Litchfield enquirer., 1873-04-10
shall not draw if from me e''


 tabooed when we were married. Kitty I had come to near killing herself with lem.
 s'But it didn't hurt me at all, Max. l gained flesh all the while was painting. Don't you see?"
 She put back her hair to show her fat cheeks, and stretched the round arms out of her loose sleeves, and came up and l made me feel how hard her shoulder was, and put me through until I owned she was iE good condition, and then she told l me-
 'sBlarney & Go. want me to paint other pictures for them. Max
 1 So we had a housekeeper and a seams tress-Kitty hated sweeping and sewing and my wife gave her leisure toher paint ing So far. all went smoothly enough. We had our home to ourselves, I had my wife we both had the baby, and We enyied nobody. Then came the assassination. The funeral cortege had not reached Springfield, when the senior. Blarney came puf1ng in, one day covered with en- thusiasm and precipitation.
 "A picture! It must be painted direct ly, Mrs. Junket, directly. We must get the inside track. Sawder < Blatherum that firm get the inside track for fortune. Moneys no object, ma'am.
 Perhaps this doesn't sound artistic. Alas that the loftiest flight must stoop for bread and butter
 The tenth day of May, Anno Domlni eighteen hundred and sixty-tive.
 This was the morning when Kitty woke and found herself famous I woke. too. I wish hadn't.
 That picture. It would be little to the purpose here for me to tell how it was en- graved, and Autographed, and photo graphed and every other ''graphed;" how 1t was chromoed on canvas and chromoed on paper; how 1t figured in stereoscope and stereoptican; how it stared from eve- " shop window from Alaska to Cape Horn, and from the Golden Gate to the cod-banks of Newfoundland: how it was copied for railroad cars, for the tail board of an express wagon, and the splash board of an omnibus: how, in short, it was reproduced in as many styles as Victo- Tia medal or the spic and span crest of Q parvenue. It narrowly escaped being en- graved on a bank bill, as it was on se- ries of red and white cotton handkercheifs; and had Dolly Vardens been heard of in those days, 1 make no doubt the irea- ments of our best bedstead would have adorned the back and front of beauty on high days and holidays to the end of the chapter. With such violence did fame swoop down up us--upon my wife, Imean.
 The first glimpse vouchsafed to me 1 ''Of the burden of an hontr l Unto which was not
 married, was the 12th day of May of tho year of grace aforesaid. Coming home to dinner, tired and hungry as a bear, To-, a line of carriages up and down the street. l thought, at first, I'd made mistake and come to my own funeral. Looking back at it now, think wasn't so far out of the way. ''Dix is having an auction of furniture, was my second conjecture.
 But l glanced up at Dix's windows. All was as quiet as, for two or three years back, the public had been given to un- derstand that 1t was along the Potomac Just then l met a footman of wonderful majesty and calves standing sentinel at the curb-stone "Whew,..' said to my self, ''my wife is receiving, and thereup- on there swept down upon me from my own door, like ship in full sale, a large woman of ipefable dignity. She wore gloves of aristocratic smallness, scented like sachet powder, and slit in the fin gers to ventilate diamonds. She had Q double chin, likewise treble and quad ruple. She wore her nose in the air and her eyes on the chimney-pots of the op- posite houses. She did not, of course, discern me, in passing, nor her. for that matter, as at the instant I was experience ing the delights of being smQthered in velvet and point lace.
 The parlor was full My wife in her old black silk-second best, and just now her afternoon ri ga knot of blue velvet in her braids, stood talking to half a dozen persons of various ages and conditions, not one of whom had ever crossed our threshold before. Kitty had burning crimson spot on either cheek, and the pupils of her eyes were big as babys when walked in the night.
 'This is my husband, Prof Apex, said Mrs. Junkett, and bowed before bent and bilious man in seedy habiliments. This then was Prof. Apex, the world re- nowned philosopher and man of science. Of course had heard of Apex; I should have been benighted pagan else, but what was l and what was my wife and what was the house we lived in, that Prof. l Apex should enter it? The gentleman lost no time in reply to my unuttered | question.
 1 ''Art makes brothers of us all" he re- l A4oAhOAs aAO Hdl1u HlJU tL llU- ger that looked and felt like tallow dip. Junkett whispered to Junkett, meanwhile his medical deduction on this wise: (E'This fellow has dyspepsia plus liver inscru- table. Requires acids-drinks boneset tea as beverage, and believes the staff of life to be pickles. J
 "What a privilege, my dear sir" perse vered Apex, ito minister to genius in the person of your exalted wife. Mrs. Junkett needs companion for her ter restrial hours"
 "A companion for her terrestrial hoursr' H-m. ''That's what's the matter then?" l thought. Fool that was, I had fam cled that needed companion for my tired honrs, and that Kitty was she. But was beginning to see. ''A companion for the terrestrial hours," Thanks, Prof Apex
 l glanced at Kitty, standing over by the piano and began to comprehend my position as the husband of famous wife. Just then there was a movement. Mrs. Gaston, pretty woman who queened it in the Olympus of society, and also wrote poetry, made low bow and slipped an envelop into my wife's fingers.
 "Merely card for my reception, Tues day evening"" she murmured. "Quite informal, but you may meet some people whom 1t will be pleasant for you to talk with. Gustave Dupres, Asymn, etc., D and she mentioned, simply enough, sev- eral names known to fame.
 ''You are very kind" said Kitty, draw ing in her chair bit, adding emphatical- ly, ''If my husbands engagements will permit
 ''Your husband, ah! was not aware-m I-m-m," and concluding with little circulating hum, Mrs. Gaston recaptured the envelope, and scrawled under the pre- vious direction. land husband" Thus it fell out that this envelope led a long line of invitations and was the one to inaugu- rate the style of address common enough afterward
 ssMRs JUEKErr 1 and
 Husband"
 l saw the invitation lying on the piano after thny had cyoDa