The clarion. [volume] (Jackson, Miss.) 1883-1888, 1886-06-30
CHAPTER II.
MY SWEET SOPHIA


/ daresay some of those readers who are
never satisfied want to know why in the
world have not told them more about Per-
cival Brent, our Sophia's worthy and happy
husband Now, the answer TO this | shall at
once supply. He was good and worthy.
and so successful and happy after his mar
riage that of him there is nothing to tell
What can you say in story about man who
goes to bed and gets up again three hundred
and sixty times every year like all the
rest of usl 1t is your men who either never
wish to go to bed, OF have no bed to go TO,
who make the fortunes of us novelists. Per-
cival continued a devoted student of science
all his life and he has already attained very
respectable eminence among men of research
l have been told that but for his great mod
esty, his name would be more widely known
than it is: and even now / am assured he will
make sensation beyond his own circle of
thought by a new work which he has in
hand. Sophia loved him well and constantly,
and he never wavered in his devotion to her
for an instant. His only other mistress was
Science who is harmless dame, and never
broke wife's heart yet; for, indeed, she
rather promotes matrimonial constancy
Children came to these happy two in fair
succession, girls and boys-the eldest being at
Cambridge when the youngest was yet tod
Ql1R ITOD1 CLld1T 10 C0tlI. L fancy ECOpfl1a
never quite shared the enthusiasm of her lord
and master for the physical sciences; and she
did not quite care for all his learned pro
fessors, who had not enough humanity for
her; but she always entertained them genially.
At times she would flip her husband little.
For instance, one day hearing him say of
scientific friend HE is successful and pro-
found" which Percival uttered with unusual
deliberation, Mrs Sophia comes to her hus-
bands side, and, locking saucily over his
shoulder, says she:
by successful my husband means that
the gentleman has discovered a new beetle,
and by profound that he believes absolutely
nothing
Which Percival answered with laugh
and pinch. Beyond these harmless pleas
antries there was never difference on
general subjects between the two.
And here is why have said nothing about
Percival Brent Happy, somebody cries, is
the nation that has no history. Happy the
husband say /, about whom the novelist can
find nothing to tell Happy Percival Brent,
of whom all we now record is that he called
Sophia his wife; and that she was mother to
the children who are now rising up like
young palm trees in that happy home where
once down the dining room floor our merry
little mother of long ago stepped her minuet.
bQt COpD1a- CCpHfd- W you nave not uOle
Justice We all called you Lady Beauty
but have failed to describe you Alright. You
are not interesting in my pages. You are in
teresting in life Who could make real your
thousand little graees of mind and way, Of
dress and look and speechF feel that had
drawn a wouan who knew the way to ad-
minister strychnine safely, and did admin
ister it; or had written about woman who
had four husbands but had never realized
her ideal, and described her in a cab, or a
yacht, or some other energetic conveyance,
flying away to joy with the man Of her heart;
or had / described a lively young woman who
smoked Three Castles tobacco, wore a billy
cock hat sloped ON her head, knew how to
swear and vhistle-she might have been
success in my hands But you l have not
been able to draw, my sweet Sophia A
blurred dim tracing is all have given OF
your clear and perfect beauty. You viii be
called insipid; you whose hands and eyes and
presence, had they but been about me, would
have made me all / might have been, and
now shall never be. Forgive me, who, try
ing to paint you, have painted only your
pale shadow, and who feels now, as the brush
slips through tired fingers, Il have tried,
and tried and failed