University of Virginia Library

AURELIA'S UNFORTUNATE YOUNG MAN.

THE facts in the following case come to
me by letter from a young lady who
lives in the beautiful city of San José;
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 have
taken place, Breckinridge, while absorbed 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 unhappy
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 deeply grieved to see her lover passing
from her by piecemeal, feeling, as she did,
that he could not last forever 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 forever, 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 true 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 mean time, 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 infernal propensity for damaging
himself every time he sees a good opportunity,
his next experiment is bound to finish him, and
then you are all right, you know, 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; but since he has seen fit to
choose a different 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.