Mower County transcript. [volume] (Lansing, Minn.) 1868-1915, 1874-05-14
From scribner's Monthly.
THE DOCTORS WIFE.

LIZ NOyc6 MaA1A0tS L IuAuA, bOuc"
where about 1868 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 Ale of
humanity, one of the weightless mole
cules that go to make up mass" (Mrs.
Tanning was that brilliant little woman
from Andover, Massachusetts, who es-
sayed to take thewell- known Mrs. Rush's
place in Philadelphia that winter. She
used to give weekly reunions-without
supper; she cannot understand, even
now, why she could not "form a literary
nucleus" there.) Nobody contradicted
her verdict; she always claimed human
ity as her cwn pre-empted property;
and besides, there really was so little
to say about the Doctors wife! Mrs.
Tanning remarked that "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 American of the Americans, descend
ed on one side from q colonial Mary
land family, and on the other from
Pennsylvania Quaker stock, o race of
reformers who livedonly for great ideas.
But there was absolutely nothing in the
creature-nothing ! It was inexplicable
by all the rules of race" The little
lady's speciality, by the way, was
trace" and "strains of blood" She
could lay her finger on the great-grand-
father from whom you inherited your
long upper-lip, or gluttonous propensi-
ties, and reason for you, out of these
inheritances, such sequencesof fatalism
that your Christianity tottered quite to
its foundations.
Now there had been nc salient points
about the Doctors wife when she was a
fat baby, or n girl at school. Dode
Near was daily set down as Ounce in
every class, from spelling to interna-
tional law, and daily took up her book
with cheerful eft 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 "Lily's" and "Violets " whom
the other girls set apart to adore, her
lack of brains could have been over
looked; but she was q short, thick-set
little body, with red hair tied back
from q freckled face which was lighted
by laughing blue eyes,-eyes in which
there was an undeniab1e cast. She
never, however, gave hint of her
opinion of herself, and always seemed
to be in high good humor with her lot
in life, stupidity and squint included.
A certain indefinable something about
the girl would prevent any one 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 Violets. Her condi-
tion on graduation-day would have
been pitiable if her placid good-humo,
had not made it exasperating. One OF
the class was going to soil as mission
ary in Africa; we all made heroic
martyr of her; we oil looked forward
with hysteric enthusiasm to speedily
becoming famous authors, leaders il
society, or at least wives and mothers
Trustees and faculty spoke and prayed
for us, the very mir kindled with hope
and fervor; and there sat that plump
little Ounce ut the foot of her bench
smelling bunch of the red Burgundy
roses, Of which she was SO fond, quite
contented to be a cipher nowand in th'
future!
Here she was again, DR.. Noyes' wife
D shapclcss and frccklcd as ever; but he
:, hair was always dclicately coiffured, ant
v her simple dress marvel OF cxq,lisit,
t art. She did not care in the least tina
y everybody believed that she sold her
2 self for an establishment. Why cls'
L should q girl of her age marry cyni
| cal, sour widower Of fifty, with hal