The weekly Floridian. [volume] (Tallahassee, Fla.) 1867-19??, 1882-11-07
STEVE APPLETON.6 WIFE.

When Stephen Appleton had lived
some 35 years bachelor, he bethought
him that it would be we'll to get married,
and accordingly looked about him for
wife. Had others looked for him, they
would probably have chosen a self-con-
tained, decorous person past 80. He,
however, greatly to the surprise Of every
one, walked up the church aisle one Sun
day morning with very pretty girl upon
his arm, and, after the service, introduced
her to his friends as his wife. She looked
great deal more like his daughter, and
was a blushing, smiling, little creature,
who must so far have had a happy life,
to have brought out Of it so many dim
Piles.
So she had, indeed and her half dozen
bright-eyed sisters asked themselves what
she could have seen in that old fellow to
love. And certainly it seemed almost a
mystery that such solemn wooing should
have prospered with such merry girl
= woolng without many of those accesso-
ries which many women hold so dear, of
praises and caresses.
Probably poor lilly thought they were
to come after marriage.
She left home and love, and plunged
into the malestrom of welded life with
man so strangely imbued with the idea
that all women were his interiors that he
thought it waste of intellect and time
to love one overmuch, or to study her
tastes and fancies for moment, if they
conf1icted with his own.
She, the inferior, had, on the contrary,
said to herself, 81 must adapt myself in
every way to Stephen" and had thought
she could find no happiness in anything
which did not give him pleasure, and she
joyfully took up the dull routine Of
woman's household drudgery, and made
all sweet and pleasant, fed her genius and
hero daintily, and saw to his stockings
and buttons
He hardly knew it. He never woke
out of his hard and cruel self-absorpton
sufficiently to be aware of her constant
thought for him.
Woman's vanity should never be en-
couraged, was one of his theories; and
hence he never praised her beauty nor ex-
pressed qualification for her care for his
comfort or thanks for her labors to make
him happy.
In the morning mandate was given
concerning the dinner In the evening
he ate it with her; and though he had no
fault to find, he never praised a dish.
After the meal he went out, or locked
himself in his study among his books and
papers. Once at the very first, she had
taken her fancy work to the door, and
asked to be let in, but was met by de-
NAL
Mans work." he said sententiously,
" is too great to be broken in upon by
woman's chat or woman's folles ;" she
then retired quietly and never tapped at
those panels again.
She had some pride in her composition.
She would not WOO her husband for the
love that she felt was her due.
One day he caught her reading certain
love poems, and took the volume from
her hands, pleasantly enough, fer he was
seldom rude and turned the pages over
A man wrote this, he said. " Praises
of woman's face! Yearning for her
presence. Why, a man should be all-suf-
icient for himself Love makes a man
weak, contemptible-love that these poets
set such value on. I think you had not
best read this thing, child: 1t is full of
folly"
Then he tossed the book upon the table
the treasured volume over which her
girls eyes had gloated before she ever
met this husband of hers, saying, "Would
that some man would feel thus to me
talk or write so to and of me !" believing
that there was love life before her in the
ecstatic future.
He went up to his study and laboratory,
where he had been toiling for weeks to
complete an invention which he believed
would be TO him the philosophers stone
would bring him fame and immortality.
Tilly took the book from the table and
laid it on the fire.
Crest there, rhymed lines that deluded
me-" she said, almost fercely. "There is
no such thing as love. You Knocked me
with it's falsehood. believe it no longer"
AS lilly was watching the flames lick
up the precious volume with their red
forgot-a something indescribable rum
bled and shook the house and rushing
by sort of instinct to her husbands
study, she found him lying among the
debris of his apparatus, q motionless dis.
figured thing, that could neither speak
to her nor look at her. An explosion had
taken place and the inventor was the
victim.
At the sight Of him lying there dead,
a. she feared--uttsrly undone, At least,
as she doubted not-all Tilly's love re-
turned. She took the disfgured face to
her bosom, as she had never, never dared
to take it before. She kissed that from
which any one else would have shrunk
with loathipg, and knew that the poet