Wood County reporter. [volume] (Grand Rapids [i.e. Wisconsin Rapids], Wis.) 1857-1923, 1911-01-05
Needles and pins,
Needles and pins,
When a man marries
His trouble begins.
CHAPTER /.
At Least | Meant Well.

At Least Meant Well.
When the dreadful thing occurred
that night, every one turned on me.
The injustice of it hurt me most.
They said I got up the dinner, that l
asked them TO give up other engage
ments and come, that I promised all
kinds Of jollifcation, If they would
come; and then when they did come
and got in the papers, and every one
but ourselves = laughed himself
black in the face, they turned on me!
|, who suffered ten times to their one!
shall never forget what Dallas
Brown, said to me, standing with a
coal shovel in one hand and a-well,
perhaps it would be better to tell it
all in the order it happened.
It began with Jimmy Wilson and
a conspiracy, was helped on by foot
square piece of yellow paper and a
Japanese butler, and 1t enmeshed and
mixed up generally ten respectable
members of society and a policeman;
incidentally, it developed a pearl col
lar and box of soap, which sounds
incongruous, doesn't it?
It Is a great misfortune to be stout,
especially for a man. jim was TO
tund and looked shorter than he really
was, and as all the lines of his face,
or what should have been lines, were
really dimples, his face was about as
flexible and full of expression as a
pillow in a tight cover. The angrier
he got the funnier he looked and
when he was raging and his neck
sWelled up over his collar and got
red, he was enhancing. And every
body liked him, and borrowed money
from him, and laughed at his pictures
the has one in the Hargrave gallery
in London now, SO people buy them
unsteady, and smoked his cigarettes,
and tried to steal his Jap. The whole
story hinges on the Jap
The trouble was, I think, that no
one took Jim seriously. His ambi-
ton in life was to be taken seriously,
but people steadily refused to- His
art was a huge joke-except to him
self. If he asked people to dinner
every one expected a frolic When
he married Bella Knowles, people
chuckled at the wedding, and consid-
cred 1t the widest prank of Jimmy's
career, although Jim himself seemed
to take 1t awfully hard
We had all known them both for
years. l went to Harrington with
Bella, and Anne Browne was her ma
tron of honor when she married Jim.
My first winter out. Jimmy had paid
me lot Of attention. He painted my
portrait in oils and had a studio tea
to exhibit it. 1t was a very nice pic
ture, but it did not look like me, so |
stayed from the exhibition Jim asked
me to. He said he was not a pho
tographer, and that anyhow the rest
of my features called for the nose he
had given me, and that all the Greuze
women have long neeks. l have net.
After | had refused Jim twice he
met Bella at a camp in the Adiro1-
dacks. and when he came back he
came at once to see me. He seemed
to think I would be sorry to lose him,
and he blundered over the telling for
20 minutes. Of course, no woman
likes to lose a lover, no matter what
she may say about it, but Jim had
been getting on my nerves for some
time, and l was much calmer than he
expected me to me.
IF you mean l said, finally in des-
peration, that you and Bella are-are
in love, why don't you say so, jim?
| think you will find that | stand ii
wonderfully"
He frightened perceptibly
Il didn't know how you would take
1t, Kit" he said, land I hope we will
always be bully friends You are alb
solutely sure you don't care a whoop
for me?"
Absolutely" l replied, and we
shook hands on It, Then he began
about Bella; it was very tiresome.
Bella is a nice girl, but I had room
ed with her at school, and I was under
no illusions. When Jim raved about
Bella and her banjo, and Bella and
her guitar, I had painful moments
when | recalled Bella learning her
two songs on each instrument. and the
old English ballad she had learned to
play on the harp When he said she
was too good for him, l never batted
an eye. And I shook hands solemnly
across the tea table again, and
wished him happiness - which was
sincere enough, but hopeless - and
said we had only been playing a game,
but that it was time to stop playing.
Jim kissed my hand and it was really
very touching.
We had been the best of friends
ever since. Two days before the we'd
ding he came around from his tailor's
and we burned all his letters to me.
He would read one and say: Here's
a crackerjack, Kit" and pass it to
me. And after l had read it we would
lay 1t on the firelog, and Jim would
say, Il am not worthy of her, Kit. I
wonder if I can make her happy?'' Or
Did you know that the duke of
Belfast proposed to her in London
last winter?"
Of course one has to take the
woman's word about a thing like that,
but the duke of Bedford had been
mad about Maude Richards all the
winter
You can see that the burning of
the letters, which was meant to be
reminiscentIy sentimental, a sort of
how-silly-we-were-it-is-all-over-now oc.
casion, became actually a two hours
eulogy of Bella. And just when l
was bored to death, the Mercer girls
dropped in and heard Jim begin to
read one commencing dearest Kit
And the next day after the rehearsal
dinner they told Bella,
There was very nearly no wedding
at all Bella came to see me in d
frenzy the next morning and threw
Jim and his two hundred odd pounds
in my face, and although l explained
it all over and over, she never quite
forgaye me. That was what made il