THE MINISTER’S WIFE.

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BY ELLA RODMAN.

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The Rev. Sydney Saybrook preached his first sermon to an admiring congregation. The people of L—— were astonished; old men dwelt with delight on the excellent home-truths introduced, as it were, amid a bed of flowers—young men admired the eloquence and frank bearing of the speaker—and young ladies, ah! that was the thing. They, disdaining the matter-of-fact admiration of the rougher sex, looked forward into futurity, and, as the young minister was reported free of encumbrances, they thought of putting an end to his season of bliss by providing him with one as soon as possible.

This, however, is in strict confidence—they would not have acknowledged it for the world, and yet many of the brains pertaining to those attentive faces were busily at work within the pretty parsonage, altering, remodeling, arranging things to their own particular tastes. One would have that rose-vine taken away—it obscured the view; another would not only leave the rose, but would add a honeysuckle, too—it looked pretty and romantic; while a third had re-carpeted the stairs to the last flight by the time that Mr. Saybrook arrived at “thirteenthly.”

Milly Ellsworth was a very pretty girl, and, therefore, what might perhaps have been vanity in one more plain, was with her only a pleasant consciousness of her own charms; as, in apparent forgetfulness of the saying that it takes two to make a bargain, she exclaimed:

“I have made up my mind to captivate Mr. Saybrook—it must be so beautiful to be a minister’s wife.”

The last remark was intended as a sort of compliment to their visitor, who enjoyed that enviable distinction, but Mrs. S—— merely smiled as Milly’s earnest face was raised toward her.

“Only think of it,” continued the young enthusiast.

“I do think of it,” replied Mrs. S——, quietly; “but the thought to me brings up some scenes that are any thing but agreeable. If I cannot tell ‘tales that would freeze your very blood,’ I can relate some that would freeze a little of that enthusiasm. A minister’s wife! You little know what is comprised in that title.”

“Of course,” replied Milly, with a demure face, “it is a station of great responsibility, and has its peculiar duties. A minister’s wife, too, is a sort of pattern, and should be a—a—in short, just the thing.”

“Exactly,” returned Mrs. S——, smiling at this very satisfactory explanation, “but for ‘pattern’ read ‘mirror’—a reflection of everybody’s own particular ideas; in which, of course, no two agree. But let me hear your ideas on the subject, Milly—I wish to know what you consider ‘just the thing.’”

“Why,” continued Milly, warming with her subject, “her dress, in the first place, should be scrupulously plain—not an article of jewelry—a simple straw hat, perhaps, tied down with a single ribbon—and a white dress, with no ornament but natural flowers.”

“Very good,” said Mrs. S——, “as far as it goes; but the beauty of this very ‘simple straw-hat’ is, of course, to consist in its shape and style, and country villages are not proverbial for taste in this respect. It would never do for a minister’s wife to spend her time in searching for a tasty bonnet, and with a limited purse this is no light labor. Then, too, she is obliged to encourage the manufactures of the town in which she resides. If you could have seen some of the hats I had to wear!”

Milly shuddered; she could have borne reverses of fortune, could even have stood at the stake unflinchingly, supported by the glories of martyrdom; but an unbecoming bonnet is one of those petty trials for which one gains no credit but that of bad taste.

“As to the white dress,” continued Mrs. S——, “you must intend it to be made of some material from which dirt will glance harmlessly off on one side. Or perhaps you have one already—a legacy from one of those everlastingly white-robed heroines in the old novels. Those must assuredly have been spectre woods that they wandered in, for in our days brambles and under-wood leave their marks. I was obliged to give up white dresses.”

Milly looked thoughtful.

“Oh, well,” said she, after a short pause, “dress is very little, after all. I should like the idea of being a minister’s wife; you are so looked-up to by the congregation; and then they bring you presents and think so much of you.”

“Yes,” replied Mrs. S——, “there is something in that; I had seven thimbles given to me once.”

“Well, that must have been pleasant, I am sure.”

“It would have done very well had they not expected me to use the whole seven at once. Don’t look so frightened, Milly—I don’t mean in a literal sense; but I was certainly expected to accomplish as much work as would have kept the seven well employed. This, with my household affairs, was somewhat impossible.”

Milly sighed; she was not fond of work, and had vague visions of meals of fruit and milk, and interminable seams accomplishing themselves with neatness and dispatch.

“Now, that you look rather more rational,” said Mrs. S——, with a smile, “I will give you a little of my own experience, that you may not walk into these responsibilities with your eyes half-shut, as I did. My ideas upon the subject of minister’s wives were very much like your own, and when I left my father’s house in the city to accompany Mr. S—— to his home in a distant country-village, it was with the impression that I was to become a sort of queen—over a small territory, it is true, but filled with adoring subjects. Mr. S—— is not very communicative, and as he did not pull down my castles-in-the-air with any description of realities, I was rather disappointed to find no roses or honeysuckles; but a very substantial-looking house, with an immense corn-field on one side and a kitchen-garden on the other. I could scarcely repress my tears; but Mr. S——, who had been accustomed to the prospect all his life, welcomed me to my future home as though it were all that could be desired.

“The congregation soon flocked, not ‘to pay their respects,’ but to take an inventory of my person and manners. I was quite young and naturally lively, and old people shook their heads disapprovingly at the minister’s choice, while grave spinsters, disappointed ones perhaps, tossed theirs at the idea of ‘such a chit.’ The very rigid ones black-balled me from their community as unworthy to enter, while the gay ones regarded me as a sort of amphibious animal, neither one thing nor the other.

“Before long, the gifts of which you speak thronged in. I was pleased at the attention—not dreaming, in my innocence, that twice as much would be required of me in return. My ignorance on a great many subjects excited the contempt, and often indignation of my country neighbors; they made not the least allowance for my city education.

“I was standing in the kitchen one day, with a delusive notion of making cake—for my attempts in the cookery line always placed me in a state of delightful uncertainty as to the end, it was quite a puzzle what things would turn out—when a middle-aged woman made her appearance, and, without being invited, seated herself near me. A basket accompanied her; and after remarking that ‘it was awful hot!’ she asked me ‘if I wouldn’t like some turnpike-cakes?’

“Previous unpalatable messes had been sent in to the table, and afraid that I might be drawn in to taste some nauseous compound, I replied rather hesitatingly—‘No, I thank you—I do not think that I am very fond of them.’

“Mrs. Badger, for that was my visitor’s name, placed a hand on each hip, and looking me full in the face, burst forth into a laugh that would have done credit to a backwood’s-man. I trembled, and felt myself coloring to the tips of my ears. To this day I have a vivid recollection of the impression made upon me by that woman’s contempt.

“‘Well, wherever was you broughten up,’ said my visitor, at length, ‘to ’spose that turnpike-cakes was meant to eat! Why, bless your heart, child! they’re to make bread with!’

“I caught eagerly at the idea; Mr. S—— was partial to home-made bread—Mrs. Badger, who was by no means ill-natured, willingly left the turnpike-cakes, and I was soon plunged up to the elbows in my labor of love. I had very mistaken ideas though upon the subject of bread, and its capabilities of rising; I supposed that a very minute piece of dough would bake into a pretty loaf, and was extremely surprised when I beheld only an extensive tea-cake. Mr. S—— laughed good-naturedly at my baking, and pronounced it very well, what there was of it. Anxious to distinguish myself in his eyes as a good housekeeper, I toiled over pies, cake, and every thing eatable that I could think of; but, alas! the mead of praise always fell short of my expectations. He dispatched the pies with a mournful air, as he assured me that ‘he never expected to taste any equal to his mother’s;’ and after trying in vain to reach this standard of perfection, I gave it up in despair. This, I have since found, is merely a delusion peculiar to men, to be classed in the same scale with the fancy that sermons were longer and winters merrier in childhood than they are now.

“My experience of ministers has convinced me that, with respect to worldly matters, they are an extremely thoughtless, improvident race; and the machinery of work, indispensable to the producing of comforts, always contrives to get on ‘the blind side’ of them. Mr. S—— seemed to imagine that shining shirt-bosoms and spotless cravats grew on trees, or were fished-up, unharmed, from the depths of the sea, for every week his astonishment at Biddy’s failures was indescribable.

“Anxious to put an end to this perpetual state of surprise, I went into the kitchen to oversee the girl’s performances—knowing about as much of the matter as she did. Her request, ‘and would ye plaze, ma’am, to be afther showin’ me,’ just meant to do it myself. The sensations that Mr. S—— experienced on finding me thus employed were almost too deep to vent themselves in words, but he positively forbade my doing it again; so, whenever I knew that he was off on some lengthy visit, I continued my mysterious occupation unsuspected; while he rejoiced at Biddy’s improvement, and in the innocence of his heart exclaimed:

“‘Don’t tell me, my dear, that these Irish cannot be taught—look at Biddy!’

“I did look at her, and encountered so hopelessly vacant a visage that I laughed to myself at his credulity.

“I was invited, rather commanded, to join ‘The Dorcas Society for the Relief of Indigent Females,’ which met every week, and where the members always sewed on unbleached muslin and sixpenny calico; they made me president, and in consequence I was expected, at each meeting, to take home the unfinished work and do it up during the week. I was collector for the poor—and in my rounds some gave me sixpence, some nothing, and some impudence. I was superintendent of the Sunday-school, besides teacher of a Bible-class of middle-aged young ladies who were not quite grown up. I was member of a ‘Society for the Diffusion of Useful Reading,’ which also met every week; and where, had I not been a minister’s wife, I should certainly have fallen asleep over the ‘Exhortations,’ ‘Helps,’ ‘Aids,’ and ‘Addresses,’ that were showered upon us poor women; while I wondered that nobody took the trouble to write to men.

“You must acknowledge that my time was pretty well employed; but, besides all this, I was expected to entertain innumerable visitors. Traveling clergymen always made our house their stopping-place; and it must have been conveniently on the route to almost every place in the Union; for some were going north, some east, and some west, but that was always the halting-place. Their hours of arriving were various and unexpected; but I was expected to furnish banquets at the shortest notice—to drag forth inexhaustible store of linen and bedding—and throw open airy apartments that had hitherto been concealed by secret springs. Mr. S—— was firmly convinced that the house possessed the elastic properties of India-rubber, and mildly disregarded my ignorance when I asserted that it would not stretch to any extent.

“A convention of ministers was to meet in the village, for some purpose or other, and the visitors, like British soldiers during the revolution, were to be quartered upon the inhabitants—with only this difference, they were to be invited before they entered a house. I was seated in Mr. S——’s study when he mentioned the ministers.

“‘I spoke for you, too, my dear,’ said he coolly, ‘and said that we could accommodate six.’

“‘Mr. S——!’ I exclaimed, roused past all endurance; ‘are you really crazy!’

“‘Anna!’ replied my husband, as he turned his eyes upon me. Mr. S—— was usually very mild, and appeared to think that a look was sufficient to subdue refractory spirits. He now undertook to look me into reason; while I, fairly boiling at the idea of being treated like a naughty child, and yet struggling with a sense of right and wrong, sat with downcast eyes trying in vain to get cool.

“‘I hope,’ continued Mr. S——, ‘that my wife has not forgotten the rules of hospitality, or the precepts of the Bible?’

“‘But it is so impossible!’ I pleaded, ‘Neither beds nor any thing else will hold out under such an inundation.’

“‘Remember the widow’s cruse of oil,’ replied my husband.

“‘Yes,’ said I, for I felt just the least bit termagantish, ‘but such things do not happen now-a-days.’

“Mr. S—— looked again, and I was quieted, though I felt very much like laughing.

“‘One can sleep on the sofa,’ continued my husband, after a pause.

“It was the nearest approach toward calculating probabilities that I had ever known him to make; but I took somewhat of a wicked pleasure in replying,

“‘Not if he is very tall—and then he would probably roll out, it is so narrow; and, after all, that is only one.’

“‘Chairs!’ suggested Mr. S——.

“‘Don’t you think,’ said I, rather hesitatingly, ‘that they would rather go where they could be better accommodated?’

“‘Anna,’ said Mr. S——, as he deliberately laid down his pen, ‘I am really sorry to see you so unwilling to contribute your mite toward entertaining those who should be welcome guests in every house.’

“‘Mite, indeed!’ thought I; ‘but that sounded better in a sentence than ‘superhuman efforts.’’

“‘Mr. S——,’ said I, in a sort of frantic hope of reducing him to reason, ‘there are exactly two spare-beds in the house—these divided among six full-grown men are not very extensive accommodations.’

“My husband turned upon me a look, ‘more in sorrow than in anger,’ and left the room, as I imagined, to examine our stock of blankets and comfortables. But not he; he only went to look for a book of reference, and soon was writing again as calmly as though six ministries were not hovering over us in perspective.

“I sat like one bewildered, and thought. Mr. S—— would not imagine the possibility of our not being able to accommodate them; and I foresaw that all the blame of a failure would fall upon me. Had they only been girls, I could have disposed of them somehow; but the idea of packing away six grave ministers, like so many bundles, was quite repugnant to my feelings of reverence. I thought, however, in vain—there was no conclusion to come to; nothing left for me but inglorious retreat. In spite of having taken him ‘for better or for worse’—notwithstanding that I had vowed to cling to him through every thing—I deserted him in his hour of need. Yes, I thought that a good, practical lesson might be of benefit both to him and me; so I went off on a visit, ostensibly to spend the day, but I contrived to be gone all night—the very night that the ministers were to arrive.

“I learned the particulars of their visit from Mr. S——.

“They arrived about dinner-time, and rather disconcerted at my absence, Mr. S—— did the honors of the house with all the egregious mistakes that usually fall to the lot of absent-minded people. No extra provision had been made for the six guests; and Mr. S—— helped the oldest minister so liberally that the others were in danger of falling short. As he proceeded in his employment the alarming scantiness of the viands struck even his eye; and, in his first feelings of embarrassment, he abruptly left the room, and dashing into a closet near by, he soon returned with a dish, which he presented to one of the unfortunate ones, saying:

“‘Mrs. S—— is quite famous for her—her’—

“What name he would have bestowed upon it he does not exactly know himself; but his visitor’s optical organs being more on the alert, he indignantly declined the feast of soft-soap with which Mr. S—— was about to favor him. My husband asserts that his feelings were indescribable; and to this day, he has scarcely forgiven my desertion. He was taking his first lesson in house-keeping; and saw, with some surprise, that a dinner provided for three or four persons would not answer for six more. He sent to the neighbors’, and soon supplied deficiencies; but conversation rather flagged, and his visitors evidently looked upon him with some distrust. At tea-time Biddy made so many ridiculous mistakes that he was obliged to set the table himself, and expressly forbid her entering the room.

“The hour for retiring approached, and then, indeed, came ‘the tug of war.’ Mr. S—— examined the accommodations again and again, but no more beds grew beneath his eye; and at length, in despair, he concluded to marshal them upstairs in the order of precedence, and see how things turned out. Brother A—— took the light from his hand, and bade him ‘good-night’ in an imposing manner, but without a single hint that the company of Brother B—— or Brother C—— would be acceptable; and somewhat despairingly he descended to his other visitors. Brother B——, being of a convenient size, was bestowed upon the sofa; but there now remained four others for one bed and a half, for Mr. S—— had concluded to take one in with him. Two were dispatched to the remaining room; one was invited to share his apartment, and, after giving Brother A—— abundance of time to establish himself comfortably, Mr. S—— presented himself at his door with the remaining visitor, and aroused him from a sound sleep with a request to take him in. No wonder that Brother A—— looked dignified at this miserable management, or that Mr. S—— began to think that I might be half-right, after all.

“The next morning matters drew to a crisis. The coffee, manufactured by Mr. S——, was execrable; and this, with a banquet of burned beef and something that Biddy termed ‘short-cake,’ lumps of dough, scorched without and raw within, utterly failed to satisfy the appetites of the six visitors, who were going upon a long journey; and they departed with a conviction that my husband’s invitation had been extremely ill-timed, and prevented them from accepting others that might have proved pleasant.

“‘My dear,’ said Mr. S—— to me one day, after I had been home some little time, ‘are you not making an uncommon quantity of cake? Do you expect any visitors?’

“‘I do not expect any,’ I replied. ‘But they may come without expecting. Perhaps the six ministers will stop here on their return.’

“Mr. S—— gave me a look, but it was only to smile at the expression of my eyes, which, I felt, were, fairly dancing; and he replied quite meekly:

“‘It was very foolish of me to be so unreasonable—but I have had a lesson that will not be soon forgotten.’

“I could have thrown my arms around him in ecstasy, but they were full of flour, and as I had ‘a respect for the cloth,’ I desisted. He never again volunteered to take in six ministers at once; how truly they had been ‘taken in,’ they could probably testify.”

“Well,” said Milly, with a sigh, “were you not sorry that you had married Mr. S——?”

“Not at all,” replied the visitor, with a smile at this detriment to her advice, “I would do the same thing again to-morrow.”

Milly was surprised; she had seen Mr. S——, a grave, mild-looking gentleman, in a white cravat, but, while she regarded him with the greatest reverence, and trembled whenever she encountered him on the stairs, she could not realize the possibility of his compensating for all these trials—even Mr. Saybrook failed there.

The next Sunday the young minister was as eloquent and fascinating as ever; but Milly glanced at his white cravat and thought of the ironings—she glanced at the congregation and thought of sewing-societies—and, like the things in “The Philosopher’s Scales,” Mr. Saybrook went up with a bound, while these stern realities pressed heavily down in the balance. Her eyes were opened, and the young minister fell to the lot of some competitor who had not been favored with “a peep behind the scenes.”