Weekly commercial herald. (Vicksburg, Miss.) 1884-18??, 1886-06-25
CHAPTER II.
MY SWEET SOPHIA.

80 AAAS
l dareSay some of those readers who are
never satisfied want to know why in the
world l 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 so 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 a story about a man who
goes to bed and gets up again three hundred
and sixty-five times every year like all the
rest of us. 1t is your men who either never
wish to go to bed, or have no bed to go to,
who make the fortunes of us novelists. Per
cival continued devoted student of science
all his life, and he has already attained a very
respectable eminence among men of research.
/ have been told that, but for his great mod
esty, his name would be more widely known
than it is; and even now l am assured he will
make a sensation beyond his ovn 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 a harmless dame, and never
broke a wife's heart yet; for, indeed, she
rather promotes matrimonial c~Onstancy.
Children came to these happy two in fair
succession, girls and boys--the eldest being at
Cambridge when the youngest was set tod
ding from chair to chair. l fancy sophia
never quite shared the enthusiasm of hel lord
and master for the physical sciences; and she
did not quite care for all his learned no
~fessors, who had not enough humanity tor
her; butshe always entertained them genially.
At Lines she would flip her husband a little,
Fer instance, one day hearing him say of a
S ientific friend, "He is successful and pro-
lound,' which Percival uttered with unusual
elaboration, Mrs. Sophia comes to her hus-
bands side, and, looking 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 a laugh
and a pinch. Beyond these harmless pleas
antries there was never a difference on
general subjects between the two.
And here is why l 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 tc
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.
But Sophia, Sophia, to you l have not done
justice. We all called you "Lady Beauty"
but I 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 graces of mind and way, of
dress and look and speech? l feel that had |
drawn a woman who knew the way to adj
minister stryohnine safely, and did admin
lister it; or had | written about a 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 I described a lively young IN who
smoked Three Castles tobacco, wore a billy
cock hat sloped on her head, knew how to
swear and whistle-she might have been a
success i'll my hands. But you l have not
been able to draw, my sweet Sophia. A
blurred dim tracing is all l have given of
your clear and perfect beauty. You will be
called insipid; you whose hands and eyes and
presence, had they but been about me, would
have made me all l 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, II have tried,
and tried, and faited.n