Originally published in Harper's New Monthly Magazine (Harper and Brothers) vol.19 #112 (Sep 1859).
James Grant landed in New York, in the summer of 1793, with two suits of clothes, a chest of carpenter's tools, a pair of strong arms, and a stout heart. He left Aberdeen because he thought to better his condition in America; and being a shrewd, common-sensible Scotchman, he found no difficulty in doing so. Discovering himself able to earn bread and butter for two, he presently sent out for "the girl he'd left behind him," and when she arrived, duly married her, and installed her mistress of a little house he had meantime built. As years passed along quietly, James Grant invested the good woman's savings and his own in a quantity of favorably-situated country lots, which are now rather below the business centre of the big city, which I am not going to call the metropolis—no, not to please any body! In their little house, next to the carpenter's shop, I shame to say, the old folks lived and died, to the great disgust of the present head of the family, then a rising young merchant, who got out of it long ago, and into a Fifth Avenue palace nineteen and three-quarters' feet wide, and very high stooped.
This is quite enough of James Grant, whose life, being only a poor devil of a ship carpenter's, I do not propose to take. He was too unremarkable a man for me to trouble myself or the reader with; I don't believe the poor fellow ever had even a political aspiration in his life, which, however, when you properly consider it, is so strange a fact in the history of an adopted American that it almost entitles him to a three-volume critical biography, in the popular style of the Honorable and Reverend Hi. Falutin.
J. Augustus Grant is the grandson of old James Grant. I have been told (by one of those disagreeable persons who "recollect" every thing) that in his youth, some three-and-twenty years ago—when the Fifth Avenue palace was yet safely hidden in the brain of the architect, and three generations of Grants hived together in the little house—J. Augustus was popularly known on the street as "Little Jimmy Grant," as mischievous an urchin as ever knuckled down to taw. I must own to admiring the taste which dictated the addition and proper prominence of "Augustus." I confess that, had he remained only plain Jimmy Grant, I should perhaps never have told this little story of him.
Before James Augustus got fairly into trowsers and boots a great change was made in his life. The country lots having got sufficiently down town to become exceedingly valuable, Peter Grant (son of James and father of J.A.) induced the old carpenter to sell out, and with the proceeds establish him in business. Peter was a good business man, and ere very long time the Fifth Avenue palace was built, and J. Augustus became at once a respectable juvenile, with an aristocratic weakness for trotters—not sheeps' trotters, but livery-stable trotters.
Young America has a very surprising knack at suiting itself to its place in the world. There is scarce a tallow-chandler's son in all Fifth Avenue but bears himself as though his ancestors had lived in palaces since before the flood; and I am sure no one who has seen these "young scions of our aristocracy"—as the Jeames of the Home Journal prettily calls them—but will perceive at once the justice and sagacity of Mr. Buchanan's remark to the Queen—that the Americans are a nation of sovereigns. J. Augustus, who no sooner got into his papa's palace than he seemed to every one to have been born there, was of course in due time sent to college; where he acquired the proper proficiency in Greek, Latin, and Mathematics, slang, billiards, and brandy smashes. He astonished his "Governor" with regularly recurring bills for "horse-hire," which persuaded that speculative old gentleman that the keeping of livery stables must be the most lucrative business in the world; and mystified his mother, on his vacation visits home, by insisting on a night-key, and requesting to have his breakfast in bed. She thought at first that Gussy was in feeble health—good soul! and proposed to send up also the family physician. I must own that the young man graduated with credit to himself. At a consequent supper he developed political aspirations, and made an astonishing speech on manifest destiny; in which he abused the old fogies, threatened the British Lion, and declared his conviction that the first duty of every true born American is to feather the nest of our national bird. His father told him next day that he had made an ass of himself, which made J.A. laugh. The old folks don't understand these things, you see.
To a wealthy American there seem but two paths open; business and—nothing. Of the two, in the present wholesome state of our civilization, the former seems preferable, as being least unendurable. J. Augustus, of course, was not going to waste his life in a profession. Peter was a first-class business man—a China merchant—Grant and Elbert, you might have seen their sign—ay, and their fine stanch old tea-ships too—any day you chose to stroll down along South Street. So there was an opening made for young Grant, pending which opening he proposed to spend a couple of years in Europe—which to young men of J.A.'s kidney seems to signify chiefly, Paris. I wonder if Abraham's young men made Gomorrah their head-quarters when they went abroad?
On J.A.'s return, which was brought about by his father's refusal to honor his drafts after a certain date, he found the opening ready for him. That it did not exactly suit him was evinced by the fact that he filled it only about once a week, when he drew his pay; spending the balance of his valuable time[1] on the road, and at his club—the last a delightful place, where, I am told, young men eat, drink, and talk intelligently about horses and "giurls."
Why should he do differently? Did not all the young men, his social peers, do the same? Why should he make a guy of himself down in South Street, while there was still a bit of life not worn thread-bare for him? Was he not his father's sole heir? Was not the Governor worth a cool three hundred thousand? And was not this promising youth by-and-by to marry pretty Maud Elbert with $100,000 more?
Which puts me in mind that I have as yet said nothing about Miss Maud, who, as a young person worth the snug sum aforementioned, and intended by kind Fate to be the heroine of this story, should have been treated with more courtesy. Maud Elbert, may it please you, then, is our heroine—a tall, straight, brown-haired girl, whose acquaintance would tell you she was proud; whose friends thought her only reserved; whose few intimates loved her as the humblest, the cheeriest, the kindest; a girl with a smile like a June morning, but with a power of cool stare in her clear blue eyes, equal, so I have heard J.A. say, to forty brown stone fronts—a Fifth Avenue figure of speech which I commend to the young men of the clubs.
I think there are people who somehow feel it a misfortune to be "cradled in the lap of luxury," as the lady novelists nicely style it. There is a description of mind which wilts in the fierce glare of too great prosperity, and blooms brightest and fullest in cloudy weather or in shady nooks. I don't say this of myself, or of you, dear reader, or of J.A. I fear Augustus was little troubled with this weariness of being served, of being "done for" instead of doing, which often brought into Maud's blue eyes that far-gazing, nothing-distinguishing look, that deepest, quietest trouble in an honest eye, which, to the observing, portends a soul rusting in fetters. This was what you might see in Maud. Not unhappiness. Why should she be unhappy whose every possible want was ministered to almost before it was felt? But to a true soul thus circumstanced, and especially to a true woman's soul, there are bright possibilities each day perishing in the dim budding which cast about her whole life this soft tinge of unavailing sorrow. To such
"Chambers of the great are jails,
And head-winds right for royal sails."
How far what a woman does often falls short of what she is! And then steps in some stupid satirist, and, applying to her life the remorseless logic of achievement, cries "Lo! here is one found wanting!" Is there any sight more sadly touching than this of a fair young girl's soul, gold-fettered and condemned by unpropitious Fate to be mastered by servants, by society, by finery, by any and all of the cumbrous, servile trifles which hinder and belittle the development of any true God-given life? What sublime pity must He, who judges as men do not judge, give these, His helpless ones, blindly and wearily struggling against the devouring tide of worldliness!
This Maud Elbert, whom I wish it were given me to place more clearly before your inward eye, had been betrothed to James Augustus Grant these many years; since early childhood indeed, when their fond fathers, having gained in some speculation of unusual hazard and percentage, and feeling the cockles of their hearts warmed toward each other, as do men who have, arm to arm, mastered some great danger—when these fond old shipping merchants, I say, pledged their two smiling innocents to each other, and vowed to secure the present good understanding of the firm with that sacramental cement known as the marriage ceremony. They grew up in the full knowledge of their destinated union; were accustomed to walk and ride together as little children; quarreled and made up as boy and girl; and by the time they were full blown into young society-hood, had grown so familiar that they didn't know each other at all, and didn't care for each other a straw. When J.A. went to Europe Maud went also on her travels, not, of course, in the same steamer—nor even in the same general direction; though they did meet in Paris, where J.A. dutifully divided himself between Maud and a pretty French girl, whose acquaintance he had made in the Jardin Mabille. When J.A. returned Maud was the beauty of her set, which, of course, pleased him. Why shouldn't it? Was not she to be his wife by-and-by? And don't a man like to see his wife, or fiancée, admired, within bounds? Pleased him the more, that it was evident, even to his dull and careless vision, that, if she cared no great deal for him, she loved no one better. Why should she? In her set J.A. was not more useless or worse than any of the others; and he certainly danced more elegantly than some. And out of her set? Did you ever know a young girl with $100,000 marry out of her set?
And marrying, you know, is the chief business of life. Prudent mammas fondly hope to rescue the morals of imprudent sons by an early marriage. Prudent papas speculatively think to make the fortunes of imprudent sons by a wealthy marriage. Prudent sons regard the transaction with a business eye, and hope to gain out of it larger means and greater liberty. And the bride? God help her! Except, as sometimes happens, she is able to help herself.
The match which had been so conveniently arranged for these young people seemed in every respect felicitous, except, perhaps, in the matter of love. But then it is to be considered that love had not been in the minds of the projectors; though in such matters love is oftener the cause than the effect. So far, however, as appeared to the world, or indeed to the thoughts of the two most interested, the affair was settled. Maud Elbert did not give her mind to a future so mapped out for her. Your fatalist is never a reasoning being; and indolent people scarce care to waste a thought upon those affairs which God, or fate, or fortune, seemed to have placed out of their control. And J.A.? J.A. drew hie weekly allowance out of the opening so conveniently provided for him in South Street, and having now pretty much run through his limited range of life, took to reading (and misunderstanding) Thackeray, and tried to do the cynical. A kind of Diogenes the Magnificent, snarling at society out of his gilded tub on the edge of Fifth Avenue, and making sarcastic comments on the way of life of those who spend more than $20,000 a year.
It is the fashion to rail at the money-getting spirit of us Americans. But money-getting is better than nothing-getting. To speculate in Wall Street is at least exercise for the mind, and though the male intellect might be applied to better purposes, happy he whose necessities lead him to achieve with his life some tangible result, however mean. But look at the unfortunates among us, who are weighed down by the load of inherited gold below the necessity of exercising any intellectual power. Every young millionaire is not a genius, thank Heaven; and a commonplace rich man, how infinitely less are his chances than a commonplace poor man's!
Old Peter Grant worked hard and constantly in his South Street counting-room. That man must know little of him who should accuse the stanch old merchant of covetousness. He sought money, not for money's sake, but for occupation's sake. He put his whole soul into his work. If only the work were worth a soul! Only fools depreciate wealth. In our hearts "we honor the rich, because they have externally the freedom, power, and grace which we feel to be proper to man— proper to us." But our wants overlay our lives and outgrow any possible wealth; and so the man who once sought wealth as a means comes to strive for it as an end, and, O vain goose! lays his diurnal golden egg, and cackles in dismal contentment over the wretched performance. Is it wonder that J. Augustus sinks the shop—which, by-the-way, he has not raised—and takes not kindly to the paternal ways? The better instinct of youth refuses to give up to this life, whose routine must crush out all true enjoyment of existence. Show him an object to gain with his money, and he will coin his brain and muscle into dollars unreluctant. But to begin where his father will leave off, and dutifully go on accumulating? The bee is a very moral and prudent insect, praised of Benjamin Franklin, and held in esteem by all lovers of honey. But a young man is not a bee. Neither, O man and father, is your son a duplicate Benjamin Franklin (bound in calf!). Why try to make him swallow the scandalous selfishness of Poor Richard? Can you not see how infinitely more glorious is old Ben Franklin's life than his wretched, wretched maxims?
In the eyes of future generations—say of Lord Macaulay's philosophic New Zealander—that nation will be counted greatest and wisest which has made the best use of its rich young men. At present England is like to carry off this prize; where, to an honest commonplace rich man there is opened at least the door of Parliament House. I hold that the man who is neither a fol nor a genius, and who has a good competence, is he who is most likely to serve the State with honor and profit. But for such young fellows our system provides nothing, and they must go the ways of their fathers in South Street, or—do worse! "Content to be merely the thriving merchants of a State, where they might be its guides, counselors, and rulers." Our theory calls for only men of genius in the councils of the nation. And our practice so fills them with the genius of blackguardism, that honest mediocrity naturally fears to soil its fingers on the balustrades of the Capitol.
So James Augustus tilted his chair against the club window, and did neither soil his hands in the Capitol nor in South Street. The good fruit of utter indolence is that it awakens thought. A bright flicker precedes the final extinction of the lamp; and in the throes which, to the idler, shadow impending mental dissolution, the man sometimes finds out things. Generally a right thing—not always the right thing. To J.A., yawning and desperately musing amidst the ruins of his Carthage, it was revealed that he did not love Maud Elbert. Had never loved her. Should never love her. That she did not love him. That he was not worthy of her. Why should they marry? Pondering which new view our young man finally came to the resolution that, though the thing was hardly the thing in him, and though probably Grant and Elbert would be displeased, yet he must tell Maud this. You see it is possible that a young man shall be very idle without being hopelessly bad.
How to tell her? Your true epicure, who has tickled his palate with the best dishes of the most famous cooks, comes at last gladly back to plain bread and butter and tea; and J.A., having exhausted his imagination in devising schemes for conveying to Maud this new light of his, came at last to the sensible determination that a few honest words, spoken with at least the affectation of manliness, would best achieve the desired result. And thus it was done:
"¥ou do not love me. I do not love you. Why should we two consider ourselves bound by the fond promises of our fathers? I love no one else, nor do you." If she had, perhaps the excellent Augustus would not have given her up so cheerfully; but let that pass. "Why live in this strait jacket? Let us cry quits, and at least feel honestly toward each other."
Maud opened her great blue eyes in silent surprise, and, as she took the young man's proffered hand, cast upon him a more kindly look than he had ever received from her before. Evidently she had not thought it was in him; and he was too well pleased to have it all over to find fault with the dubious compliment. So these two ceased to be lovers, but became from that moment friends. A friendship which helped them to a better perception of life; for this light, which had so illuminated their once mutual relation, also shed its faint gleam upon all other parts of their lives, and gave them a clearer insight into the power and use of those mysteries which we call circumstances. They stood upon new ground; and, insensibly, their attitude to the world was changed. Not that the change was very perceptible, even to themselves. J.A. still tilted his chair back and smoked his cigar, and, for ail I know, this one honest deed done, was fast returning to his spew, when— Have you ever observed how fatal it is to a prosperous fool to do one sensible deed—to a successful rogue to be in one instance honest? This marks a point in his career; Fate pursues him remorselessly; will not let him stand still on this middle ground; says to him "Backward or forward: here is no rest for you." Providence acknowledges no good deed which stands alone; and, as in the boy's game of prisoner's base, the unlucky venturer on new ground finds himself chased on both sides, and has no peace till he elects his future.
When the panic of 1857 came on, no house stood firmer than Grant and Elbert. Their paper was gilt-edged in the banks; their credit was without a shadow; their business was, though widely extended, really prosperous. But two India clippers that should have come safely home were lost by the way; others lay rotting, freightless, in foreign ports; houses, in whose stability they were vitally interested, one after another, went to the ground; and one morning it was announced that Grant and Elbert were down—hopelessly down. Old Grant sat silent, like a stern old Roman, in the deserted counting-room, and wound up affairs, which, alas! should never go again; wound up as fast as things could be wound up in those crazy times when Wall Street was financially insane as well as insolvent, and all the world was mad with fright. Sacrificed every dollar, every cent, to give each creditor his due—needlessly, some said, for scarce any one would do the like for him; but not needlessly, said stanch old Peter, when his honest fame and fair mercantile character were at stake. And every man was paid one hundred cents in the dollar, and Grant and Elbert were beggared. When all the clerks and retainers of the house had received their salaries in full, and a moderate douceur to help them through the hard times; when all claims were adjusted, all goods sacrificed; when, the great old sign was taken down, and Grant and Elbert was a firm no longer—then old Peter, looking prouder than in his best days—if these indeed were not his best days—began to turn about for a shelter from the remainder of the great storm. His house and Elbert's had been put in to the general settlement, and the families were now but tenants by courtesy in Fifth Avenue. Now it was conveniently remembered that, in a quiet village a few miles out of town, Maud Elbert owned, in her own right, a humble cottage with some ground attached—so humble, indeed, that it had scarce ever had a moment's thought from her, except when she remembered that here her father was born. Hither George Elbert and Peter Grant removed; here to await in quiet, and what peace they might, the clearing up of the financial atmosphere. Here Maud received them, having gone up some days in advance, with a faithful old servant and what little resources had been saved from the great wreck, to prepare their new home for the old men. Here, she—worthy, thrice worthy the high fate which had now befallen her—served them, as who could do so well, with cheery smile and brightening eye—like a very queen in her palace; remembering all their old accustomed ways, and hours, and whims; catering frugally to all their simple old tastes; putting her fair hands to all work from bread-making to bed-making; and accomplishing all with the air of one born to just this. As was she not? Here dawned her happiest hours; and here, too, the old merchants basked in her sunshine till they forgot their toils and troubles, their weary struggles and sore disappointments, and were fain to acknowledge—though faintly, and by no means too assuredly—that, in all their magnificence, they had known no such happiness and comfort as here.
And J.A.? Truly in the general upsetting and remodeling of things, poor, useless, cigar-smoking J.A. had been totally forgotten. When the sea is calm, and the wind fair, the idlers of a ship make more noise and show than the oldest salt on board, and old Sheet-anchor Jack, who in such times seems rather a fifth wheel to this fast-rolling coach, and a useless piece of lumber, must be content to chew his cud of sweet and bitter fancies in silent waiting, under lee of the long-boat. But when the gale, which no one thought could by any possibility overtake so fast and stanch a clipper, does break its fury over her, then Sheet-anchor Jack comes out of his hole, and quietly makes all snug, while your boasting braggart idler is not even of sufficient value to pull and haul. So J.A., who had hitherto enacted the part of chief butterfly so much to his own admiration, now slunk wretchedly into his hole, and was content to be forgotten. Content?
Of course he was included in the general ruin; was shorn of his gay colors, divested of his trotting pony, his tailor, his fine society, his club. Last, unkindest cut of all—to give up his club! To hear him groan, you would have thought him a very Hercules, disarmed with not half his labors accomplished. The dear club! which got along quite as well without him as with him. Though, to be sure, when you consider what a potent weapon it had been in his hands against his arch-fiend and enemy—Ennui, it is not so surprising that he cherished its memory.
He had not lived at home for some time before the final catastrophe. Our young men, knowing the discomfort their inanities and idlings must cause their simple parents, take care to leave home as soon as they are half fledged, and in the enjoyment of a preposterous allowance, or an opening in South Street. When J.A.'s salary ceased to be paid, he found it prudent to come home to dinner, where he sat with solemn and helpless visage, bolting his hasty food, and retiring to his den up stairs immediately after. I don't know whether he or his father most keenly appreciated his abject helplessness; but I think J.A., who was, after all, merely useless, and not altogether graceless, was touched by the old man's silent grieved glance, and reticence of just scorn; remembering that now, when he might gladly be a support to the "Governor," he was only a clog. As for old Peter, I dare say that now, when he could no longer indulge his boy, he saw that he should sooner have trained him.
It was Maud who first mentioned the illustrious name of James Augustus in their new home. Old Peter looked up sternly at this mention, and bade her give herself no thought about so useless a lout; and for a time, apparently, she obeyed. Meanwhile J.A., feeling that he must somehow look out for himself, embarked in this new enterprise with, it must be said, some little misgivings as to the result. Things, financially speaking, were yet in such a state of general upsetness, that old friends of Grant and Elbert, who might otherwise have given the young man a trial, were obliged to say "Wait till times clear up." Pending which clearing up, Master J.A., I suspect, found some difficulties attending the management of the commissariat department, and was forced to make occasional little calls upon an accommodating uncle, trading at the sign of the three gilt balls, whose business, happily, had not suffered in the general depression, and who was able, therefore, to make the youth small cash advances upon certain superfluous articles of jewelry, and a chronometer, which was no longer needed to time fast horses on the Bloomingdale Road.
If idleness, as we have seen, is a partial illuminator of the dull mind, I am sure the breadless condition is the source of much greater light. There is such intimate connection between the stomach and the brain, that, as a full dinner temporarily disables your most acute thinker, so given a certain vacuum in the region of the digestive organs, and you have almost invariably a singularly lucid brain. So in J.A.'s needy condition he was as one blind from whose eyes the scales had suddenly fallen. Not one thing, but many, did he find out; and though at first he "saw men as trees walking," presently these new lights took order in his brain, and he discerned his course more clearly before him. But the question of bread was the most potent and imminent. He had caused it to be generally known that a book-keeper's place, even at a very moderate salary, would be temporarily acceptable to him; but he discovered that many other and abler applicants were before him here; that even a poor entry-clerk's situation might be a dozen times filled in as many minutes; and finally, pressed by circumstances, and slowly gathering courage to look fortune in the face (which is the only way successfully to advance upon that fickle jade), he was content to accept of a porter's situation in the store of an honest but not over-courteous Quaker, who advised him to "sink Fifth Avenue, and turn to his work like a man." Five dollars per week made him happy for the time—a happiness which was dimmed by the jeers of his fellow-porters at his lack of muscle and his awkwardness. In his prosperity he had foolishly looked down upon these rough, strong men; now, how he envied them their brawn and their knack. Truly, it is a risky thing to despise the wisdom of even the least babe among us.
It was no small step gained for J.A. when he found pride in his work, in his increasing skill and muscle, and ceased to take thought of horny hands. One day it was revealed to him that a man might be porter and gentleman too—if only he have the heart in the right place. "Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might." It is not Poor Richard who said that. And now to J.A. came a singular and novel doubt of his own capacities and true value—a promising sign, truly; for this doubt was to him the beginning of all wisdom. He who had so valiantly applied for a book-keeper's place found it expedient to study somewhat of that intricate mercantile science. So to this he devoted his evenings, now relieved of that stress of invitations which formerly gave him his knowledge of books chiefly from their outsides and titles. By the flickering gas-light he patiently explored the abstruse and cabalistic Dr. and Cr., Ledger, Day-book, Journal, Cash-book; and having mastered this one thing, found he had conquered himself. It is not a bad thing to have been richly born and daintily nurtured. Let no man despise it. No soul that has ever come from heaven but longs to get back, and in this longing conceives and treasures the very idea of immortality and God. To poor J.A., dimly seeing his to be, the past was now a land-mark enabling him more definitely to lay out that future which should be the goal of his regenerate ambition and his honest toils. With what secret joy did he indite a letter to old Peter, telling him modestly his present deeds, and hinting to him what he dared of his hopes! With what pride the old man read the letter aloud; his eyes filling, and his stern old voice trembling as he felt the new spirit of his boy! Maud's dear eyes flashed out a bright comprehension of the whole change; and old Elbert proposed at once to have J.A. up to the house. To which Peter wisely demurred, preferring that his boy should not be interrupted by untimely temptation of praise.
There are so few honest and punctual men in the world that one who has these qualities needs to be very stupid indeed not to gain his step on the ladder, if only he has also the gift of patience. So it happened that J.A.'s employer presently discovered him of too great value for a mere porter—one needing chiefly muscle and a moderate degree of temperance—and ere the summer was over, which followed the great panic, Peter's boy was assistant book-keeper. And now, at last, he could look his father in the face; so one Saturday afternoon, gaining an early leave for the purpose, he sailed up to the village where Maud's house gave the old man shelter. A sad breaking down, indeed, his old associates would have thought could they have seen him as he stood for one hesitating moment at the gate. Poor fellow! no longer mincing in his gait; no longer nattily gloved in daintiest kid; no longer adorned in coat and hat of latest style, and finest make; but truly a man—standing firmly upon his feet, as one who possesses his soul in wholesome content; and looking you clearly in the eye, with a consciousness of honorable toil-won bread; not haughty or supercilious; but humbly proud, as one who has learned the great lesson of obedience, and knows that to obey is truly to command.
So they met—the old man and his son. I am not so base as to attempt for you a sketch of this sacred scene. If you can not feel it in your heart, I am not fit to tell it. Peter felt the blood of twenty years ago coursing through his veins, and George Elbert almost swore for extreme joy to see the boy come home. And Maud?
Sweet Maud! her life had blossomed here, indeed, and borne such fruit of joy to these old men, of peace and uttermost content, that their every breath asked blessings upon her dear head—their every thought was a prayer for her happiness. A very queen, indeed—as is every true woman in the home where she reigns supreme in love and good works; counting no labor drudgery which gives her loved ones comfort. What is drudgery indeed? Only that work which masters the worker. To the true heart no toil which is necessary to give peace and good cheer to any loved soul is mean or commonplace. Such a one no labor can master. To such—no toil is drudgery.
Why should I not tell it? There was still one thing to be found out; and this revelation was to be made to both Maud and J.A. They are to be married in September. J.A. has but an assistant book-keeper's modest salary: I am sorry I stand in his way to speedy promotion. But his wife will bring him good health, and a brave kind heart as ever beat. When J.A., the other day, under pretense of finding something in my ledger, asked me to stand up with him, he said he "thought they should be happy."
I shouldn't wonder! For my wife says theirs is really a Love Match.
1."Time is money."—Poor Richard.