The citizen. (Frederick City, Md.) 1895-1923, 1897-05-28
THE MAKING OF A MAN.
BY cwENponEN Overflow.
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L
If woman is not ignorant of life, she
had bettei have learned it from life and
not from books.
Olive Torrey was clever and had MOTH
Ing to do. She lived at a frontier post
and could go in neither for charity nor
clubs nor fads. She had husband who
studied, and no children, so there was
ing for her in her home. She had
come straight from southern Cali
fc-nia town-and there is less of life
to be seen there in a given period of
years than In any other spot on earth
But she read-largely Balzac and
Thackeray and Crawford and Bourget:
which taught her great deal that she
had no need to know. She dreamed
dreams Of love at first, while she was
bride; but they were not very realistic
dreams. She had to idealize her hus-
band vigorously to make them endure
even a year; and no one can idealize
husband successfully. Heis too much
on hand; more especially in a four
company post
She was a good woman-therefore
when she failed on the husband it did
not even occur to her to try on some one
else, though there were two promising
bachelors. Instead, she went at the
novels of manners again, and with new
devotion, and dwelt on the parts that
dealt with intrigue and ambition and
success In the world, and SKINNED over
the love parts. She did not believe in
them much now. So her mind became
filed with this sort of thing, and there
was no vent for it. She wanted to be a
brilliant, disillusioned young matron,
courted by diplomats, power in salons
which ambitions were just bit diff
cult of realization where she was.
Lieut.. Torrey would not be worked
up to her pitch. He read war records
end interior department reports, and
thought great thoughts about Indians,
and would have made himself nuisance
to the people at Washington, if they had
not become used to that sort of thing
and thick-skinned long ago. He was
an unpleasant kind of man, and a SOL
der neither in appearance nor by in
stinct, nor In actions. He was to the
service what the man who signs his let
ters "a Citizen" is to local newspaper.
He was always making petty objections
to and complaints against what is. And
what is should be bowed down to and
silently worshiped by good officer. In
short, he was not at all the sort of a
man for his wife, and she did not need
TO be as clever as she naturally was
to find this out.
AT four-and-twenty she thought she
vas old and experienced, and quite
capable of handling amy sort of sharp
edged tools. Although she never posed
as unhappy, or thought herself partic-
ularly so, the idea came to her that she
would like to have the making of a man,
to be the Egeria to some Numa. just
what she would make him she had not
determined. She would have to have
the man first. She got him. He came
straight out from West Point, and he
was hopeless-impossble.
"Joe, don't you think young Gordon
is promising?" she asked her husband.
Gordon had come the day before.
'Promising to be about like all the
Others" There was infinite contempt in
that "all the others"-men with no
ideas. ''I
81 don't know. 1t seems to me he has
clever face, the face of a man-that
is, man of the world, in embryo"
She was trying TO see him in the light
of her own inn >fings. 1t is quite hui
man and very feminine to persist in
trying to itlealize those about one, and
only great many dismal failures sue
coed in curing one of the habit.
st struck me that he had the face Of
boy from West Point"
His wife's good nature was unfag-
glng "Now-yes. But he could be
made something Of
"A major, If he lives"
Mrs Torrey was silenced, but not
daunted.
Mrs. Torrey continued to think that
Thorne Gordon was good material to
work with. She liked his name. 1t
smacked of the statesman. She called
his face impressionable, when 1t was
Just weak She saw secrecy in his eyes
which were shifting. She discovered
evasion in his speech-which was trivial.
Physically, he did fairly well. He was
tall and slender in distinguished sort
of way. There was no cause for the dis
tinction; it was neither in himself nor
inherited. If there had been any girls
at the post, he would have fallen in love
and married, and then Mrs. Torrey
couldn't have done anything with him.
AS it was, he came to her naturally. No
body else wanted him. She set to work
by giving him her books to read. He
knew enough West Point French to
CLEAN all the harm there is in BalZac
and Bourget., When Mrs. Torrey talked
life as therein portrayed. he talked love
as they showed it forth.
st seems to me that the greatest de-
light inl.living that man could have
would be to wind other men around his
finger"
at seems to me that it would be to-
wind women around his finger" her
ward would say.
"Only as a means to an end" she sug-
gested.
"That goes without saying" he an
swered, with the wrong sort OF look.
The books had taught him that. Mrs.
Torrey recoiled. She didn't mind kread-
ing dough into shape, but she was afraid
of pitch. However. she treasured her
self and tried it again the next Jay
at is a pity for a promising young fell
low To he thrown like an empty beer-bot-