Ypsilanti sentinel. [volume] (Ypsilanti, Washtenaw Co., Mich.) 1843-1900, 1846-12-30

) l-"Wal, swan to man,
He started at the echo of his own Yanke
, voice uttering Yankeeisms, and sileuE quote
certain proverb, "What is bred in the bone,
&C.; but he did not trust his tongue with 1t.
CHAPTER III.
) The next days paper contained the partner
ship notice of Marsden and Doolittle; and it wa
! a pardonabe vanity In Ephraim that he tool
care the advertisement should be published il
Boston also, with solicitation of consignments
Nor was this notice without its effect. Mars
den & Co. soon had rather more than one man.
share of the Boston business, and Peter Mars
den was every day better satisfied than ever tina
he had done good thing in taking in his young
partner. 1t must have been high tide in thu
Delaware when Ephraim stepped ashore from
the '"Three Sisters" for no ebb tide could thus
lhave taken him on to fortune. The reader neet
not be informed that the young merchant fully
Justified Mr.. Marsden's predictions, and while
he looked out well for the firm did no less fol
himself, and in year or two from the date O
his entrance into the copartnership was an equa
participation in the profits and equal owner in the
stock. AT length, indeed, Mr.. Peter Marsden
who with every year that passed over him see
med to settle farther and farther down into his
boots, was lost in them altogether, SO far as any
practical purpose was concerned. Ephraim had
the whole business in his own hands, and it could
not have been in better.
Changes took place in the household-where
by the way, we might have said before. Ephraim
had been domesticated from the first. He
would quite as soon have thought of leaving the
firm as of leaving his comfortable quarters in
the old mansion-now alas obterated, to make
room for twenty-five wooden houses, built like
a slim carrot with abundance of longitude and
no latitude at ALA plague of such innovations
on old-fashioned comfort, ace say! John, the
son, was made physician of, and carried his
profession into practice by-putting a sign on
the window-shutter of the breakfast-room, and
nothing more. Mary grew matronly as her
mother and father became infrm, and gradual
ly assumed the whole charge of the household,
in which she found it, by some unexplained and
mysterious sympathy, much more natural to ask
advice of Ephraim than of any body else; and
he, accustomed to give counsel and direction,
answered as naturally as if Mary had been his
own sister. Offers of marriage Mary did not
lack, for independent of her personal merits and
attractions, there was her fathers fortune to be
considered. To all of these she turned deaf
ear, assigning as the reason that the persons
were Indifferent to her. This certainly was
true, and was good enough reason, as far as it
went, and as it answered the purpose fully, she
did not examine her heart or look into her mo-
tives for any other.
In process of time Mary Marsden passed en-
tlrely ''out of the market" as the mercenary
phrase is, and was dropped out the list ofmar-
rying people. Occasionally calculating" Of
fer was made her by some person who wished
to marry as matter of convenience, and reck-
oned upon the usefulness of a wife as he would
upon any piece of merchandise which he thought
of purchasing. Mary was too shrewd to look
for moment at suitors who require ''charac-
ter from their intended, as one asks reference
from clerk or a recommendation from a new
domestic. So she became what is called anold
mald-tnatis to say, a kind-hearted, benevolent
and industrious girl, content assduously to sup
port the tottering steps of her parents down the
declivty of years, piously to minister to their
comforts, and patiently to endure their natural
querulousness as the eye bacame dim and |
the things which once pleased palled upon thel |
WORKOUT senses.
How lovely is such woman-lovely, indeed, |
in mind and in heart, strewing the paths of those
around her with flowers, while the only partic- |
ipation in them that she asks is the delight of |
making others happy Ever ready with kind
offices, self-sacrifcing, interchangeable, and ha-
bitually meek and accomplishing, if her face
seemed sometimes careworn, 1t was not with |
repinings for herself, but that she assumed with |
generous sympathy the distress of others. If |
the frivolities of the hour did not interest her,
the thoughtless pronounced her ''sour.' They |
did not see the heavenly smile which lighted up
her face when her father or mother made some
expression of pleasure-they
did not hear the grateful voice of the soul ready
to perish when it arose in benisons upon her
name. Such are sold maidsr' The world does
not know them; if it did, nothing but the most
resoiute obstinacy on their part could keep the
class eXtant.
Ephraim was not, of course, nsensible to the
excellent character of her who was so long an
inmate of the house with him. But Ephraim
was eminently conservative, and held it to be a
sound principle always to ''let well enough
alone." Everything in the house vent on like
clock-work. John smoked in his den down
stairs, and Mary quietly closed the doors when
the smoke crept up and made her mother cough.
Peter Marsden regularly droned through the
Advertising columns of the United States Ga
.ette and Poulson's Daily Advertiser from the
force of habit, and if the day was fine rode down
for an hour to his counting Ephram came
regularly home to dinner,a as regularly spent
MS evenings in the house, and Mary talked or
listened as she detailed domestic incidents or
ne brought home the news from out of doors.
He had not thought beyond the enjoyment of
lis present quiet and exceeding content. Per-
maps Mary had her thoughts-but what can a
woman do, you know su
One morning when Ephraim went down to
his warehouses he found, as he entered, his ca
~, broadcast chair, which had an expansion of
egs which seemed sufficient to defy Archime-
les to push the high back out of the perpendic-
llar, tilted up! From one side of the seat issu-
ID one leg of man, the foot resting upon the
desk: and the wooden pegs in the sole of the
other shoe were exhibited to the passers-by in
the street as specimens of the best Yankee man
ufacture. A long and strong cigar emitted jets
of villanous smoke from head in the chair,
which head seemed to have some connection
with the legs aforesaid, and two long arms Wide
Iy spread held up the morning paper. Upon
hearing footsteps. these extensively distributed
i II Ill. Il II |