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7. AURELIA'S UNFORTUNATE YOUNG MAN.
The facts in the following case came to
me by letter from a young lady who lives
in the beautiful city of San Jose; she is
perfectly unknown to me, and simply signs
herself “Aurelia Maria,” which may possibly
be a fictitious name. But no matter,
the poor girl is almost heart-broken by the
misfortunes she has undergone, and so
confused by the conflicting counsels of
misguided friends and insidious enemies,
that she does not know what course to
pursue in order to extricate herself from
the web of difficulties in which she seems
almost hopelessly involved. In this dilemma
she turns to me for help, and supplicates
for my guidance and instruction with
a moving eloquence that would touch the
heart of a statue. Hear her sad story:
She says that when she was sixteen
years old she met and loved, with all the
devotion of a passionate nature, a young
man from New Jersey, named Williamson
Breckinridge Caruthers, who was some six
years her senior. They were engaged, with
the free consent of their friends and relatives,
and for a time it seemed as if their
career was destined to be characterized by
an immunity from sorrow beyond the usual
lot of humanity. But at last the tide of
fortune turned; young Caruthers became
infected with small-pox of the most virulent
type, and when he recovered from his
illness his face was pitted like a waffle-mould
and his comeliness gone forever.
Aurelia thought to break off the engagement
at first, but pity for her unfortunate
lover caused her to postpone the marriage-day
for a season and give him another
trial.
The very day before the wedding was to
in watching the flight of a balloon,
walked into a well and fractured one of his
legs, and it had to be taken off above the
knee. Again Aurelia was moved to break
the engagement, but again love triumphed,
and she set the day forward and gave him
another chance to reform.
And again misfortune overtook the poor
youth. He lost one arm by the premature
discharge of a Fourth-of-July cannon, and
within three months he got the other pulled
out by a carding-machine. Aurelia's heart
was almost crushed by these latter calamities.
She could not but be grieved to see
her lover passing from her by piecemeal,
feeling, as she did, that he could not last
for ever under this disastrous process of
reduction, yet knowing of no way to stop
its dreadful career; and in her tearful
despair she almost regretted, like brokers
who hold on and lose, that she had not
taken him at first, before he had suffered
such an alarming depreciation. Still, her
brave soul bore her up, and she resolved
to bear with her friend's unnatural disposition
yet a little longer.
Again the wedding-day approached, and
again disappointment overshadowed it: Caruthers
fell ill with the erysipelas, and lost
the use of one of his eyes entirely. The
friends and relatives of the bride, considering
that she had already put up with
more than could reasonably be expected
of her, now came forward and insisted that
the match should be broken off; but after
wavering awhile, Aurelia, with a generous
spirit which did her credit, said she had
reflected calmly upon the matter, and
could not discover that Breckinridge was
to blame.
So she extended the time once more, and
he broke his other leg.
It was a sad day for the poor girl when
she saw the surgeons reverently bearing
away the sack whose uses she had learned
by previous experience, and her heart told
her the bitter truth that some more of her
lover was gone. She felt that the field of
her affections was growing more and more
circumscribed every day, but once more
she frowned down her relatives and renewed
her betrothal.
Shortly before the time set for the nuptials,
another disaster occurred. There was
but one man scalped by the Owens River
Indians last year. That man was Williamson
Breckinridge Caruthers, of New Jersey.
He was hurrying home with happiness in
his heart, when he lost his hair for ever,
and in that hour of bitterness he almost
cursed the mistaken mercy that had spared
his head.
At last Aurelia is in serious perplexity
as to what she ought to do. She still loves
her Breckinridge, she writes, with truly
womanly feeling—she still loves what is
left of him—but her parents are bitterly
opposed to the match, because he has no
property and is disabled from working, and
she has not sufficient means to support
both comfortably. “Now, what should
she do?” she asks with painful and anxious
solicitude.
It is a delicate question; it is one which
involves the lifelong happiness of a woman
and that of nearly two-thirds of a man, and
I feel that it would be assuming too great
a responsibility to do more than make a
mere suggestion in the case. How would
it do to build to him? If Aurelia can
afford the expense, let her furnish her
mutilated lover with wooden arms and
wooden legs, and a glass eye and a wig,
and give him another show; give him
ninety days, without grace, and if he does
not break his neck in the meantime, marry
him and take the chances. It does not
seem to me that there is much risk,
any way, Aurelia, because if he sticks to
his singular propensity for damaging himself
every time he sees a good opportunity,
his next experiment is bound to finish him,
and then you are safe, married or single.
If married, the wooden legs and such other
valuables as he may possess revert to the
widow, and you see you sustain no actual
loss save the cherished fragment of a noble
but most unfortunate husband, who honestly
strove to do right but whose extraordinary
instincts were against him. Try
it, Maria. I have thought the matter over
carefully and well, and it is the only chance
I see for you. It would have been a happy
conceit on the part of Caruthers if he had
started with his neck and broken that first;
policy and string himself out as long
as possible, I do not think we ought to
upbraid him for it if he has enjoyed it.
We must do the best we can under the
circumstances, and try not to feel exasperated
at him.
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