University of Virginia Library

2. CHAPTER II.
FAMILY MATTERS.

Allow me to introduce my dramatis personæ,
severally and generally.

Mr. Morey was one of those characters, almost
peculiar to our republic, who have been every
thing by turns and nothing long, and done every
thing, and found nothing that would do.

He had been liberally educated, that is, so far as
a profuse expenditure of money in college, and a
parchment diploma when he left it, would give
him a right to the boast. He came on the stage of
the great world, in the character of a wit and an
exquisite—he soon fell in love, really, truly, worthily—so
far as the character of the lady was concerned,
and this love changed him to a poet and a
man of sentiment. He educated the young lady
he was intending to wed in the most elegant and
expensive manner. They were married, and began
life in style.

But a married man, in our country, cannot kill
time without business of some kind. Young Morey
was too rich to make business a necessary

occupation—so he declined entering any of the
learned professions; they were too laborious; but
polities was no labour—it was a short and glorious
career to immortality, and he became a politician.
In order to increase his influence, and prevent the
odium of aristocracy from attaching to him as a
merely rich man, living on the patrimony his
father had left him, Morey engaged in trade; he
furnished money, and his partner mind—at the
end of ten years the stock of both was expended.

About the same time, the political party which
Morey had assumed to lead, vanished like a shower
of shooting stars; and their light was absorbed or
lost in the rising sun of a more fortunate rival.
Morey was completely down.

But Morey had resources; he thought he had,
for he had often been told so, a great genius; he
would exercise it, he would now become a political
writer, an editor, and make his talents feared,
and his name respected. His enemies should feel
that neither the loss of office or wealth had power
to crush him.

In truth, they did not crush him; it was the
petty vexations of his craft, the small, but everpressing,
every-day cares of common life that
wore him out. He felt that he could, in the defence
of his family, have grappled with a lion; but
though they perished, he would not stand and be

stung by a host of mosquitos. So he soon abandoned
his editorship. He then tried several other
departments of business, but all in vain; and from
his last, that of clerk in the — Bank, he was released
by a severe pulmonary attack. He recovered;
but when, after a long year's confinement, he
was able to go abroad, he found his friends all
dead to him.

Mrs. Morey was just such a woman as Solomon
must have had in his mind when he said, “the
heart of her husband doth safely trust in her.”
She had been indebted to him for her education.
Her father had once been a great man on change,
but when the last change came to him, as he left no
money to his widow and children, no part of his
greatness descended to them. The eldest son went
out to India, where he was soon carried off by the
cholera; the second died at home of a fever, and
the poor mother, broken-hearted and discouraged,
soon followed him to the grave, leaving the beautiful
Isabel, a child of thirteen, to the mercy of a
heartless world.

It was in the deep weeds of mourning that the
lovely child first caught the eye of the gay Richard
Morey. She looked so fair, so pure, so like a new-made
star, just trembling through the clouds of
earth's foul atmosphere, that every soft and exalting
sentiment which female beauty and innocence

is capable of inspiring in the heart of a young man,
was kindled in that of Morey. Had the spirit of
chivalry dictated his course, it could not have been
more romantically refined. He adopted her as a
sister, placed her under the guardianship of his
aunt, provided for her every advantage of education,
and every enjoyment suited to her age, which
money could command. Till she was sixteen he
never hinted to her his partiality, or endeavoured
to gain her heart. But he had secured it long before;
and at seventeen she became his wife.

It was not for his wealth, station, education, appearance—not
for any or all of these, that Isabel
Erskine loved Richard Morey. It was his tenderness
and truth to her, his kindness that had
sustained the orphan, his generosity that had, by
affording her the means of an education, opened
in her mind and heart such rich sources of intellectual
and moral enjoyment; it was these recollections
which bound her soul to his, as it were,
absorbing her whole earthly being in his happiness,
and making the aim of her life to contribute
to the exaltation of his character.

How vividly she had enjoyed his prosperity, and
how deeply she felt his misfortunes, no language
could describe! Their reverses were never thought
of as affecting her own comforts—she would cheerfully
have

—if by that means her husband might have been
sustained in his place and fortune.

This sentiment it was which called forth the energies
of her character. She met, with cheerful
alacrity, every change of situation his decreasing
finances made necessary. She parted with her
splendid furniture without a sigh; gave up her
fashionable circle; even rejoiced when some of
these heartless beings affected to cut her, that she
was effectually freed from their intrusion, and had
her time to devote to domestic avocations, and to
the instruction of her young daughter, whom she
had taken from the expensive school where they
could no longer afford to keep her. When the
heart-corroding trouble of Mr. Morey had broken
his constitution, and brought on his long disease, it
was his affectionate wife that was, like a guardian
angel, about his bed. No fatigue seemed to depress,
no watching to weary her. Her gentle tones always
encouraged him to hope in the mercy of that
God who does not willingly afflict His children,
and to be resigned to His will. And when their
prayers were answered, and Mr. Morey went from
his sick chamber, a “sadder but a wiser man,” and
found the world all occupied, and no spot to call

his own, his devoted wife had provided him a
home.

It was her hardest trial to persuade and reconcile
him to the idea of her opening a boarding-house!
That his wife, his lovely and accomplished Isabel,
who had been the “cynosure of all eyes,” whose
grace and beauty had been the admiration of princes
and lords in the courts of Europe; that she should
be reduced to a mere housekeeper, a poor dependent
on the caprice of those who had money to pay
for their board—that such should sit at his table,
and subject her to the necessity of domestic cares
and toils—this was the bitterness of his lot!

“It is nothing, nothing, my dear Richard, in
comparison with what many of my sex have endured
for those they love,” said Mrs. Morey.
“Think of the trials and sufferings of Lady Russell!—O,
how trivial to her would have appeared
the mere exertion to obtain a living, if the life of
her husband might have been spared. And how
often, during your illness, in my prayers for your
recovery, did I feel that, if you might be spared, I
never could be otherwise than happy.”