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

apology. Hard to say why, since any acute
reasoner nfI perceive that it takes some of
the very finest qualities of real manhood to
make thorough man of business" A
man exact, persevering, shrewd, enterpris-
ing, with strong perception OF his own
rights, and an equally fair judgment, and
an honest admission of the rights of his
neighbor; who, from conscience, common
sense, and prudence takes care ever to do
to others as he would be done by; who has
tirmness enough to strike the clear bal
ance between justice and generosity; who
IS honest before he is benevolent, and
righteous before he is compassionate; who
will defraud no man, nor, if he can help it,
suffer any man to defraud him; who is
careful in order to be liberal, and accurate
that he may compel accuracy in those about
him; who. though annoyed by the waste
or transportation of pound, would
not grudge thousands spent in q lawful,
wise, and creditable way; man of whom
his enemies may say, sarcastcally, that he
Is q near" man, SHARP" man, a man
who "can push his way in the world" yet
half the worlds work and good work, too
is done by him, and the like of him.
done far more successfully, far more nobly,
than by your great geniuses, who aim at
your grand incompletenesses who only sad
den one by the hopelessness of their
failures. Better than to be a poet, whose
ignoble life lags haltingly behind his noble
poetry; statesman, who tries to mend the
world and forgets that the first thing to be
mended is himself; or philanthropist, who
loves all mankind, but neglects his own
family better far than all these in the long
run is the thorough man of business, the
secret of whose career is the one simple
maxim, Anything worth doing at all is
worth doing well.
Whatever else people might say of John
Bowerbank-an they have said much,
both bad and good, during his life Of near
Iy sixty years-they always said of him
this: that he had never shutfled out of an
undertaking, nor broken promise; never
begged, borrowed, nor cheating is
stealing-one shilling from any man; and
though his aims might not be lofty, and
his daily life far removed from the heroic,
still he was good, honest man, and Gas l
repeat, with exceeding spect for the cpl
thet) a thorough man of business.
But there was nothing the least interest
ing about him. His figure was short and
stumpy, and his gray hair bristled funnily
not, by any force of imaginatio-, be turned
into romantic parsonage. That his life
had had its romance was not impfobable;
few lives are without 1t might have been
who knows?-connected with q certain
grave (which Mrs. Knowle once found
when visiting her own little grave in Hale
churchyard, and ever after looked kindlier
on the man for the sake of it,, which bore
the inscription, Jane, vito of Mr.. John
Bowerbank" (he was not Esquire them,
who died in childbirth, was here inferred
with her infant son, nearly forty years
ago.
But so completely forgotten had been
this episode in his life, that most people
thought John Bowerbank an old bachelor;
and when he grew in years and honors, so
much SO that it was rumored that he had
declined being made Sir John Bowerbank
solely because knighthood was small
thing, and baronetcy, to man without
heirs, blank sort of dignity, nobody sus-
pected he would marry; nor, when he did
marry, was he suspected of marrying in
any but business like way-to secure a
pleasant mistress for his splendid house,
cheerful companion for his declining years.
And, let the truth be owned he did marry
only for this. He was not one bit in love.
The solitary passion of his life had blazed
up and burned itself out or rather been
extinguished by the hand of fate, and it
He did not marry Emily Kendall for love,
norwich, perhaps, was the secret of her
finally consenting to marry him-had he
made any foolish pretense of doing SO.
He respected her character, lie liked her
we'll, in tender. fatherly sort of way; but
Jane, wife of Mr. John Bowerbank," now
sleeping in her peaceful grave, need not
have had the slightest jealousy over, nay,
would hardly have recognized the middle
aged gentleman who was the happy BRIDE
groom" that sunshiny morning in St
Georges. Hanover Square.
Perhaps this was a good thing for
Emily. In her husbands unexacting
and administrative regard, more pater-
nal than lover like, she found the rest
which was the only thing for which
she craved; and in his steady, sedate,
persistent character, which aimed at moth
ing higher than it accomplished, and
sought from her no more than she was
sole to give, she found q little of the COM
fort which she once thought was hopeless
to her in this world. She, who had begun
life with girls dreams of perfection, and
proved them all false, who, in her weak
ness-weaker than most woman s-had
leaned on one stay after mother, and found
them all pierce her like broken reeds, ex-
perienced in her calm, cold marriage with
this kind, good, practical man, certain
peace, which after all the tempasts of her
youth, was not without its soothing charm.
Also, 10 one of her weak, hesitating nature,
the mere sense of her fate being rrevoca-
bly, settled-of leaning on somebody, and
having somebody on whom she was bound
10 lean-of passing out of the fowery
fields and dark precipices of her troubled
life mo the smooth, hard, iron tramway of
duty, conveyed feeling of relief.
tlNa Sre e /,
riage everybody said how well Mrs. John
Bowerbank was looking; better than any
body ever expected to see Emily Kendall
look III this world; for most people had set
her down as the doomed inheritor of her
mothers disease consumption, decline,
atrophy-whatever name be given to the
outward tokens of an inward grief which
kills the spring Of youth, and makes life
a WEAKNESS, and the grave the only rest.
1t cannot be said that marriage caused
any great change in John Bowerbank; he
was too old for that. But he lost some
of his crotchety, old bachelor ways; moved
with a certain air of conten ment and
pride about his handsome house, and
was carefully mindful of his delicate
and sweet-looking young wife, whom
he took to state dinner parties, and
introduced among the blooming, forid,
and little too conspicuously dressed
Liverpool aides, where she looked not
unlike lily of the valley in the midst of
bed of tulips and ranunculuses.
SO they lived their lives, those two. Not
domestic life by any means Mr.. Bower
bank had never been used to that, nor Mrs.
Bowerbank neither. She had dreamed of
it once; of the honor and happiness of be-
ing poor mans wife; of mending bis
shirts and stockings; of looking after his
dinners and making the best of everything;
counting no economies mean that were to
tighten the toll of the bread winner; no la
bors hard that were to add to his comfort.
toward whom love made even the humblest
service the most natural thing in the world.
But this was not Emily's lot. She was a
rich woman. married to rich man; moth
ing vas expected of her but elegant idle
ness. Once this might have been to her
WEAKNESS intoleral lie; but she had long
been passive and languid, glad to do moth
ing, and to be just whatever she fancied,
since nobody ever insisted upon her being
anythin9-a life that some would have
PallpI harpy- and 81 i