The Bolivar bulletin. [volume] (Bolivar, Hardeman County, Tenn.) 1865-1888, 1874-05-15
THE DOCTORS WIFE.

DIR. Noyes married, I think, some
where about 1853 or 1869. There is .
very little to be said about his wife. |
Mrs. Sarah Tanning, indeed, gave a de. |
cisive verdict upon her at first sight. |
"She is one of the rank and file of hui |
manity," said she "one of the weight
less molecules that go to make up mass"
Mrs. Tanning was that brilliant little |
woman from Andover, Massachusetts, |
who essayed to take the we'll known
Mrs. Rush's place in Philadelphia that
winter. She used to give weekly re-
uniOns-without supper; she cannot
understand, even now, why she could
not &c form a literary nucleus there
Nobody contradicted her verdict; she
always claimed humanity as her own
pre-. empted property and besides,
there really was so little to say about
the doctors wife Mrs. Tanning re-
marked that Sc an American woman, if
no other, ought to have some salient
/ points, good or bad, to justify her right
/ to live, and this woman was an Ameri-
can of the Americans, descended on one
| side from a colonial Maryland family,
and on the other of Pennsylvania Qua
ker stock, a race of refOrmers who lived
only for great ideas. But there was alb
solutely nothing in the creature-noth-
ing =! It was inexrlicable by all the
rules of race p The little lady's
speciality, by the bye, was Grace" and
g strains of blood She could lay her
finger on the very great grandfather
from whom you inherited your long up
per-lip or gluttonOus propensities, and
reason for you, out of these inheritances,
such sequences of fatalism that your
christianity tottered quite to its foun-
datiOns.
Now, there had been no salient points
about the doctors wife when she was a
fat baby, or a girl at school. Dode
Near was daily set down as a Ounce in
every class, from spelling up to inter-
national law, and daily took up her
book with a cheerful Tt really Is too
bad in me-" and went out with fresh
zeal to skate and run races with the
boys. If she had been one of the deli
cate "Lilys" and "Violets " whom
the other girls set apart to adore, her
lack of brains could have been over
looked but she was short, thickset
little body, with shock of red hair
. tied back FROM a freckled face which
was lighted by laughing blue eyes
eyes in which there was an undeniable
cast She never, however, gave q hint
of her opinion of herself, and always
seemed to be in high good humor with
!
her lot in life, stupidity and squint in
Guided A certain indefinable some.
thing about the girl would prevent any
one from limiting a disagreeable truth
to her. The same impalpable reserve
or old-fashioned courtesy in her, too,
made the boys who skated and raced
with her treat her with respect which
they did not show to the LilYs and Vio-
l lets. Her condition on graduation-day
To1N 10
| good-humOr had not made it exaspera-
ting. One of the class was going to
: sail as missionary to Africa; we all
made heroic martyr of her; we all
looked forward with hystelic enthusi-
, asm to speedily becoming famous au-
l thors, leaders in society, or at least
! wives and mothers. Trustees and fac
ulty spoke and prayed at us, the very
; air kindled with hope and fervor and
there sat that plump little Ounce at the
foot of the bench, smelling bunch of
! the red Burgundy roses, of which she
was so fond, quite conUented to be a
cipher now and in the future
Here she was again, DIR. NoYes' wife,
shapeless and freckled and bright-eyed
as ever but the ugly hair was always
/, delicately coiffured, and her simple
l dress a marvel of xquisite art. She
did not care in the least that everybody
believed that she had sold herself for
an establishment. Why else should a
, girl of her age marry a cynical, sour
Whoever of fifty, with a half dozen hob
, ble-de-hoys of sons CDR. Moves, -
Mrs. Tanning said, 4" was an ambitious
man, thwarted in his aims by the
drudgery of supporting a family. He
! should have chosen an intellectual
. woman as his second wife, who could
5 have helped him TO regain his lost
. ground"
The doctors mistake was soon appar-
. ent IN his wife's course. The faded
carpets and hair-cloth sofas were swept
: ont of the dreary old house The
money spent in making it bright and
! pretty, as Mrs. Tanning said, would
have kept open a SOUP house all winter
Moves old friends, instead of smoking
; their meerschaums in his dusty office
9 came IN now to coy dinners, where
! each man found his fayorite dish his
wife had fine taste in cookery, it ap-
pears IN that, as in everything else.
, she took life with zest and ioyously
The Noyes boys, who had began to
, hang around variety theaters, gave a
series of dancing parties and private
theatricals Mt home, to which girls of
their own class came. Now all these
|, things bring In bills; the doctors long
/, bearded money was spent like water.
It was an inscrutable mystery to our
society leaders why he and his boys,
and in fact, ali other men, clustered
around Mr. Dode, as they called her.
affectionately, like bees about honey.
She never said anything worth remem-
bering for five minutes she made NJ
professions of love or friendship. Some
of us, who remembered how the whole
= \ = -. i.
her Bible verse, thought the charm lay
in her pleasant voice, or could there be
any magic in the clean, spicy scent of
Burgundy roses with which the house
was al ways filed =? The men, when ques-
toned, really seemed to have no def
niteside of the woman one g liked
her because she was quiet" another