University of Virginia Library

1. CHAPTER I.
THE AUTHOR DEFINES HIS POSITION.

IT appears to me that the world is returning to its
second childhood, and running mad for Stories.
Stories! Stories! Stories! everywhere; stories in
every paper, in every crevice, crack and corner of the house.
Stories fall from the pen faster than leaves of autumn, and
of as many shades and colorings. Stories blow over here
in whirlwinds from England. Stories are translated from
the French, from the Danish, from the Swedish, from the
German, from the Russian. There are serial stories for
adults in the Atlantic, in the Overland, in the Galaxy, in
Harper's, in Scribner's. There are serial stories for youthful
pilgrims in Our Young Folks, the Little Corporal, “Oliver
Optic,” the Youth's Companion, and very soon we anticipate
newspapers with serial stories for the nursery. We shall have
those charmingly illustrated magazines, the Cradle, the Rocking
Chair, the First Rattle, and the First Tooth, with successive
chapters of “Goosy Goosy Gander,” and “Hickory
Dickory Dock,” and “Old Mother Hubbard,” extending
through twelve, or twenty-four, or forty-eight numbers.

I have often questioned what Solomon would have said if
he had lived in our day. The poor man, it appears, was
somewhat blasé with the abundance of literature in his times,
and remarked that much study was weariness to the flesh.
Then, printing was not invented, and “books” were all
copied by hand, in those very square Hebrew letters where
each letter is about as careful a bit of work as a grave-stone.
And yet, even with all these restrictions and circumscriptions,
Solomon rather testily remarked, “Of making many

books there is no end!” What would he have said had he
looked over a modern publisher's catalogue?

It is understood now that no paper is complete without its
serial story, and the spinning of these stories keeps thousands
of wheels and spindles in motion. It is now understood
that whoever wishes to gain the public ear, and to
propound a new theory, must do it in a serial story. Hath
any one in our day, as in St. Paul's, a psalm, a doctrine, a
tongue, a revelation, an interpretation—forthwith he wraps
it up in a serial story, and presents it to the public. We
have prison discipline, free-trade, labor and capital, woman's
rights, the temperance question, in serial stories. We have
Romanism and Protestantism, High Church, and Low Church
and no Church, contending with each other in serial stories,
where each side converts the other, according to the faith of
the narrator.

We see that this thing is to go on. Soon it will be necessary
that every leading clergyman should embody in his
theology a serial story, to be delivered from the pulpit Sunday
after Sunday. We look forward to announcements in
our city papers such as these: The Rev. Dr. Ignatius, of the
Church of St. Mary the Virgin, will begin a serial romance,
to be entitled “St. Sebastian and the Arrows,” in which he
will embody the duties, the trials, and the temptations of
the young Christians of our day. The Rev. Dr. Boanerges,
of Plymouth Rock Church, will begin a serial story, entitled
“Calvin's Daughter,” in which he will discuss the distinctive
features of Protestant theology. The Rev. Dr. Cool Shadow
will go on with his interesting romance of “Christianity a
Dissolving View,”—designed to show how everything is, in
many respects, like everything else, and all things lead
somewhere, and everything will finally end somehow, and
that therefore it is important that everybody should cultivate
general sweetness, and have the very best time possible
in this world.

By the time all these romances get to going, the system of
teaching by parables, and opening one's mouth in dark
sayings, will be fully elaborated. Pilgrim's Progress

will be no where. The way to the celestial city will be as
plain in everybody's mind as the way up Broadway—and so
much more interesting! Finally all science and all art will
be explained, conducted, and directed by serial stories, till
the present life and the life to come shall form only one
grand romance. This will be about the time of the Millennium.

Meanwhile, I have been furnishing a story for the Christian
Union, and I chose the subject which is in everybody's
mind and mouth, discussed on every platform, ringing from
everybody's tongue, and coming home to every man's business
and bosom to wit:

My Wife and I.

I trust that Miss Anthony and Mrs. Stanton, and all the
prophetesses of our day, will remark the humility and propriety
of my title. It is not I and My Wife—oh no! It is
My Wife and I. What am I, and what is my father's house,
that I should go before my wife in anything?

“But why specially for the Christian Union?” says Mr.
Chandband. Let us in a spirit of Love inquire.

Is it not evident why, O beloved? Is not that firm in human
nature which stands under the title of My Wife and I,
the oldest and most venerable form of Christian union on
record? Where, I ask, will you find a better one?—a wiser,
a stronger, a sweeter, a more universally popular and agreeable
one?

To be sure, there have been times and seasons when this
ancient and respectable firm has been attacked as a piece of
old fogyism, and various substitutes for it proposed. It
has been said that “My Wife and I” denoted a selfish,
close corporation inconsistent with a general, all-sided diffusive,
universal benevolence; that My Wife and I, in a
millennial community, had no particular rights in each other
more than any of the thousands of the brethren and sisters
of the human race. They have said, too, that My Wife
and I, instead of an indissoluble unity, were only temporary

partners, engaged on time, with the liberty of giving three
months' notice, and starting off to a new firm.

It is not thus that we understand the matter.

My Wife and I, as we understand it, is the sign and symbol
of more than any earthly partnership or union—of
something sacred as religion, indissoluble as the soul, endless
as eternity-the symbol chosen by Almighty Love to
represent his redeeming, eternal union with the soul of man.

A fountain of eternal youth gushes near the hearth of
every household. Each man and woman that have loved
truly, have had their romance in life—their poetry in existence.

So I, in giving my history, disclaim all other sources of
interest. Look not for trap-doors, or haunted houses, or
deadly conspiracies, or murders, or concealed crimes, in this
history, for you will not find one. You shall have simply
and only the old story—old as the first chapter of Genesis—
of Adam stupid, desolate, and lonely without Eve, and how
he sought and how he found her.

This much, on mature consideration I hold to be about
the sum and substance of all the romances that have ever
been written, and so long as there are new Adams and new
Eves in each coming generation, it will not want for sympathetic
listeners.

So I, Harry Henderson—a plain Yankee boy from the
mountains of New Hampshire, and at present citizen of
New York—commence my story.

My experiences have three stages.

First, My child-wife, or the experiences of childhood.

Second My shadow-wife, or the dreamland of the future.

Third, my real wife, where I saw her, how I sought and
found her.

In pursuing a story simply and mainly of love and marriage,
I am reminded of the saying of a respectable serving
man of European experiences, who speaking of his position
in a noble family said it was not so much the wages that
made it an object as “the things it enabled a gentleman to

pick up.” So in our modern days as we have been observing,
it is not so much the story, as the things it gives the
author a chance to say. The history of a young American
man's progress toward matrimony, of course brings him
among the most stirring and exciting topics of the day,
where all that relates to the joint interests of man and
woman has been thrown into the arena as an open question,
and in relating our own experiences, we shall take occasion
to keep up with the spirit of this discussing age in all these
matters.