THE BACHELOR’S EXPERIMENT.

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BY MRS. EMMA C. EMBURY.

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There are some persons in the world who seem born to evil fortune; they grow up under the shadow of care, and misfortune dogs their footsteps like a sleuth-hound eager for his prey. Reversing the old fable of King Midas, every thing they touch becomes valueless. Their best efforts are rewarded with disappointment,—their life is a perpetual struggle,—troubles come not in a host which might be confronted at once, but in slow and sure succession, one evil being overcome only to make room for another, until at length the energies of the worn spirit are all exhausted, and patient endurance is the only trace which still remains of the high capabilities with which it was originally gifted. But there are others who are decidedly born to good luck. (Poor Power! how do we check the career of laughter with a sigh, when some passing word recalls the inimitable skill with which he ruled the chords of mirth!) There are people to whom success is a sort of natural inheritance,—who never put forth a finger to beckon fortune onwards, and yet find her following in their track, dropping her golden favours in their way, and smoothing with obsequious care the asperities in their path of life. Such an one was the hero of the following sketch.

Mr. Simon D. Waldie, or rather S. De Courcy Waldie, (for thus he always wrote it; having rather a leaning towards aristocracy even in the trifling matter of names,) was the son of a highly respectable merchant, who, conscious of the defects in his own early education, determined to bestow on his child all the advantages of scholarship. As young De Courcy exhibited evidences of talent, and indeed was looked upon as a remarkably precocious boy ere he attained his fifth year, he was early banished from his paternal roof to the residence of a private tutor in the country. This plan was adopted in order to rescue him from the temptations to idleness which exist in large schools, and, so far, it was very judicious. But to a constitution naturally delicate and a temper exceedingly reserved, a public school offered some advantages which were not to be found in the home of a secluded student, and the want of which had no small influence on the future life of young De Courcy. Shut out from other companionship than that of his pedantic tutor, he devoted himself to study with most indefatigable zeal, and his close application was rewarded by the attainment of the highest honours, when called to pass through the ordeal of a collegiate examination.

Of course all those who were interested in his future welfare anticipated great results from this early development of mind. But in the education of the young student one most material point had been forgotten. He had been taught to labor but no object had been offered to his future attainment:—he had learned to delve the classic mine but he knew not how to coin the fine gold he there discovered:—he had been trained to run a race without having any fixed goal to direct his steps. His life was a perfectly aimless one,—he had no definite end in view. His father’s competent fortune placed him above the necessity of seeking a livelihood, and nothing short of absolute want seemed likely to drive the solitary student into the haunts of men. When desired to choose a profession he was utterly confounded. The various claims of Law, Gospel and Physic were placed before him in every possible light; but they were exhibited after his habits of desultory thought and profitless study had become too deeply rooted. At first he was inclined to adopt the law; but a few days attendance on court, (where he heard the finest powers of reasoning and the noblest gifts of eloquence exerted in behalf of one of the vilest criminals that ever stood before the bar of Justice,) sickened him of this profession. “I cannot spend some of the best years of my life,” said he, “in learning to make the worse appear the better reason.” The delight with which he sometimes listened to the gifted preacher, who spoke as if his lips had been ‘touched with a live coal from the altar,’ tempted him to the study of divinity. But his delicate sense of duty checked the impulse ere it became a wish, for he dared not assume the ‘form’ without the ‘spirit of godliness’ or enter into the ‘holy of holies’ with the soil of earth upon his garments’ hem. The study of medicine attracted him by the facilities which it afforded for relieving the sufferings of mortality; but the illness of a young friend showed him the darker side of the picture also. He beheld the weeping relatives looking up to the medical attendant as if he were an angel endowed with the power of life and death. He learned how fearful is the responsibility of him who ministers at the bed of sickness, and how deeply it is felt by the honest and conscientious physician. He was disgusted with the heartlessness of those (and there are such) who calculate a patient’s means of payment ere they enter his sick room; and he was intimidated by the remembrance of the wear and tear of feeling which is necessarily suffered by the man of science who puts heart and soul into his duties at the couch of suffering. Commerce, De Courcy abhorred, for the details of its busy scenes were little suited to his reserved habits and refined tastes. Viewed in its fairest light he recognised it as a noble calling, but those who pursued it were but too apt to wander with idolatry and bow down before the golden calf.

So the youth hesitated, and deferred his decision, passing his days amid his books in the seclusion of his study until his habits of reverie were rather rudely broken by the sudden death of his father. This startled him from his torpor and had he been then called to enter upon the active duties of life, might have aroused him more effectually. But the elder Mr. Waldie had been one of those careful bodies who trust nothing to chance. Every thing was in such perfect order, his business was so admirably arranged, and his will was so precise in its directions that De Courcy had nothing to do and little to reflect upon. The head clerk assumed the business and purchased the stock in trade,—the income of the property was bequeathed to mother and son during life with a reversion of the whole estate to the survivor, and after the legal forms had been properly attended to, every thing went on in its usual manner. The only perceptible difference was that when rents, or interests on bonds and mortgages became due the bold and flourishing signature of S. De Courcy Waldie was appended to the receipts instead of the cramped and queer hieroglyphics which were formerly presumed to designate the name of his parent.

There was something in the mode of life peculiarly calculated to cherish the secluded habits of De Courcy Waldie. Their abode was situated in one of those narrow gloomy streets, where the sun is only visible at noonday,—a street which formed, in old times, a portion of the ‘court-end’ of the city, but which is now occupied principally by elderly proprietors or decayed gentlewomen, who, compelled to live on a small income, yet unwilling to appear shorn of their former honors, haunt the scenes of their youthful gaiety, and affect to despise the upstart ‘nobodies’ of B—— Street and —— Place. The tall, dusky houses stand wedged in close array, looking upon their opposite neighbors like a row of their old time-worn spinsters in an old fashioned contra-dance; in one of these sleepy-looking mansions, resided the Waldie family. Every thing in the house bore evidences of Dutch neatness in housekeeping. The faded but unworn carpets were the same which had been the wonder of the neighborhood when the parents of our hero were first married; the carved chairs belonged to that perpendicular race now rarely to be found except in rubbish rooms; the narrow necked china jars on the high chimney-piece were relics of a by-gone age; and the tall clock, standing in the very spot where it had been placed thirty years before, rolled its Ethiop eyes, and ticked its monotonous warnings in a most drowsy and slumber-inducing voice. Dark heavy curtains in winter, and yellow Venitian half-blinds in summer, added to the gloomy appearance of apartments in which the sun never shone. The sound of the clock, the low purr of the cat as she stretched her overgrown body on the soft hearth-rug, and the dull clicking of Mrs. Waldie’s knitting-needles, which she plied with unceasing assiduity, alone broke the deep silence of the apartment, and the most sincere votary of indolence could scarcely have imagined a more comfortable sort of domestic “sleepy-hollow.”

Here would Mr. De Courcy Waldie sit hour after hour, pondering over some learned treatise, digging out Greek roots, exhausting his ingenuity in patching up some mutilated fragment of antiquity, and occasionally, by way of light reading, arousing himself with the Latin Poets, but never condescending to look into any thing which could not boast the musty flavor of past ages, except the daily newspapers. It is not strange that a man of such habits should soon learn to mistake reverie for reflection, and feasible projects for good resolutions. There was always something which he meant to do at some future time. He would tilt himself back in his chair, plant his feet against the chimney-piece, and, with a cigar in his mouth, indulge those vague and pleasant but idle dreams, which such men are apt to dignify with the name of thoughts. The household went on with a kind of mechanical regularity. The important affairs of indoor life were managed by two old servants, who, before the abolition of slavery in New York, had been the property of Mr. Waldie, and had been carefully trained in all the duties of their station, (a class, by the way, who make the very best domestics, but who are now almost extinct; thanks to the spirit of philanthropy, which has thrown them upon their own resources and left them to die by want, vice and intemperance.) Mrs. Waldie walked into the kitchen every morning, and gave, or fancied she gave directions for the day; but Dinah needed no such watchfulness,—she knew her business and went about it as regularly as if she were wound up like the clock every Saturday night.

In the early part of his life it had been suggested that De Courcy ought to look out for a wife. But the idea of returning into a throng of giddy giggling girls, was quite too trying to the poor youth’s feelings. He was sometimes conscious of an emotion of pleasure when, as he sat at the head of his pew in church, his eye fell upon the rosy cheek and bright eye of some fair damsel. Yet he only admired at a respectful distance, for a single word from a lady, or even the necessity of touching his hat to her in the street, would crimson his face with the painful blush of most officious modesty. If perchance he did venture to play the agreeable to some female less volatile than her companions, his constrained manner and pedantic compliments evinced a much more intimate acquaintance with the Daphnes and Chloes of antiquity, than with the luring, breathing, captivating beauties of the nineteenth century. By degrees all hope of taming the shy young student was relinquished. His female contemporaries married less intractable individuals, and long before he had made up his mind as to the propriety of assuming the responsibilities of wedlock, a second race of giggling girls was springing up around him. However he seemed quite contented with his celibacy. Perhaps some of my readers may consider this as a very integral portion of the good fortune which had fallen to his lot, and this I will not venture to dispute, for to a man of his dreamy temper and indolent habits, a wife would have been a positive annoyance—unless indeed, he could have found a sister to the inimitable “fat boy” of Pickwick.

Matters went on very smoothly with De Courcy Waldie until he had attained that awkward corner in man’s life, which must be turned, and the pathway from which leads rather down hill. Mr. De Courcy Waldie reached his forty-fifth birth-day, ere he had decided upon a profession or concluded to take a wife, but his time had glided away so calmly, that he scarcely noted its loss, till a second domestic bereavement aroused him. Quiet old ladies, who do not trouble themselves about their neighbors and never talk scandal, generally spin out life to its most attenuated thread, and thus Mrs. Waldie dozed away until she had completed her eighty-fourth year, when she fell into a sound sleep from which she never woke. It was not until the bustle attendant upon the funeral, had subsided, that the son had time to think of his loss, and then, when left to the utter solitude of his home—for the first time in his life he was sensible of actual profound grief. He did not know how essential his mother’s presence had become to him. He was so accustomed to see her in the warmest corner in winter, and by the recess of the window in summer, that the apartment seemed to have lost, not only one of its inmates, but part of its furniture. Her tiny work-table and easy chair still held their wonted place, but she who was almost a part of them, was gone forever, and a feeling of loneliness took possession of his heart. He knew not, until the form of that revered parent was hidden from his sight, how often his eye had wandered from the page of his favourite book, to rest on her placid face. He remembered how carefully she had studied his tastes, how scrupulously she had obeyed his wishes, how well she had adapted herself to his peculiar habits; and when he reflected upon the different degree of his grief at the loss of his father, he began to think that there was something in the nature of woman particularly calculated to make man happy. This thought was followed by regret at not having secured a continuance of womanly tenderness for his future life. In the natural order of events, he must long outlive his mother, and who would have supplied her place, like a devoted wife. Mr. De Courcy Waldie began to wish he was married.

The longer he dreamed over this new idea, however, the more his difficulties seemed to increase. He thought of the pretty delicate girls whom he had admired in his college days, but he recollected them now as fat comfortable matrons, or thin, withered spinsters; and he looked in his mirror as if to discover whether age had made the same havoc with his appearance. But the daily use of the said useful appendage of the toilet had rendered him so gradually habituated to time’s changes, that he could discern little difference in himself. He had never possessed much of the bloom of youth, and his face had early worn the pale student-like ‘cast of thought,’ which years had only traced in deeper characters. His dapper little figure, still trim and upright, was not spoiled by the obesity so much dreaded by elderly gentlemen; his teeth were still perfect—his incipient baldness—but this was an exceedingly delicate point—we will draw the veil of silence over his reflections on this painful subject. Suffice it to say that Mr. De Courcy Waldie came to the conclusion that he was yet young enough to think of matrimony.

It was necessary for him to proceed with great caution however, for he knew that he was reputed rich, and he heard that society contained such anomalies as mercenary young ladies. While thinking over his new project, he was one day called upon for a subscription to some benevolent association, by one of those charitable persons who relieve the real or fancied distresses of their fellow mortals, by a free expenditure of their own time and their neighbor’s money. With his usual generosity, Mr. Waldie handed her a liberal contribution, not sorry perhaps, to buy off her garrulity at such a price. But the lady dropped some words ere she departed, which set him off upon a new track. She had suggested the propriety of his adopting some orphan boy and educating him as his own. This was quite a new idea to him, but he viewed it in rather a different light from that which his visitor had intended. “Adopt a son,” said he to himself, in a tone that seemed strangely like disgust, “no indeed. I should go crazy with a rollicking boy ransacking the house, and turning every thing upside down. Besides, boys have always got dirty faces, and they are forever cutting their fingers with their penknives, breaking their heads against horse posts or cracking their skulls on skating ponds; then they always tear their trousers, lose their gloves, and stump their toes through their shoes. Faugh! I can’t endure great rude bearish boys. If she had said a daughter now, I might have thought better of it; there is certainly something very pleasant in a nice little quiet girl.”

The more he reflected upon this fancy, the better he liked it, but the idea of adopting a daughter soon gave place to a more eccentric scheme. He determined to make an experiment. He would ‘train up’ a child in the way she should go; he would educate a wife.

Whether it was the loss of his mother which had awakened him from his apathy, or whether the long latent affections of his nature were now only developing themselves, cannot be determined, but, certain it is, that before he had dreamed over his project three months, Mr. De Courcy Waldie actually applied to the managers of the Orphan Asylum for permission to adopt three of the female inmates. He engaged to educate them according to their different capacities, to furnish them with the means of obtaining a future livelihood, and to settle the sum of two thousand dollars on each, when she should either marry or attain her majority. His character for probity and honor, was as well known as his eccentricity, and as no doubt existed of the fulfilment of his promises, his proposition was accepted. He was allowed to select his three protégées, and however ignorant he might be of female character, he showed himself no mean judge of female beauty, for his choice fell on three of the loveliest children in the institution. He wished them to be about twelve years of age, and there was but the difference of a few months between them. They were poor, friendless orphans, destined to a life of hardship if not of want, and he knew that if his experiment terminated unsuccessfully, the girls would be better provided for by his means, than if they were apprenticed to some hard task-master. He determined to bestow on all the same care, to educate them after his own peculiar notions, and when they should have attained a proper age, to decide upon their individual claims to his affections.

The old servants shook their heads in ominous silence, when they learned the sudden increase of family. Old Dinah went so far as to hint that his mother’s death had touched Mr. Waldie’s brain, and indeed wiser folks than she came to something like the same conclusion. But your quiet people, who are so amazingly slow in waking up to any purpose, pursue it with wonderful perseverance, when once fairly placed on the track. Mr. Waldie engaged an elderly governess to take charge of his young wards, and an apartment in the upper part of the house was appropriated to her use as a schoolroom. It was agreed that the privacy of Mr. Waldie’s sitting room should never be violated by the intrusion of the females, except when he invited them to enter its hallowed precincts. His old-fashioned politeness regulated the etiquette of the table at their daily meals, and very soon the household assumed its usual regularity, notwithstanding the presence of three little girls. Mr. Waldie did not consider them old enough to deserve his particular attention for the present, and he therefore left them to the care of their very competent governess: only stipulating that they were never to be allowed to read poetry or fiction—never to wear any other dress than a calico frock, white apron and cottage bonnet,—and by no means, to form an acquaintance with other children. Having made these rules he returned to his former abstract studies, until such a time as he should deem it proper to undertake the instruction of his young protégées.

He had chosen the little girls rather on account of their personal beauty than with any regard to their mental gifts, for of these he determined to judge for himself, and it was not surprising, therefore, that he should discover great diversity in their characters. Fanny Morris, the elder of the three, possessed that regular and classical beauty which ever charms the eye in the remnants of Grecian art. Her features were perfect, her complexion exquisite, her form symmetry itself, but unfortunately, she seemed born to verify the oft-repeated criticism on that paragon of ideal beauty, the Venus de Medici, of whom it has been said that “if a woman exactly resembling her could be found in this breathing world, she would in all probability, (judging by the rules of physiognomy and phrenology) be an idiot.” Fanny’s small and beautifully shaped head was utterly destitute of brains—her soft dark eyes were never lighted up with any loftier expression than that of pleasure at sight of a box of sugar plums—and her lovely mouth gave utterance to none but the silliest of speeches. She could learn nothing, and after a year spent in fruitless attempts to impart more than the mere rudiments of knowledge, she was given up as incorrigible. But mindful of his promise Mr. Waldie gave her the choice of an avocation, and finding her only capable of the most mechanical employment, he apprenticed her to a fringe and fancy-button maker; at the same time he purchased, in her name, bank stock to the amount of two thousand dollars, as her future dowry. Fanny seemed to have as little heart as mind, and parted from her benefactor with no regret. As we shall not have occasion to allude to her again, it may be as well to satisfy the reader’s curiosity by stating that her beauty afterwards attracted the attention of a young artist, who wanted just such a model. Finding that her quiet stupidity rendered her a most untiring sitter, while her two thousand dollars added weight to her other attractions, the painter married her, and much of his present celebrity is owing to the matchless loveliness of his silly wife.

Of the two children who now remained under Mr. Waldie’s roof, Emily Rivers was by far the most strikingly beautiful. Her blonde hair fell in rich curls upon her fat, white shoulders, while her delicate features, and large clear blue eyes gave an infantile grace to her lovely countenance. There was a frank joyousness in her expression, which was very attractive, and, at that time, few would have hesitated in giving her the preference over her young companion. Celina Morley was one of those children whose personal characteristics develop very slowly. She was short in stature, and slightly inclined to stoop, while her gray eyes, whose hue was deepened almost into blackness by the shadow of the fringed lid, and a small mouth filled up with pearly teeth, formed her only claims to admiration. Her face appeared out of proportion—her forehead was so immensely high, her brows so thick and dark her cheeks so colorless, that her countenance seemed like some modern engravings, all black and white, without tints of light and shadow.

Nor was this difference in their personal appearance the only one which existed between the two girls. The shy, quiet demeanor of Celina, contrasted strongly with the frank, bold manner of her companion. Emily would run to meet Mr. Waldie with a gay laugh, and throwing herself on a footstool beside him, would beguile him with her merry prattle, without seeming to care whether he were annoyed by her intrusion. But Celina would stand timidly awaiting an encouraging word from her benefactor, and thus it often happened, in the little household as in the great world, that modest merit was overlooked in favor of obtrusive importunity, and Celina was forgotten for the more clamorous Emily. Yet it was Celina who brought the dressing-gown the very moment it was wanted, and drew the easy-chair into the accustomed corner—it was Celina who laid the slippers just where his feet would be sure to find them without giving the head trouble to think about them; it was Celina who, when he was confined to his bed by sickness, watched in his room through the long day, and listened at his door in the silent hours of the night. But the caresses of Emily had opened a fountain of tenderness in Mr. Waldie’s bosom, and after they had been inmates of his family for rather more than two years, he felt that the time had come when his course of instruction must commence. What that course was it is needless to specify; let it suffice to know that he destined them to pursue a series of studies which would have appalled the most zealous aspirant for college honors.

The true character of the two girls began now to be exhibited. They were approaching their fifteenth year, and the fresh, glowing beauty of Emily Rivers had already excited the notice of strangers. She had observed the stolen glance of admiration, she had even heard the sudden exclamation of delight, as some ardent youth peeped under the close cottage bonnet, while she walked demurely beside her benefactor or her governess, in their daily promenades, and the latent vanity of her nature had been fully aroused. The calico dress and white apron annoyed her sadly. She was full of projects for making Mr. Waldie sensible of the folly of his restrictions, and while he was busied in teaching them to solve algebraic problems, she was as busy in devising schemes for eluding his vigilance. She had no taste for study, but she had tact and quickness of comprehension and thus it often happened that her adroitness stood her in the stead of application and industry. While Celina devoted herself to the performance of her required tasks, Emily exerted her ingenuity in evading them, or in skilfully applying to her own use, the industry and talent of her young companion. But Emily had a most decided love for dress. She was wonderfully tasteful in trimming bonnets and furbelowing dresses and debarred from any such pleasures for her own account, she amused her leisure hours by furbishing up old Dinah (who was particularly fond of a fine spreading knot of ribbons) and regarnishing the head gear of all the dingy dame’s dressy acquaintances.

At length her vanity would no longer be controlled. The girls received a regular allowance of pocket-money, which it was expected they would spend in charity, and this sum Emily hoarded up until she was enabled to purchase some of the long-coveted finery. Determined to try the strength of Mr. Waldie’s rules, she came down to the parlor one Sunday morning, prepared to accompany him to church, clad in her new attire. For a few minutes he looked at her in stern silence, while, with a beating heart but resolute spirit, she awaited his reproaches. The little cottage bonnet had given place to a tawdry pink silk hat, flaunting with streamers of lace and ribbons, and instead of her simple white cape her shoulders were now covered with a bright yellow gauze scarf. She had certainly not improved her appearance by her new display, but she wished to try the effect of a little rebellion, and she was fully satisfied. Mr. Waldie quietly desired her to change her dress,—she remonstrated,—he insisted,—she grew angry and exhibited a degree of fiery passion, which, though by no means strange to the other members of the family, had hitherto been carefully concealed from him; until at length, irritated by her vehement opposition, he led her to her apartment and locked her in. There were three faults which Mr. Waldie regarded with peculiar abhorrence in the female character, and these were a passionate temper, a love of dress, and a determined will. He was perfectly horror-stricken, therefore, at the sudden discovery of all these most dreaded attributes in the beautiful Emily. Nor was his disgust much diminished, when, on his return from church, he proceeded to her apartment to receive, as he hoped, an humble confession of her fault. He found her leaning from the window engaged in an interesting conversation with a beardless young gentleman who resided in the adjoining house, and who was now standing on the top of a ladder placed against the garden wall, in order to be within whispering or rather murmuring distance of the young lady, with whom he had for some months carried on a flirtation by means of billets tied to pebbles and flung into her window. This of course decided the matter. Emily was desired by her benefactor to make choice of some trade, and, as she fancied it must be perfectly delightful to live among finery, she decided upon adopting the profession of a milliner. Accordingly, Latin and Geometry were exchanged for frippery and folly. Emily soon became a most skilful artiste, and, by exhibiting their effect on her beautiful face, which nothing could spoil, was the means of selling so many ugly bonnets and turbans, that she was quite a prize to her employer. At the age of eighteen she married a fashionable draper and tailor, when she received her promised dowry from the hand of Mr. Waldie. As the business of both husband and wife was one which ministered to the master spirit of vanity, they made a large fortune in a few years, and I have heard—but I will not vouch for the truth of the story—that after their retirement, Colonel Fitwell and his beautiful wife made quite a figure in the saloons of Paris, where she could boast of the honor of having been noticed by royalty; his majesty having been heard to ask the name of that very large woman with blonde hair! What an honor for a simple republican!

Celina Morley was now left alone, and the punishment inflicted on her companion, for such to her sensitive nature it seemed, rather tended to increase her timid reserve. But she possessed high intellectual gifts and a great love for study, so that her progress in learning equalled her eccentric benefactor’s highest anticipations. I am afraid she would have been deemed a blue-stocking in the circles of fashion, for she was a fine Latin scholar, read Greek with great ease, had not even been delayed on the Pons Asinorum in her mathematical career, and in short, when she had attained her eighteenth year, knew considerably more than most collegians when they take their degree. Do not think this is an over-estimate of the attainments of our heroine, gentle reader. Let an intelligent woman be endowed with industry, perseverance and a love for study, then give her a powerful motive, such as love or gratitude, to stimulate her, and all the boasted intellect of man will hardly outstrip her in the race of learning.

The person of Celina had developed as fully as her mind. Her swarthy complexion had cleared into a fine brunette, her dark hair parted smoothly on her high forehead, added feminine grace to a rather masculine feature, while the intellectual expression which beamed in her fine eyes, lighted up her whole face with positive beauty. Her form had become tall and majestic, scarcely rounded enough for perfect symmetry, but just such a figure as expands with queenly grace in later life. In short, Celina had become a stately, beautiful, and gifted woman. But while all these things had been going on, Mr. Waldie had become some six or seven years older, and already passed his fiftieth year; yet some how or other, he did not seem to be very impatient to change his condition. It is true, Celina had attained the age which he had originally destined to be the period of marriage, but he felt so very comfortable and was so much the creature of habit, that he seemed rather to dread any innovation. He had taken the precaution to keep his wards in ignorance of his final intentions, and therefore, Celina loved him with truly filial affection, without dreaming that she might be called upon to cherish any warmer emotion. As she grew up to the stature of womanhood, Mr. Waldie had been induced, by the remonstrance of the governess, to withdraw some of his restrictions in female attire; and though he still insisted on a rigid proscription of bows, feathers, flowers and lace, he allowed Celina to assume a garb somewhat in accordance with the prevailing fashion. But he had forbidden her to acquire any feminine accomplishment except sewing and knitting. The first act he found very necessary to his own comfort, as strings would break, and buttons would come off, which evils no one could repair with such neat-handed rapidity as Celina; while the second mystery he looked upon as essential to every well-trained woman, because it had been the sole occupation of his mother for the last twenty years of her life. But sad to tell! the young victim of theory could neither dance, nor play on the piano, nor sketch in crayons, nor paint velvet, nor make filigree boxes, nor work worsted:—in short, she was utterly unskilled in the thousand lady-like arts of idle industry.

Yet nature had made her beautiful and good, education had made her a fine scholar, and her innate tact (without which talent and learning are often but useless gifts) had taught her womanly duties and womanly tastes. Indeed she had rather too much feminine delicacy to suit the peculiar notions of Mr. Waldie. He had an idea that the want of physical courage, which characterizes the sex, was simply an error in female education, and, not content with the passive endurance and moral strength which make woman a heroine in the chamber of pestilence, he determined that Celina should possess some share of masculine boldness. Accordingly, he practised various fantastic experiments to habituate her to pain and terror. He dropped hot sealing-wax on her bare arms, fired pistols within six inches of her head, and practised various feats of a similar nature, until, after having thrice set fire to her dress by accident, and once shocked her into a fit of sickness, he gave up his attempt in despair of ever bringing her to the required point of courage. Mr. Waldie was a little disappointed. Celina did not quite realize his ideal of the partner of his life. She bore little resemblance to the dull, drowsy, quiet creature, who, soon after his mother’s death, seemed to fulfil his notions of wifely excellence, and neither was she that most unfeminine of all females—a plodding and slovenly book-worm. She was simply a gentle, lovely, intellectual woman, whom profound learning had failed to make either a pedant or a metaphysician. Do not listen to your prejudices, friend reader, and fancy that I am portraying an immaterial character: such women are to be found—sometimes in the saloons of gaiety but more frequently in the shades of private life, and the fire on the domestic hearth may still burn brightly and cheerfully even when lighted by the torch of wisdom.

A year or two more passed on. Mr. Waldie seemed to linger long on the threshold of celibacy ere he could summon courage to cross it, and in the meantime he was spared all future anxiety about the matter. Among the few, who still kept up their acquaintance with the eccentric Mr. Waldie, was the head-clerk of his deceased father, who, grateful for the liberal treatment which he had received at the settlement of the estate, was always ready to do a kindness for the heir. Unpunctual tenants and troublesome debtors were peculiar objects of his watchfulness, and Mr. Waldie was saved from many a loss and many a vexation by his honest friend. The son of this gentleman, after receiving a liberal education, had devoted himself to the church, and, as Mr. Waldie’s extensive library furnished a great variety of polemical works, he had gladly accepted the bachelor’s kind invitation to visit it at all times, without restraint. At first young Willington Merwyn came rarely, and taking some dusty volume of controversial divinity would retire to his own quiet study. By degrees he learned to linger longer, and ponderous tomes which he formerly sought were often forgotten when he took his departure. He came frequently and staid late, while Mr. Waldie, absorbed in his own speculative philosophy, always greeted the presence of the clergyman as a tribute to the value of his intellectual stores, or a compliment to his own scholarship. He fancied, good man, that the long metaphysical discussions and ingenious theories, in which he took so much delight, were the young man’s chief attraction, and never dreamed that even the presence of philosophy herself,

“Attired in all

The star-gemmed robes of speculative truth”

would have awakened far less emotion in the bosom of Willington Merwyn than did the beauty and gentleness of Celina. But the lady herself had some little inkling of the truth, for women seem to have a sort of intuitive knowledge of the heart’s love. There were looks and tones and casual words which needed no interpreter, or if they did, she soon found one in her own feelings. She discovered that the visits of the clergyman were only recurring pleasures to her, and she reflected upon the matter till she came to the very natural conclusion, that, considering the warm regard manifested by her benefactor to his young friend, it probably was his wish that they should obey the command of the apostle to “love one another.” Not long after she had arrived at this conclusion, one of those lucky chances, which always favor lovers, revealed to her the fact that Mr. Merwyn had precisely the same opinion. In short, if the commandment already quoted had contained the sum of Christian duty, they would certainly have been regarded as eminently excellent young persons.

Of course the elder Mr. Merwyn was soon made acquainted with his son’s passion for Celina, and, following the honest old-fashioned mode of transacting such affairs, he thought it best to be sure of his friend’s approbation. Now it so happened that Mr. Waldie was at length coming to a decision on the momentous subject which had so long occupied his thoughts. He had made up his mind that, however reluctant he might feel to assume the responsible duties of matrimony, a further delay would be an act of cruel injustice to Celina. He thought over all her good qualities, and, though he did not quite like her cowardice, he determined that, rather than doom her to a life of celibacy, he would celebrate his fifty-fifth birth-day by a wedding. It cost him some effort to make this decision; for, in addition to his natural indolence which led him to dread any change in his mode of life, Mr. Waldie had one secret which he could not bear to betray. It was one of his weak points—nobody knew it, and he dreaded lest the familiar intercourse of married life should reveal it. Nothing but a sense of duty towards his ward could have induced him to overcome this last objection which seemed to have gained new force with the progress of time. It was just at this moment, when his heroic self-devotion had carried him to the verge of an explanation with Celina, that Mr. Merwyn, with sundry nods, and winks, and dry jokes, disclosed to him the wishes of the young people. Mr. Waldie was thunder-struck. It seemed to him too preposterous for belief, but it was sufficiently startling to determine him to judge for himself. He shook off his abstraction long enough to discover that his old friend was not very far wrong, and once assured of the fact, he fell into his usual reverie before coming to any definite decision. He had sufficient practical wisdom to keep his own counsel about his original plan, and he reflected upon Celina’s incorrigible timidity—the many little troubles which matrimony is apt to bring around one—his own bachelor comforts—and, above all, his inviolable SECRET, until he was quite disposed to believe that it was “all for the best.”

Mr. Waldie’s fifty-fifth birth-day was celebrated by a wedding; but Mr. Waldie still enjoyed his celibacy and his secret. Celina became the wife of Willington Merwyn. At the request of the eccentric but kind bachelor, the happy pair took up their abode with him. He probably did not gain much in the way of quiet by this arrangement, for in the course of a few years a certain little rosy-cheeked De Courcy and his chubby sister started the decorous echoes of the old house with the sounds of baby-grief and baby-joy. However, there is a wonderful power of adaptation in the human mind, and Mr. Waldie learned, after a while, to allow them free ingress to his student’s den, while he often neglected his speculative theories for practical illustrations of kindly affections. Celina made quite as good a wife as if she had been brought up in the usual lady-like ignorance of science. She shaped and sewed her children’s garments, concocted puddings and pies, directed the mechanism of her household, and was quite as useful in her sphere as the most vehement declaimer against learned women could have deemed necessary to vindicate her character. Mr. Waldie never regretted the result of his experiment. He lived in perfect harmony and peace with his now enlarged family, and it was not until Celina had become a comely matron and her children had grown up to love and reverence him, that the old man was gathered to his fathers. But his secret had been discovered long before his death, for he gradually lost his little personal vanity as soon as he finally concluded to remain a bachelor, and he did not find any decrease in Celina’s affection even when she learned that he wore A WIG.