The Superior times. [volume] (Superior, Wis.) 1870-1912, 1888-06-30

who never took holiday illegally-she
saw him crossing the long, frosted
grass of this said churchyard, alone,
though he had not been married many
months, to stand by that grave, OF when
the messy headstone still remained, but
tho mound lad long grown level with the
turf. If his eyes could have peered be-
low, he would have found nothing of wife
or child but little handful OF bones.
Another wife now sat at ais splendid, not
humble, hearth; possibly another child
might
Yes. this was what they said of him. the
i'll .natured portion of his friends; how,
since the offer Of the baronetcy. certain
dawning pride of race, the truly English
wish to found family, had come into the
head of grave John Bowerbank; that ac-
cordingly he had, in his grave and pracn-
cal waF, conceived the idea, however late
in life. of marrying, and had accordingly
looked round on all his eligible young lady
acouaintances, until, in his practical eye,
he found one who, for her own sweet Sc
dateness, he thought would be suitable
mate for an elderly man; and accordingly;
without much inquiry as to her feelings,
and having, indeed, arranged the whole
matter in the most business like fashion
married Emily Kendall.
But when, after a year-the baronetcy
being again offered and accepted-there
appeared no heit to these honors, in=
doubtedly Sir John was very much disap
pointed. OF course, he did not show it; he
was too good a man for that; but the
placid mien became colder and colder; and
though they were not unhappy-it takes
certain amount of hope even to create dis
appointment still, day by day, the hus-
band and wife went more their own
WAYS: saw less and less of one another, as
is quite easy i'll the daily life of wealthy
people, who have. or think they have SO;
many duties owed to their position and to
society. And though Emily still smiled =
her soft, languid. wistful smile-and no
body ever said an unkind word to her, and
she, dear soul, had never said al unkind
word to anybody i'll her life, still her
cheek grew paler and paler, her eyes grew
larger and larger, with sort of Jar away
look, as if gazing forward into a not distant
heaven for something on earth never found
something lost or incomplete
thing without which, though man should
give the whole substance of his house for,
it would be utterly in vain.
Marriage must be heaven or hell. Not
at first, perhaps, for time softens and
mends all things; but after time has had
its fair license and failed; and then
comes the dead blank, the hopeless en-
durance, even if the sharper pangs do not
intervene; the feeling that the last chance
IN life has been taken, the last die thrown
and lost.
Probably John Bowerbank did not feel
thus; his feelings were never remarkably
keen; and he had his business, his days
occupied on Change, and his evenings de-
voted several times week, to the long,
splendid, intensely dull and entirely re-
spectacle Liverpool dinner parties. But
his wife, left all day at home, with no du-
ties to fill up the idle, aimless, weary
hours, with no children of her own, aud
too listless and Inactive to adopt the sub
stitute of other childless matrons-Mrs.
Knowle, for instance-and take everybody
else's children, who needed it, under her
motherly wing-to such as poor Emily, a
marriage like hers most resembles being
slowly frozen alive in tie lake of gilded
torment, which forms the horror of one of
the circles of Dante's He'll.
But nobody knew it. Her father, en-
gagged in the same dining-ou exist
ence in London that her husband, in a
lesser and more harmless degree, enjoyed
in Liverpool, never visited her, seldom
wrote to her. When he did, his letters
breathed the most enviable self satisfac-
ton that he had done the very best for
her; that she was perfectly happy; and it
was he, her affectionate father, who had
secured, after his own pattern which, of
course, was infallible-her coniugal felicity.
And all the world, his world especially,
went on as usual, and the people who had
most discussed the marriage, pro and con,
till the heat of wordy war stretched over a
wide area between its two points of Liver
pool and London; even these subsidized. as
all people so soon subside after every mar
riage, into leaving the two concerned TO
bear their own cross or enjoy their own
content. For, after all, it is their own
business and nobody's else; which it was
from the very first, if their atfecticnate
friends could have believed so.
I