic,
as yourself, to the fact that the title of the leading
essay in this little volume (of which, permit
me to say, you are so essential an ornament) is
marked as a quotation; and a quotation, as you
will very well remember, from the lips of our
friend, Mrs. Potiphar, herself. If gilt were only gold, or sugar-candy common
sense, what a fine thing our society would
be! If to lavish money upon objets de vertu,
to wear the most costly dresses, and always to
have them cut in the height of the fashion; to
build houses thirty feet broad, as if they were
palaces; to furnish them with all the luxurious
devices of Parisian genius; to give superb banquets,
at which your guests laugh, and which
make you miserable; to drive a fine carriage
and ape European liveries, and crests, and coats-of-arms;
to resent the friendly advances of your
baker's wife, and the lady of your butcher (you
being yourself a cobbler's daughter); to talk
much of the “old families” and of your aristocratic
foreign friends; to despise labour; to
prate of “good society;” to travesty and parody,
in every conceivable way, a society which we
know only in books and by the superficial
observation of foreign travel, which arises out
of a social organization entirely unknown to us,
and which is opposed to our fundamental and
essential principles; if all this were fine, what
a prodigiously fine society would ours be! My dear Caroline,—Lent came so frightfully
early this year, that I was very much afraid
my new bonnet à l'Impératrice would not be out
from Paris soon enough. But fortunately it arrived
just in time, and I had the satisfaction
of taking down the pride of Mrs. Crœsus, who
fancied hers would be the only stylish hat in
church the first Sunday. She could not keep
her eyes away from me, and I sat so unmoved,
and so calmly looking at the Doctor, that she
was quite vexed. But, whenever she turned
away, I ran my eyes over the whole congregation,
and would you believe that, almost without
an exception, people had their old things?
However, I suppose they forgot how soon Lent
was coming. As I was passing out of church,
Mrs. Croesus brushed by me: It certainly is not papa's fault that he doesn't
understand French; but he ought not to pretend
to. It does put one in such uncomfortable situations
occasionally. In fact, I think it would be
quite as well if we could sometimes “sink the
paternal,” as Timon Crœsus says. I suppose
every body has heard of the awful speech pa
made in the parlor at Saratoga. My dearest
friend, Tabby Dormouse, told me she had heard
of it every where, and that it was ten times as
absurd each time it was repeated. By the by,
Tabby is a dear creature, isn't she? It's so nice
to have a spy in the enemy's camp, as it were,
and to hear every thing that every body says
about you. She is not handsome,—poor, dear
Tabby! There's no denying it, but she can't
help it. I was obliged to tell young Downe so,
quite decidedly, for I really think he had an
idea she was good-looking. The idea of Tabby
Dormouse being handsome! But she is a useful
little thing in her way; one of my intimates. My Dear Mrs. Downe,—Here we are at last!
I can hardly believe it. Our coming was so sudden
that it seems like a delightful dream. You
know at Mrs. Potiphar's supper last August in
Newport, she was piqued by Gauche Boosey's
saying, in his smiling, sarcastic way: I hear and obey. You said to me, Go, and I
went. You now say, come, and I am coming,
with the readiness that befis a slave, and the
cheerfulness that marks the philosopher. I am very anxious that you should allow me
to receive your son Frederic as a pupil, at my
parsonage, here in the country. I have not lived
in the city without knowing something about
it, despite my cloth, and I am concerned at the
peril to which every young man is there exposed.
There is a proud philosophy in vogue
that every thing that can be injured had better
be destroyed as rapidly as possible, and put out
of the way at once. But I recall a deeper and
tenderer wisdom which declared, “A bruised
reed will he not break.” The world is not
made for the prosperous alone, nor for the
strong. We may wince at the truth, but we
must at length believe it,—that the poor in
spirit, and the poor in will, and the poor in
success, are appointed as pensioners upon our
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