Watertown republican. [volume] (Watertown, Wis.) 1860-1906, 1876-12-27
MRS. ARDORY.
a Christmas Sketch in Three Chapters
BY ED WARD EGGLESTON.
CHAPTER I.


MRS. ARDORY's sENsIBILITIBs.
That has to be the subject of the first
chapter That was always the first
chapter with Mrs. Ardory. She was a
woman of acute sensibilities. Every
body shocked her. For my part, can
never laugh at people who have sensi-
bilities without being sensible. They
must suffer q great deal, both from
their sensibilities and their lack of
sense. It is a double misfortune; let
us pity them. But if selfshness and
Incidence hide their heads behind sem
sibility, let us blame, even at the risk
of being shocking to sensibility.
do not say that Mrs. Ardory was
selfish. Some readers are always in a
hurry to jump to conclusions about
people. To say that Mrs. Ardory was
selfish would be libel, SANDER, de-
samation of most tender.hearted crea-
ture. Poor dear Mrs. Ardory was a
bundle of sympathy, an unfailing foun-
dalton of pity, a fathomless ocean of
philanthropy. She wept and la
mented over the condition of the poor,
the sick, the bereaved. the fatherless.
When her children came in of morn
ing, shouting with delight because the
white snow was eagerly piling itself up
higher and higher, and yet higher on
the garden fence, and fairly smothering
the dark green cedars with massive and
matchless Wilderness, poor Mrs. Ardory
>clasped her pale hands in distress, and
sighed, "What day for people out of
coal !" am sure you couldn't say she
was not benevolent. She never failed
to burden everybody about her with her
sympathy for the poor. She wouldn t
suffer people who had comforts to en-
Joy them so long as there were people
who hadn't them. She seemed to be
saying perpetually: "Let us all be
unhappy together"
Mrs. Ardory's sensibilities were phil
anthropic. Her husbands father had
the good fortune to be a supplemented
old truckman, and, though Mrs. Ardo-
ry's husbands was quite wealthy, Mrs.
Ardory found it great thorn in her
side that Ardory the elder wouldn't
give up his low calling and be a gentle
man dependent of his son. It would
seem SO much better. 1t was all an &C.
centricity-so she told her friends
this persistence of the old man in the
ignoble business of earning an honest
livelihood when his son was ready to
take care of his parents shat is
though she did say it, to give them a
grudged pittance to keep them in a
state of genteel good-for-nothingne
And, at last, when her mother in law, a
woman of a sturdy will of her own, died,
Mrs. Ardory attacked the old man, who
was Of an easy temper, and besought
and besieged him, for the sake Of her
delicate and refined sensibilities, which
were shocked by his course, to yield to
her entreaties, sell his old truck, put
faithful old Bob up at auction AID come
and live with them. It made people
ask so many questions, you know, about
the why and the wherefore, for the old
man to live alone. Questions that re-
fected upon her character for benevo-
lence were dreadful shock to Mrs. Ar
dery's sensibilities. And SO the old
man, unwilling to cut down the bridge
behind him, hired out his horse and
truck, put 9" To Let, Furnished" over
the door of his shabby little house, and
became sort of chore-boy in his sons
family; he rolled the baby carriage and
/ hoed in the garden. and was miscel-
Aaneous utility man about the house.
All for the sake of Mrs. Ardory's sensi-
sibilities.
But Mrs. Ardory's sensibilities we're
more than ever shocked by his lack of
polish. She did not like to have her
.father-in-law in the house when there
was company; he was sure to do some
thing very shocking. So the old man,
who had too much sense to mention his
sensibilities, who had never used the
word sensibility in his life, and who
really thought it meant some fearful
1.-THE old man, having sensibilities
nevertheless, staid out of the parlor
when there was company, only went
to the table to keep from shocking Mrs.
Ardory by keeping away, and when at
the table swallowed but a very little
dinner awkwardly in silence, taking
pains to shovel his potatoes up with
the back of his knife for fear of not
being polite, cooling his coffee by blow
ing on it in his saucer, as his master
taught him, and yet feeling that, do
what he would to be well-mannered, he
somehow shocked The sensibilities of
his daughter-in-law at all times.
Without any society-too high up for
the servants, too low down for the fam
;Iy-the old man had nothing left for
him to do but to go on shocking sensi-
bilities all the time. Perhaps there is
no way Of passing ones lifetime more
unpleasant than to spend it in being
an object of dislike. People who are
blocks always feel it more
zeenly than those who stub their toes
against them. It is far worse to be in
l~nox1 ~ fhon II 10 fO bouo |