University of Virginia Library

[Letter from Eva Van Arsdel to Mrs. Courtney.]

MY Dear Friend and Teacher:—I scarcely dare
trust myself to look at the date of your kind
letter. Can it really be that I have let it he
almost a year, hoping, meaning, sincerely intending to
answer it, and yet doing nothing about it? Oh! my
dear friend, I was a better girl while I was under your
care than I am now; in those times I really did my duties;
I never put off things, and I came somewhere near
satisfying myself. Now, I live in a constant whirl—a whirl
that never ceases. I am carried on from day to day, from
week to week, from month to month, with nothing to show
for it except a succession of what girls call “good times.”
I don't read any thing but stories; I don't study; I don't
write; I don't sew; I don't draw, or play, or sing, to any
real purpose. I just “go into society,” as they call it. I am
an idler, and the only thing I am good for is that I help to
adorn a house for the entertainment of idlers; that is
about all.

Now Lent has come, and I am thankful for the rest from
parties and dancing; but yet Lent makes me blue, because
it gives me some time to think; and besides that, when all
this whirligig stops awhile, I feel how dizzy and tired it has
made me. And then I think of all that you used to tell me
about the real object of life, and all that I so sincerely
resolved in my school-days that I would do and be, and I
am quite in despair about myself.

It is three years since I really “came out,” as the phrase
goes. Up to that time I was far happier than I have been
since, because I satisfied myself better. You always said,
dear friend, that I was a good scholar, and faithful to every

duty; and those days, when I had a definite duty for each
hour, and did it well, were days when I liked myself better
than now. I did enjoy study. I enjoyed our three years
in Europe, too, for then, with much variety and many
pleasures, I had regular studies; I was learning something,
and did not feel that I was a mere do-nothing.

But since I have been going into company I am perfectly
sick of myself. For the first year it was new to me, and I
was light-headed and thought it glorious fun. It was
excitement all the time—dressing, and going, and seeing,
and being admired, and, well—flirting. I confess I liked
it, and went into it with all my might,—parties, balls, opera,
concerts all the winter in New York, and parties, balls, etc.
at Newport and Saratoga in Summer. It was a sort of prolonged
delirium. I didn't stop to think about anything,
and lived like a butterfly, by the hour. Oh! the silly
things I have said and done! I find myself blushing hot
when I think of them, because, you see, I am so excitable,
and sometimes am so carried away, that afterward I don't
know what I may have said or done!

And now all this is coming to some end or other. This
going into company can't last forever. We must be married—that's
what we are for, they say; that's what all this
dressing, and dancing, and flying about has got to end in.
And so mamma and Aunt Maria are on thorns, to get me
off their hands and well established. I have been out
three seasons. I am twenty-three, and Alice has just come
out, and it is expected, of course, that I retire with honor.
I will not stop to tell you that I have rejected about the
usual number of offers that young ladies in my position get,
and I haven't seen anybody that I care a copper for.

Well, now, in this crisis, comes this Mr. Sidney, who
proposed to me last Fall, and I refused point-blank, simply
and only because I didn't love him, which seemed to me at
that time reason enough. Then mamma and Aunt Maria
took up the case, and told me that I was a foolish girl to
throw away such an offer: a man of good character and

standing, an excellent business man, and so immensely
rich—with such a splendid place at Newport, and another
in New York, and a fortune like Aladdin's lamp!

I said I didn't love him, and they said I hadn't tried;
that I could love him if I only made up my mind to, and why
wouldn't I try? Then papa turned in, who very seldom
has anything to say to us girls, or about any family matters,
and said how delighted he should be to see me married to
a man so capable of taking care of me. So, among them all,
I agreed that I would receive his visits and attentions as a
friend, with a view to trying to love him; and ever since I
have been banked up in flowers and confectionery, and
daily drifting into relations of closer and closer intimacy.

Do I find myself in love? Not a bit. Frankly, dear
friend, to tell the awful truth, the thing that weighs down
my heart is, that if this man were not so rich, I know I
shouldn't think of him. If he were a poor young man, just
beginning business, I know I should not give him a second
thought; neither would mother, nor Aunt Maria, nor any of
us. But here are all these worldly advantages! I confess
I am dazzled by them. I am silly, I am weak, I am ambitious.
I like to feel that I may have the prize of the season—the
greatest offer in the market. I know I am envied
and, oh, dear me! though it's naughty, yet one does like
to be envied. Besides, to tell the truth, though I am not in
love with him, I am not in love with anybody else. I respect
him, and esteem him, and all that, in a quiet, negative sort
of way, and mother and Aunt Maria say everything else
will come—after marriage. Will it? Is it right? Is this
the way I ought to marry?

But then, you know, I must marry somebody—that, they
say, is a fixed fact. It seems to be understood that I am a
sort of helpless affair, to be taken care of, and that now is
my time to be disposed of; and they tell me every day that
if I let this chance go, I shall regret it all my life.

Do you know I wish there were convents that one could
go out of the world into? Cousin Sophia Sewell has joined

the Sisters of St. John, and says she never was so happy.
She does look so cheerful, and she is so busy from morning
till night, and has the comfort of doing so much good to a
lot of those poor little children, that I envy her.

But I cannot become a Sister. What would mamma say
if she knew I even thought of it? Everybody would think
me crazy. Nobody would believe how much there is in me
that never comes to light, nor how miserable it makes me to
be the poor, half-hearted thing that I am.

You know, dear friend, about sister Ida's peculiar course,
and how very much it has vexed mamma. Yet, really and
truly, I can't help respecting Ida. It seems to me she shows
a real strength of principle that I lack. She went into gay
society only a little while before she gave it up, and her
reasons, I think, were good ones. She said it weakened
her health, weakened her mind; that there was no use in
it, and that it was just making her physically and morally
helpless, and that she wanted to live for a purpose of her
own. She wanted to go to Paris, and study for the medical
profession; but neither papa, nor mamma, nor any of the
family would hear of it. But Ida persisted that she would
do something, and finally papa took her into his business,
to manage the foreign correspondence, which she does admirably,
putting all her knowledge of languages to account.
He gives her the salary of a confidential clerk, and she lays
it up, with the intention finally of carrying her purpose.

Ida is a good, noble woman, of a strength and independence
perfectly incomprehensible to me. I can desire, but
I cannot do; I am weak and irresolute. People can talk
me round, and do anything with me, and I cannot help myself.

Another thing makes me unhappy. Ida refused to be
confirmed when I was, because, she said, confirmation was
only a sham; that the girls were just as wholly worldly after
as before, and that it did no earthly good.

Well, you see, I was confirmed; and, oh dear me! I
was sincere, God knows. I wanted to be good—to live a

higher, purer, nobler life than I have lived; and yet, after
all, it is I, the child of the Church, that am living a life
of folly, and show, and self-indulgence; and it is Ida, who
doubts the Church, that is living a life of industry, and
energy, and self-denial.

Why is it? The world that we promise to renounce,
that our sponsors promised that we should renounce—what
is it, and where is it? Do those vows mean anything? if
so, what? I mean to do all that I ought to; but how to
know what? There's Aunt Maria, my god-mother, she did
the renouncing for me at my baptism, and promised solemnly
that I should abjure “the vain pomp and glory of
the world, with all covetous desires of the same; that I
should not follow, or be led by them;” yet she has never,
that I can see, had one thought of anything else but how
to secure to me just exactly those very things. That I
should be first in society, be admired, followed, flattered,
and make a rich, splendid marriage, has been her very
heart's desire and prayer; and if I should renounce the vain
pomp and glory of the world, really and truly, she would
be utterly heart-broken. So would mamma.

I don't mean to lay all the blame on them, either. I have
been worldly, too, and ambitious, and wanted to shine, and
been only too willing to fall in with all their views.

But it really is hard for a person like me to stand alone,
against my own heart, and all my relatives, particularly
when I don't know exactly, in each case, what to do, and
what not; where to begin to resist, and where to yield.

Ida says that it is a sin to spend nights in dancing, so that
one has to lie in bed like an invalid all the next day. She
says it is a sin to run down one's health for no good purpose;
and yet we girls all do it—everybody does it. We
all go from party to party, from concert to ball, and from
ball to something else. We dance the German three or
four nights a week; and then, when Sunday comes, sometimes
I find that there is the Holy Communion—and then I

am afraid to go. I am like the man that had not on the
wedding garment.

It seems to me that our church services were made for
real Christians—people like the primitive Christians, who
made a real thing of it; they gave up everything and went
down and worshiped in the catacombs, for instance. I
remember seeing those catacombs where they held their
church far down under ground, when I was in Rome. There
would be some meaning in such people's using our service,
but when I try to go through with it I fear to take such
words on my lips. I wonder that nobody seems to feel how
awful those words are, and how much they must mean, if
they mean anything. It seems to me so solemn to say to
God, as we do say in the communion service, “Here we offer
and present unto Thee, O, Lord, ourselves, our souls and
bodies, to be a reasonable, holy, and living sacrifice unto
Thee”—

I see so many saying this who never seem to think of
it again; and, oh, my dear friend, I have said it myself, and
been no better afterward, and now, alas, I too often turn
away from the holy ordinance because I feel that it is only a
mockery to utter them, living as I do.

About this marriage. Mr. Sydney is not at all a religious
man; he is all for this world, and I don't think I shall grow
much better by it.

I wish there were somebody that could strengthen me, and
help me to be my better self. I have dreams of a sort of
man like King Arthur, and the Knights of the Holy Grail a
man, noble, holy, and religious. Such an one I would follow
if I broke away from every one else; but, alas, no such
are in our society, at least I never have met any. Yet I
have it in me to love, even to death, if I found a real hero.
I marked a place in a book the other day, which said:

“There is not so much difficulty in being willing to die for
one, as finding one worth dying for.”

I haven't, and they laugh at me as a romantic girl when I
tell them what I would do if I found my ideal.

Well, I suppose you see how it's all likely to end. We
drift, and drift and drift, and I shouldn't wonder if I drifted
at last into this marriage. I see it all before me, just what
it will be,—a wonderful wedding, that turns all New York
topsy turvy—diamonds, laces, cashmeres, infinite fiowers,
and tuberoses of course, till one's head aches,—clang and
ding, and bang and buzz;—triumphal processions to all the
watering-places; tour in Europe, and then society life in
New York, ad infinitum.

Oh, dear, if I only could get up some enthusiasm for him!
He likes me, but he don't like the things that I like, and it is
terribly slow work entertaining him—but when we are
married we shan't see so much of each other, I suppose, and
shall get on as other folks do. Papa and mamma hardly
ever see much of each other, but I suppose they are all
right. Aunt Maria says, love or no love at the beginning,
it all comes to this sort of jog-trot at the end. The husband
is the man that settles the bills, and takes care of the family,
that's all.

Ida says—but I won't tell you what Ida says—she always
makes me feel blue.

Do write me a good scolding letter; rouse me up; shame
me, scold me, talk hard to me, and see if you can't make
something of me. Perhaps it isn't too late.

[Letter from Mrs. Courtney to Eva Van Arsdel.]

My Dear Child:—You place me in an embarrassing position
in asking me to speak on a subject, when your parents
have already declared their wishes.

Nevertheless, my dear, I can but remind you that you
are the child of an higher than any earthly mother, and in an
affair of this moment you should take counsel of our holy
Church. Take your prayer-book and read her solemn service,

and see what those marriage vows are that you think
of taking. Are these to be taken lightly and unadvisedly?

I recollect, when I was a young girl, we used to read Sir
Charles Grandison, and one passage in the model Harriet
Byron's letters I copied into my scrap-book. Speaking of
one who had proposed to her, she says:

“He seems to want the mind that I would have the man
blessed with that I am to vow to love and honor. I purpose
whenever I marry to make a very good, and even dutiful
wife; must I not vow obedience, and shall I break my marriage
vow? I would not, therefore, on any consideration,
marry a man whose want of knowledge might make me
stagger in the performance of my duty to him; who would,
perhaps, command from caprice or want of understanding
what I think unreasonable to be complied with.”

I quote this because I think it is old fashioned good sense,
in a respectable old English novel, worth a dozen of the
modern school. To me, there is indicated in your description
of Mr. Sydney, just that lack of what you would need in a
husband, which would make difficult, perhaps impossible,
the performance of your marriage vows. It is evident that
his mind does not impress yours or control yours, and that
there are no mental sympathies between you.

That a man is a good business man; that he is fitted to
secure the rent or taxes of the house one lives in, and to pay
one's bills, is not all. Think, my child, that this man, for
whom you can “get up no enthusiasm,” whose company
wearies you, is the one whom you are proposing to take by
the hand before God's altar, and solemnly promise that forsaking
all others, you will keep only unto him, so long as you
both shall live, to love, to honor, and to obey. Can you
do it?

You say you can get up no enthusiasm for this man, yet
you have a conception of a man for whom you could leave all
things; whom you could love unto the death.

It is out of just such marriages, made by girls with just
such hearts as yours, that come all these troubles that are

bringing holy marriage into disrepute in our times. A
woman marries, thoughtlessly and unadvisedly, a man whom
she consciously does not love, hoping that she shall love him,
or that she shall do as well as others do; then by accident or
chance she is thrown into the society of the very one whom
she could have loved with enthusiasm, and married for himself
alone. The modern school of novels are full of these
wretched stories, and people now are clamoring for free
divorce, to get out of marriages that they never ought to
have fallen into.

Amid all this confusion the Church stands from age to age
and teaches. She shows you exactly what you are to promise;
she warns you against promising lightly, or unadvisedly,
and I can only refer my dear child to her mother's
lessons. Marriage vows, like confirmation vows, are recorded
in Heaven, and must not be broken.

The time for reflection is before they are made. Instead
of clamoring for free divorce, as a purifier of marriage, all
Christians should purify it as the church recommends, by
the great care with which they enter into it. That is my
doctrine, my love. I am a good old English Church-woman,
and don't believe in any modern theories. The teachings of
the prayer-book are enough for me. I know that, in spite of
them all, there are thoughtless confirmation vows and marriage
vows daily uttered in our church, but it is not for want
of clear and solemn instruction. But you, my love, with
your conscientiousness, and good sense, and really noble
nature, will I am sure act worthily of yourself in this matter.

Another consideration I suggest to you. This man, whom
I suppose to be a worthy and excellent man, has his rights.
He has the right to the whole heart of the woman he marries
—to whom at the altar he gives himself and all which he
possesses. A woman who has what you call an enthusiasm
for a man, can do much with him. She can bear with his
faults; she can inspire and lead him; she can raise him in
the scale of being. But without this enthusiasm, this real
love, she can do nothing of the kind; it is a thing that

cannot be dissembled, or affected. And after marriage, the
man who does not find this in his wife, has the best reason
to think himself defrauded.

Now, if for the sake of possessing a man's worldly goods,
his advantages of fortune and station, you take that relation
when you really are unable to give him your heart, you act
dishonestly. You take and enjoy what you cannot pay for.
Not only that, but you deprive him through all his life of the
blessing of being really loved, which he might obtain with
some other woman.

The fact is, you have been highly cultivated in certain
departments; your tastes would lead you into the world of
art and literature. He has been devoted to business, and in
that way has amassed a fortune, but he has no knowledge,
and no habits that would prepare him to sympathise with
you.

I am not here undervaluing the worth of those strong,
sterling qualities which belong to an upright and vigorous
man. There are many women who are impressed by just
that sort of power, and admire it in men, as they do physical
strength and courage; it dazzles their imagination, and
they fall in love accordingly. You happen to have another
kind of fancy—he is not of your sort.

But there are doubtless women whom he would fully satisfy;
who would find him a delightful companion who, in
short, would be exactly what you are not, in love with him.
My dear, men need wives who are in love with them. Simple
tolerance is not enough to stand the strain of married life,
and to marry when you cannot truly love is to commit an
act of dishonesty and injustice. Remembering, therefore,
that you are about to do what never can be undone, and
what must make or mar your whole future, I speak this in
all sincere plainness, because I am, and ever must be,

[Ida Van Arsdel to Mrs. Courtney.]

My Dear Friend:—I am glad you have written as you have
to Eva. It is perfectly inexplicable to me that a girl of her
general strength of character can be so undecided. Eva has
been deteriorating ever since she came from Europe. This
fashionable life is to mind and body just like a hotbed to
tender plants in summer, it wilts everything down. Eva was
a good scholar and I had great hopes of her. She had a
warm heart; she has really high and noble aspirations, but
for two or three years past she has done nothing but run
down her health and fritter away her mind on trifles. She
is not half the girl she was at school, either mentally or
physically, and I am grieved and indignant at the waste.
Her only chance of escape and salvation is to marry a true
man.

But when people set out as a first requisite that the man
must be rich, how many are the chances of finding that?

The rich men of America are either rich men's sons, who
from all I have seen of them, are poor trash enough, or business
men, who have made wealth by their own exertions.
But how few there are who make money, who do not sacrifice
their spiritual and nobler natures to do it? How few
with whom the making of money is not the beginning, middle,
and end of life, and how little can such men do to
uphold and elevate the moral nature of a wife!

Mr. Sydney is a man, heart, soul, and strength, interested
in that mighty game of chance and skill by which, in
America, money is made. He is a railroad king—a prince
of stocks—a man going with a forty thousand steam power
through New York waters. He wants a wife—a brilliant,
attractive, showy, dressy wife, to keep his house and ornament
his home; and he is at Eva's feet, because she is, on the
whole, the belle of his circle. He chooses en Grand Seigneur,
and undoubtedly he is as much in love with her as such a
kind of man can be. But, in fact, he knows nothing about
Eva; he does not even know enough to know the dangers
of marrying such a woman. With all her fire, and all her

softness, all her restless enthusiasms, her longings and aspirations
and inconsistencies, what could he do with her?
The man who marries Eva ought to know her better than
she knows herself, but this man never would know her, if
they lived together an age. He has no traits by which to
estimate her, and the very best result of the marriage will
be a mutual laisser aller of two people who agree not to
quarrel, and to go their own separate ways, he to his world
and she to hers; and this sort of thing is what is called in
our times a good marriage.

I am out of patience with Eva for her very virtues. It is
her instinct to want to please and to comply, and because
mamma and aunt Maria have set their heart on this match,
and because she is empty-hearted and tired, and ennuyeuse,
she has no strength to stand up for herself. Her very conscientiousness
weakens her; she doubts, but does not decide.
She has just enough of everything in her nature to get her
into trouble, and not enough to get her out. A phrenologist
told her she needed destructiveness. Well, she does. The
pain-giving power is a most necessary part of a well organized
human being. Nobody can ever do anything without
the courage to be disagreeable at times, which I have plenty
of. They do not try to control me, or enslave me. Why?
Because I made my declaration of independence, and planted
my guns, and got ready for war. This is dreadfully unamiable,
but it did the thing; it secured peace; I am let alone.
I am allowed my freedom, but everybody interferes with
Eva. She is conquered territory—has no rights that anybody
is bound to respect. It provokes me.

As to the religious part of your letter, dear friend, I
thank you for it. I cannot see things as you do, however.
To me it appears that in our day everything has got to be
brought to the simple test of, What good does it do? If
baptism, confirmation and eucharist make unworldly, self-denying,
self-sacrificing people just as certainly as petunia-seed
make petunias, why, then, nobody will have any doubt
of their necessity, and the church will have its throngs. I

don't see now that they do. Go into a fashionable party I
have been in, and watch the girls, and see if you can tell
who have been baptized and confirmed, and who have not.

The first Christians carried Christianity over all the pomp
and power of the world simply by the unworldly life they
lived. Nobody doubted where the true church was in those
days. Christians were a set of people like nobody else in the
world, and whenever and wherever and by whatever means
that kind of character that they had is created, it will have
power.

I like the Episcopal Church, but I cannot call it the church
till I see evidences that it answers practically the purpose of
a church better than any other. For my part I go to hear a
dreadfully heretical preacher on Sunday, who lectures in a
black-coat in a hall, simply because he talks to me on points
of duty, which I am anxious to hear discussed. Eva, poor
child, wears down her health and strength with night after
night in society, and spends all her money on dress; doing
no earthly thing for any living creature, except in the pleasure-giving
way, like a bird or a flower, and then is shocked
and worried about me because I read scientific works on
Sunday.

I make conscience of good health, early hours, thick
shoes, and mental and bodily drill, and subjection. Please
God, I mean to do something worthy a Christian woman
before I die, and to open a path through which weaker
women shall walk out of this morass of fashion-slavery, and
subjection, where they flounder now. I take for my motto
that sentence from one of Dr. Johnson's allegories you once
read to us: “No life pleasing to God that is not useful to
man.” I hope, my dear friend, I shall keep the spirit of
Christ, though I wander from the letter. Such words as
you have spoken to me, however, can never come amiss.
Perhaps when I am old and wiser, like many another self-confident
wanderer, I may be glad to come back to my
mother's house, and then, perhaps, I shall be a stiff little
church-woman. At all events I shall always be your loving
and grateful pupil.

[Eva Van Arsdel to Isabel Convers.]

My Dear Belle: Thanks for your kind letter with all its
congratulations and inquiries,—for though as yet I have no
occasion for congratulation, and nothing to answer to
inquiry, I appreciate these all the same.

No—Belle, the “old sixpence” is not gone yet,—you will
have to keep to your friend a while longer. I am not
engaged, and you have full liberty to contradict that report
everywhere and anywhere.

Mr. Sydney is, of course, very polite, and very devoted,
very much a friend of the family and all that, but I am not
engaged to him, and you need never believe any such thing
of me till you hear it directly, under my own hand and seal.

There have been a lot of engagements in our set lately.
Lottie Trevillian is going to marry Sim Carrington, and
Bessie Somers has at last decided to take old Watkins—
though he is twenty-five years older than she,—and then
there's Cousin Maria Elmore has just turned a splendid
affair with young Livingstone, really the most brilliant
match of the winter. I am positively ashamed of myself,
under these circumstances, to be sitting still, and unable
to report progress. My old infelicity in making up my
mind seems to haunt me, and I dare say I shall live to be a
dreadful example.

By the by, I have had a curious sort of an adventure
lately. You know when I was up at Englewood visiting
you last summer, I was just raving over those sonnets on
Italy, which appeared in the “Milky Way” over the signature
of “X.” You remember those verses on “Fra Angelico”
and the “Campanile,” don't you? Well, I have found out
who this X is. It's a Mr. Henderson that is now in New
York, engaged on the staff of “The Great Democracy.” We
girls have noticed him once or twice walking with Jim
Fellows—(you remember Jim;) Jim says he is a perfect
hermit, devoted to study and writing, and never goes into
society. Well, wasn't it odd that the fates should have
thrown this hermit just in my way?

The other morning I came over from Brooklyn, where I
had been spending three days with Sophia, and when I got
into the car who should I see but this identical Mr. Henderson
right opposite to me. I took a quiet note of him,
between whiles thinking of one or two lines in his sonnet.
He is nice-looking, manly, that is, and has fine dark eyes.
Well, do you know, the most provoking thing, when I came
to pay my fare I found that I had no tickets nor small
change—what could have possessed me to come so I can't
imagine, and mamma makes it all the worse by saying it's
just like me. However, he interposed and arranged it for
me in the nicest and quietest way in the world. I was going
up to call at Jennings', the other side of the Astor House, to
see about my laces, but by the time we got there, there
came on such a rain as was perfectly dreadful. My dear, it
was one of those shocking affairs peculiar to New York,
which really come down by the bucketful, and I had nothing
for it but to cross Broadway as quick as I could to catch a
Fifth Avenue omnibus, and let my lace go till a more convenient
season.

Well, as I stepped out into the storm, who should I
find quite beside me but this gentleman, with his umbrella
over my head. I could see at the moment that it had one
of those quaint handles that they carve in Dieppe. We
were among cars, and policemen, and trampling horses, and
so on, but he got me safe into an up-town omnibus, and I
felt so much obliged to him.

I supposed, of course, that there it might end, but, would
you believe it, quite to my surprise, he got into the omnibus
too! “After all,” I said to myself, “perhaps his route lies up
town like mine.” He wasn't in the least presuming, and
sat there very quietly, only saying, “Permit me,” as he passed
up a ticket for me when the fare was to be paid, so saving
me that odious necessity of making change with my great
awkward bill. I was mortified enough—but knowing who
it was, had a sort of internal hope that one day I could apologize
and make it all right, for, my dear, I determined on the

spot that we would invite him to our receptions, and get
Jim Fellows to make him come. I think there is no test of
a gentleman like the manner in which he does a favor for a
stranger lady whom the fates cast upon his protection. So
many would be insufferably presuming and assuming—he
was just right, so quiet, so simple, so unpretentious, yet so
considerate.

He rode on very quietly till we were opposite our house,
and then was on duty again with his umbrella, up to the
very door of the house, and holding it over me while we
were waiting. I couldn't help expressing my thanks, and
asking him to walk in; but he excused himself, giving his
card, and saying he would be happy to call and inquire
after my health, etc.; and I gave him mine, with our
Wednesday receptions on it, and told him how pleased
mamma would be to have him call. It was all I could do to
avoid calling him by his name, and letting him see how
much I knew about him; but I didn't. It was rather awkward,
wasn't it?

Now, I wonder if he will call on Wednesdays. Jim Fellows
says he is so shy, and never goes out; and you know if
there is anything that can't be had, that is the thing one is
wild to get; so mamma and all of us are quite excited, and
wondering if he will come. Mamma is all anxiety to apologize,
and all that, for the trouble I have given him.

It's rather funny, isn't it—an adventure in prosaic old
New York? I dare say, now, he has forgotten all about it,
and never will think of coming into such a trifling set as we
girls are. Well, I will let you know if he comes.