University of Virginia Library

1. I.
MR. BLOSSOM HEARS BAD NEWS.

MR. BENJAMIN BLOSSOM was guilty of three faults
which his brother Archy, the bachelor, could not forgive:
first, having a family; second, going to California;
and, lastly, dying when he got there.

The news of the lamented Blossom's decease was brought
to Archy one morning, like Cleopatra's asp, with his breakfast.
The surviving brother, unconscious of the sting prepared
for him, comfortably seated himself to nibble the
bread of single-blessedness, spread his landlady's neat white
napkin on his lap, tucking the corners into the armholes of
his waistcoat, stirred his coffee, read the morning paper, ate
three eggs out of the shell with a little ivory scoop, and
finally broke the seal of the feminine-looking envelope beside
his plate.

“I knew there was something deused disagreeable in
that letter!” said Archy, turning first purple and then
pale. “The best I can do, I am always being made a
victim!”

The epistle was from the mother of Benjamin's children;
and in a cramped chirography, and a style full of grammatical
errors, italics, and tears, indicating a good deal of
grief and not much education, it informed the bachelor
that his sister-in-law was a widdow (with two d's), and his

nephews and nieces “orfens.” The news would have been
very apt to spoil his breakfast, but for the precaution he
had taken to open the eggs before he did the letter.

Archy walked the room with his napkin, and thought of a
good many things, — poor Ben dying away off there, among
strangers, and, no doubt, in very improper clothes; how he
(the surviving brother) would look in black; and what was
his duty respecting Priscilla and her orphans.

“There is no other way, as I see,” he mused, wiping his
forehead with the napkin, “but to submit, and be a victim!
Think of me, Archibald Blossom, suddenly called to be the
father of four little Blossoms; and a brother to her whose
heart is left destitoot-t, double-o, t, toot!” groaned Archy,
holding the letter up to the light. “Poor woman! poor
woman! no doubt she was too much afflicted to give attention
to her spelling. A brother to her! I wonder she
did n't say a husband, while she was about it!” And Archy
smiled a grim smile in the glass, mentally contrasting his
fastidious habits of life with the disagreeable ties and duties
of paternity.

To the bachelor's love of nicety and sleepless solicitude
for himself was joined an amiable disposition which was forever
getting the other traits into trouble. On the present
occasion he was perfectly well aware, as we have seen, that
he was to be made a victim; nevertheless, even while heaping
reproaches upon the late Benjamin, calling his children
brats, and cursing the man who first invented widows, he
resolved to visit his brother's family, — brushed his wig, colored
his whiskers, packed a carpet-bag, and made other
preparations for the pious pilgrimage. It was the first
time he had ever thought of fulfilling the Scriptural injunction,
“To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction”;
although it had long been a personal habit of his to keep
himself, literally, “unspotted from the world.”