Part 2 — CHAPTER I IN ACCOUNT

I HAVE a little circle of friends, among all my other friends quite distinct, though of them. They are four men and four women; the husbands more in love with their wives than on the days when they married them, and the wives with their husbands. These people live for the good of the world, to a fair extent, but much, very much, of their lives is passed together. Perhaps the happiest period they ever knew was when, in different subordinate capacities, they were all on the staff of the same magazine. Then they met daily at the office, lunched together perforce, and could make arrangements for the evening. But, to say true, things differ little with them now, though that magazine long since took wings and went to a better world.

Their names are Felix and Fausta Carter, Frederic and Mary Ingham, George and Anna Haliburton, George and Julia Hackmatack.

I get the children’s names wrong to their faces—except that in general their name is Legion, for they are many—so I will not attempt them here.

These people live in very different houses, with very different “advantages,” as the world says. Haliburton has grown very rich in the rag and paper business, rich enough to discard rag money and believe in gold. He even spits at silver, which I am glad to get when I can. Frederic Ingham will never be rich. His regular income consists in his half-pay as a retired brevet officer in the patriot service of Garibaldi of the year 1859. For the rest, he invested his money in the Brick Moon, and, as I need hardly add, insured his life in the late Continental Insurance Company. But the Inghams find just as much in life as the Haliburtons, and Anna Haliburton consults Polly Ingham about the shade of a flounce just as readily and as eagerly as Polly consults her about the children’s dentistry. They are all very fond of each other.

They get a great deal out of life, these eight, partly because they are so closely allied together. Just two whist-parties, you see; or, if they go to ride, they just fill two carriages. Eight is such a good number—makes such a nice dinner-party. Perhaps they see a little too much of each other. That we shall never know.

They got a great deal of life, and yet they were not satisfied. They found that out very queerly. They have not many standards. Ingham does take the “Spectator;” Hackmatack condescends to read the “Evening Post;” Haliburton, who used to be in the insurance business, and keeps his old extravagant habits, reads the “Advertiser” and the “Transcript;” all of them have the “Christian Union,” and all of them buy “Harper’s Weekly.” Every separate week of their lives they buy of the boys, instead of subscribing; they think they may not want the next number, but they always do. Not one of them has read the “Nation” for five years, for they like to keep good-natured. In fact, they do not take much stock in the general organs of opinion, and the standard books you find about are scandalously few. The Bible, Shakespeare, John Milton; Polly has Dante; Julia has “Barclay’s Apology,” with ever so many marks in it; one George has “Owen Felltham,” and the other is strong on Marcus Aurelius. Well, no matter about these separate things; the uniform books besides those I named, in different editions but in every house, are the “Arabian Nights” and “Robinson Crusoe.” Hackmatack has the priceless first edition. Haliburton has Grandville’s (the English Grandville). Ingham has a proof copy of the Stothard. Carter has a good copy of the Cruikshank.

If you ask me which of these four I should like best, I should say as the Laureate did when they gave him his choice of two kinds of cake, “Both’s as good as one.”

Well, “Robinson Crusoe” being their lay gospel and creed, not to say epistle and psalter, it was not queer that one night, when the election had gone awfully, and the men were as blue as that little porcelain Osiris of mine yonder, who is so blue that he cannot stand on his feet—it was not queer, I say, that they turned instinctively to “Robinson Crusoe” for relief.

Now, Robinson Crusoe was once in a very bad box indeed, and to comfort himself as well as he could, and to set the good against the evil, that he might have something to distinguish his case from worse, he stated impartially, like debtor and creditor, the comforts and miseries, thus:—

EVIL.GOOD.

I am cast upon a horrible desolate island, void of all recovery. But I am alive, and not drowned as all my hope of ship’s company were.

I am singled out and separated, as it were, from all the world, to be miserable. But I am singled out, too, from the ship’s crew to be spared from death.

And so the debtor and creditor account goes on.

Julia Hackmatack read this aloud to them—the whole of it—and they agreed, as Robinson says, not so much for their posterity as to keep their thoughts from daily poring on their trials, that for each family they would make such a balance. What might not come of it? Perhaps a partial nay, perhaps a perfect cure!

So they determined that on the instant they would go to work, and two in the smoking-room, two in the dining-room, two in George’s study, and two in the parlor, they should in the next half-hour make up their lists of good and evil. Here are the results:—

FREDERIC AND MARY INGHAM.

GOOD.EVIL.

We have three nice boys and three nice girls. But the door-bell rings all the time.

We have enough to eat, drink, and wear.But the coal bill is awful, and the Larrabee furnace has given out. The firm that made it has gone up, and no castings can be got to mend it.

We have more books than we can read, and do not care to read many newspapers. But our friends borrow our books, and only return odd volumes.

We have many very dear friends—enough. But we are behindhand 143 names on our lists of calls.

We have health in our family. But the children may be sick. The Lowndes children are.

We seem to be of some use in the world. But Mrs. Hogarth has left Fred $200 for the poor, and he is afraid he shall spend it wrong.

The country has gone to the dogs.

GEORGE AND ANNA HALIBURTON.

GOOD.EVIL.

We have a nice home in town, and one in Sharon, and a sea-shore place at Little Gau, and we have friends enough to fill them. You cannot give a cup of coffee to a beggar but he sends five hundred million tramps to the door.

We have some of the nicest children in the world. A great many people call whose names we have forgotten.

We have enough to do, and not too much. We have to give a party to all our acquaintance every year, which is horrid.

Business is good enough, though complaining. We do not do anything we want to do, and we do a great deal that we do not want to do. George had added, “And there is no health in us.” But Anna marked that out as wicked.

The children are all well. People vote as if they were possessed.

GEORGE AND JULIA HACKMATACK

GOOD.EVIL.

We have eight splendid children. The plumbers’ work always gives way at the wrong time, and the plumbers’ bills are awful.

We have money enough, though we know what to do with more. The furnace will not heat the house unless the wind is at the southwest. None of the chimneys draw well.

George will not have to go to Bahia next year. We hate the Kydd School. The master drinks and the first assistant lies. But we live in that district; so the boys have to go there.

Tom got through with scarlet fever without being deaf. Lucy said “commence” yesterday, Jane said “gent,” Walter said “Bully for you,” and Alice said “nobby.” And what is coming we do not know.

Dr. Witherspoon has accepted the presidency of Tiberias College in Alaska. How long any man can live under this government I do not know.

FELIX AND FAUSTA CARTER

GOOD.EVIL.

Governments are stronger every year. Money goes farther than it did. But as the children grow bigger, their clothes cost more.

All the boys are good and well. So are the girls. They are splendid children. But the children get no good at school, except measles, whooping-cough, and scarlet fever.

Old Mr. Porter died last week, and Felix gets promotion in the office. But the gas-meter lies; and the gas company wants to have it lie.

The lost volume of Fichte was left on the door-step last night by some one who rang the bell and ran away. It is rather wet, but when it is bound will look nicely. But the Athenaeum is always calling in its books to examine them, and making us say where Mr. Fred Curtis’s books are. As if we cared.

The mistress of the Arbella School is dead. But our drains smell awfully, though the Board of Health says they do not.

We have to go to evening parties among our friends, or seem stuck up. We hate to go, and wish there were none. We had rather come here.

The increasing worthlessness of the franchise.

With these papers they gathered all in the study just as the clock struck nine, and, in good old Boston fashion, Silas was bringing in some hot oysters. They ate the oysters, which were good—trust Anna for that—and then the women read the papers, while the smoking men smoked and pondered.

They all recognized the gravity of the situation. Still, as Julia said, they felt better already. It was like having the doctor come: you knew the worst, and could make ready for it.

They did not discuss the statements much. They had discussed them too much in severalty. They did agree that they should be left to Felix to report upon the next evening. He was, so to speak, to post them, to strike out from each side the quantities which could be eliminated, and leave the equations so simplified that the eight might determine what they should do about it—indeed, what they could do about it.

The visitors put on their “things”—how strange that that word should once have meant “parliaments!”—kissed good-by so far as they were womanly, and went home. George Haliburton screwed down the gas, and they went to bed.