Los Angeles herald. [microfilm reel] (Los Angeles [Calif.]) 1900-1911, 1908-02-02

through the biting air. To hungry the
cheerful tinkle pleasantly suggested the thought
of creature comforts But the thought of creature
comforts unpleasantly suggested their natural en-
toll of bills He recalled the unpaid of these
tormentors rustling in the hollow bronze globe by
whose weight bronze Atlas standing on his Office
table seemed quite bent and overcome No wonder
either, thought the careworn doctor. His own
world often seemed to contain nothing but bills,
and that stDop in his own shoulders had come of
their unlifting load he knew.
1t was Mrs. MyrickS last Christmas gift to him
that costly inutility. When he kissed her, with
thanks, his prophetic soul misgave him that the
bill would be sent in at the moment he could least
afford to pay if hour of his wearing year were
distinguishable from another in that respect But
he had long since discovered that his wife mad
fiscal genius unrvalled among her SEX save by
that able inancier Mrs. Micawber She declared
that the explanation of their embarrassments lay
in the fact that the doctor constantly misaid his
bills and so, of course, paid most of them twice
over When therefore, she had appointed to Office
so to speak, this pagan Chancellor OF the Ex-
cheouer and had made it daily duty to put all
new or stray evidences of debt into his grim Keep
ing she really felt that the Myrick family stood
once more on sound financial basis, or, II they
did not that it certainly no fault of hers
Meantime she went she had always done,
committing endless extravagances in the name OF
economy and heaping up bills against the day OF
bills Had she been one OF the ten virgins 1or
whom the bridegroom called her lamp would nave
been found neither full nor empty; she would
long since have exchanged it altogether, mucn
under value, for highly recommended self-llght-
ing-and-feeding perpetual burner certain under no
circumstances TO ignite This system of barter and
substitution animated the housekeeping, devastat-
ing as 1t went - ,
But however spent and troubled Dr. Myrick
might be- he never suffered himself to be impa-
tient with his wife. He was eminently just man.
He remembered that she was unaltered from the
smiling beauty of seventeen whom he had pas
sionately wooed vowing, after the manner OF low
ers that not for worlds would he have had her
other than she No strong-minded aggressive,
unsexed creature for him. he had gone so far as
to say in the wisdom of his postgraduate exper-
fence but tender, clinging sweet adorable maid
! en- whose strength her weakness, and who
should clothe his roughness with her grace. In
short the oak and the vine, though somewhat
hackneyed to metaphor, seemed to him quite the
correct thing as to sentiment.
At thirtyive his Mary was just as pretty, just
as useless Just as incapable of serious effort just
as inane just as loving, just as sweettempered'
as on their wedding day. 1t was the care-Worn
man of forty-two who had left the 1mpulslve poy
of twenty-four so far behind him that he could
no longer comprehend the passion OF that foolsh
young fellow for beautiful doll 1t seemed I'M
possible that he, Arthur Myrick knowing what
wise careful and hgh-minded wife might have
done for him in essence and estate during these
eighteen years, could ever have quoted with ap-
prevail to the girl he loved Coler1dges sentiment
that the perfection of character in woman is to
be characterleSS.
Yet he remembered that he had perpetrated that
very idiocy and he acknowledged that he had no
right to whimper now that his pleasant vice OF
sentimentality had been made an instrument 10
plague him. All that he had reason to expect from
his Mary-love for himself and his chlldren-ne
had received in full measure. And ne would nave
held himself caitif indeed could he have visited
upon her blameless head his own sins OF Dllndeu
judgement of dull perception and of an ignoble
worship which exacted no nobeness or us OBJECT:
Over the cradles of his five daughters he had
suffered pangs of apprehension and selfreproach
lest they had been born to make the lives OF other
as