Vermont phÅ“nix. [volume] (Brattleboro, Vt.) 1834-1955, 1884-05-09
4 RASH ADVENTURE.

A RASH ADVENTURE.
"Why don't get married ?"
II wonder if there is any process Of law or
condition of ethics that can protect me from
that question I"-aud Miss Margaret Winthrop
turned sharply round and looked at her broth
er-in-law as if for a reply.
Dr. Ainslee looked up from his paper with
an expression that evinoed a certain enjoy
ment of the chase, rather than q sympathy
with the pursued and answered
Yes there is one means of escape"
'Aud that is to get married, suppose"
Exactly"
Miss Winthrop was not soothed by the sug-
gestion. She regarded il as an unwholesome
state Of civilization in which a woman with
q handsome income and a natural bias toward
contentment could not pursue her own course
without being headed of at every turn with
that imbecle query. Among her friends she
was spoken of az eccentric, a woman who un-
fortunately had IDEAS and possessing inosti-
mable advantages had signally failed to make
any use of them. This failure was all the
more conspicuous from the fact that in her
first season she had promised much. She had
allowed brilliant opportunities to slip through
her fingers one by one until she had brought
the reproach OF spinsterhood upon a family
that within the memory of man had married
its daughters young and well, and for any
thing the world knew to the contrary, happi-
ly. She was % to-day.
This was the view taken Of the situation by
her friends. Miss Winthrop regarded it from
a different point of observation. She knew
many things that the world could not know
concerning the alleged felicity OF various
members of her family, past and present, who
had married early and well" Then there
was the inevitable entail of care and suffer.
ing. Why any sano woman should fly pre-
cpitately into the consequences of marriage
when she had the benefit of other peoples
experience as a warning was something Miss
Winthrop had never understood and did not
seek to explain. She had all a womans hor-
ror of being called an 'old maid" though
the immunities of spinsterhood were at times
Rllurng. 1t had never been her deliberate
intention to join the ranks of the belated sis
| terhood. or course she intended to marry al
some time, but why be in haste? Did moi
every married woman Of her acquaintance ad-
nit that courtship was the most delightful
part of all, and that antcipations of post-nup.
tial felicity were apt to resolve themselves in.
to an unsatisfactory anticlimaI? or course
no well-regulated woman wanted to be an old
maid, but conceive the want of foresight in
the woman who married her first lover, thus
putting it out Of her power to enjoy again the
delightful experience Of courtship, when by
rejecting him she could go on repeating it in
| definitely with fresh subjects and under al
infinite variety of conditions.
She that loves and runs away
VIII live to love another day
was Miss Winthrop's motto that marriage
was, like death, a thing to be deferred as lonf
as possible and accep ed finally as a heroic
remedy for something worse, was her philos
ophy. Being 2s to-day, she felt that the tim,
had come for heroic measures. She did moi
| look day over 20. Her hair was the same
soft tint of brown that it had always been
her cheek had firmness of contour and del
icate blush upon it that might have belonged
to girl of II the beauty which had made
| her conspicuous as a debutaute gave no signs
of approaching deterioration, but what did al
this amount to when everybody knew she wa
| 2S, and attested with eIasperating indelcacJ
that she was remarkable well preserved"
She could not possibly put it of much lon
ger, and yet she felt certain shrinking from
her destiny-as the hand of a suicide nigh
| recoil from its instrument-as she began tc
review mentally the opportunities remaining
to her.
money is no object" she exclaimed a
last. 81 want freedom, and the only condi
tion compatible with perfect freedom is wild
| OWuoOu OulOINuuhttll VIC eau Do DOTl
widows, and the odds against being left
widow without incumbrance are ininity t
one. II there was only some way of making
a woman widow by an act Of Congress or
decree OF court It's shocking to think o
the risks a woman must run to attain tina
seventh heaven of independence. believe
will advertise for a consumptive, and agree
to nurse him tenderly through the remnant o
his existence if he will oblgate himself TO di,
within given time"
Mrs. Ainslee, her sister, and her senior b,
two years, turned toward her the face o
shocked and outraged wifehood.
But Mrs. Ainslee, to the indiscretion o
marrying young, had added the folly of spoil
ing her husband, and Miss Winthrop expect
ed this silent protest from her.
IF you want something of that sort, sal
the doctor, laying aside his paper, sit is no
worth while to advertise. / have a patien
on hand that will exactly fill the bill"
"Tell me about him, she said with sudde
enthusiasm.
"He is not a consumptive," continued IN
doctor. "He is even a more hopeless cas-
than that. He may die at any moment; b
can't possible live longer than few months
and is as sorely in need Of competent nursin
as any poor devil l ever saw. He has n
friends here, though he was born and raise
pital, but it is crowded, and there has bee
so much sickness this season that could nc
get a nurse for him, though I've been lookin
for one ever since he came. He was ofasI
mate of mine at college, but he went away
and have not seen him since he graduate
until was called to attend him several day
ago. lie was a splendid fellow then, but
is a total wreck now. The worst of it ia ths
the fellow doesn't want to get well. 1 don
know what has happened to him since he le
here, but whatever it ia it has crushed hiI
utterly. He seems to have money enough fc
everything he wants the only trouble is,
can't get a nurse for love or money"
The doctor had forgotten what started hi
recital he was thinking only of this frienC
wondering what could have subdued a jovi
and naturally buoyant fellow so completely
when he was suddenly called to order by Mi
Winthrop.
"You are positively certain that he cannt
recover 2" she asked.
I'm the natural course of events he canno
He might be restored by a miracle"
And can only live a few months at best
81 should say five or six months at most
'"lhis," said Miss Winthrop, with perfe
gravity, ''is the one opportunity Of lifetim
II would be like flying in the face of Prov
dence not to accept it,"
= ''It looks rather pointed" replied the do
p tor. "It does not often happen that womi
while indulging whim can at the same tin
do Nn act that may bo counted upto her 4
} righteousness.
III were to talk like that should eIpe
something to happen to me, said Mrs Ain
lee, shocked at her sister aud surprised
this unusually lippant behavior on the pa
of her husband.
Perhaps out Of regard for Mrs. Ainslee's a
|
rested here, but the subject was not forge
ten. Miss Winthrop pondered 1t in seer
and ultimately evolved purpose.
: John Hemingway had been crushed by
{ catastrophe, He had simply been uniform
. uulueky. A series of Improbable speoul
tions, each inoonsiderable in itself, had me
ed his once ample fortune to q meagre incol
D barely sufficient for his needs. The siren
! GUS efforts to retrieve it in climate insult