The Prince George's enquirer and southern Maryland advertiser. (Upper Marlborough, Md.) 1882-1925, 1895-05-17
5elrtt MisrellunlJ.
MY COUSIN MARY
And she's dead.

| 1t was my sad fortune from earliest boy
hood up to be a failure in all ways. was
not so handsome as could have been ex-
pected in the son of my beautiful mother
and the young father who died before |
| was born, and who was also beautiful
was told | was not brilliant, though both
| sides of the house showed men and women
of excellent ability, and, worst of ALL
was not good, though this puzzled me not
a little as a child, for my intentions were
of ma agnificent order and the resultant
| behavior not merely reprehcnsible as
that of many boys | knew less punished.
| But in some way the things | meant to
do failed of accomplishment or were found
when accomplished to have most unhappy
consequences, and the things | did under
pressure of discipline were seldom salts
factory.
Years of reproof and often overheard
complaint as to my trying disposition
finally convinced me of my unworthiness,
and in time I grew to look at my life as a
failure, merely an opportunity for as much
self indulgence as could be procured with
out too great expense.
Being of a lazy and luxurious DISPOSE
ton, early fell into the habit of deriving
an inexhaustiblc fund of pleasure from
mere ina gination of what things might be /.
to console myself for my Intellectual strug
gle to make them such. As a little boy
was sent to bed with military like precis-
ion by my intie xible mother, usually with
sense of failure and i'll doing in the day
behind me, and | used to lie mute and still
in my little chamber and make up to my
self in royal bursts of imagination for the
dsappointments of the real life. How Of
ten, so laid and Thought to be sound asleep,
| have in spirit not only established my
pre- eminent virtues by a series of noble
acts, so easy to imagine, so difficult to per-
form in the gray irksomeness of everyday
life, but besides this have | glutted my in
fant soul with the sweet vengeance of mag
nanimty, arranging unparalleled dona-
tions and privileges to be conferred by me,
me the lamcntable and unworthy son, up
on nv grateful family and friends One
sweetest JOY of these fair dreams was that
when l should be a man my Cousin Mary,
who tlislikcd me for the disa grecable boy
| was, should love and marry me.
1t was a sore problem with me in those
davs to decide whether | should indeed
receive the open gratitude of my benefi-
Charles, reveling gloriously therein, or
whether, proudest height of power con-
cealed, | should bestow all benefit in Sc
cret, and vet remain, condemned and criti-
cised by the unwilling recipients of my
bounty. But my Cousin Mary in these
dreams always loved me for myself, and
then, afterward, ah, the jewels showered
upon her.
This habit of internally satisfying my
self, of paving back in triumphant magma
nimitv for all the sting and arrows of
outrageous fortune continued with me as
| grew and remained my best consolation
after had become an unaspired reporter
on great newspaper. And still in my
solitary chambers down town, when | was
not so tired as to sleep perforce in what
hours remained to me, | would console
myself for all the notifications of the day