The Cotton Factory Times. — 1892-12-02 (Manchester, Greater Manchester, England)

BRAVE GIRL.  I am not inclined to disparage the physical bravery involved in facing bastions and taking cities, but I do say that this is not the most difficult side of the virtue, and that there are moral victories won in daily life evincing as honourable and enduring courage.  Mattie was the only child of Major John Darley, a man who had done good service in the Mexican War, and been rewarded for it by an honourable and lucrative government office. He lived in good style in a handsome house, and Mattis was generally understood to be as well off in money matters as she was attractive in person and v4nning in manners. She visited in the most fashionable circles, and was rather noted for her pretty toilets and the number of her beaux. Mettle had, however, made her choice. Unreservedly she had given her affections to Mark Taylor, a young man of no particular family, but of handsome exterior and fair business prospects. Many, indeed, wondered at the major sanctioning the match; but there are always reasons within reasons, and the poor father had his private motives for forwarding the views of the man who seemed most in earnest about marrying Mettle. But before Mattie's pretty wardrobe was finished, and while the lovers were yet undecided as to whether the wedding was to be a public or a private one, Major Darley was found dead in bed one morning, and 'the house of pleasant unticipations became a house of mourning. This was but the beginning of Matting troubles. Vague but terrible rumours of suicide and ruin began to be heard, and Mattie, even in the first gush of sympathy for her desolate condition, could feel that indefinable something which expressed disapprobation as well as pity; and after the funeral was over she was quite sensible that her acquaintances and friends were ready to stand aloof from her at the first good opportunity. The world, upon the whole, is not flagrantly unjust; it thought it had good reason for its disapprobation. Major Darley had done wrong; he had squandered money not his own; and poverty and dishonour it refuses to sanction. In the main it is right. And when Mettle knew all and knew, also, that it was generally believed that he father had slunk into the grave because be was afraid to face the wrong he had done, she did not much blame the world. She knew it must judge men and women on general rules. But she did blame Mark, for he bad no such excuse. He had made particular promises to her, and her alone. But when misfortune does not strengthen love, it kills it; and before Major Darley wee in the grave, Mark's behaviour had lost something of its respect, and he soon became querulous and inattentive. Mettle did not hesitate long. In a few dignified lines she gave him his dismissal, and it was coolly accepted, with a very unmanly and ungenerous reflection upon the dead. Then the poor girl began seriously to consider her future. There was absolutely nothing for her but the furniture of the house in which she lived, and the half-and-half invitations which she bad received from her two itunte to make her home for a time with them. One had a large family and lived in a pretty Jersey village; the other was an invalid and travelled a great deal. She sold the furniture at auction, paid out of it her father's funeral expenses, and found that she had about sixteen hundred dollars left. Upon the whole, the invalid aunt seemed the most desirable, and she accepted her invitation first. It was the beginning of summer, and Mrs.. Dayton was going to Europe "for her health." Mattie was to go with her, but it was not until everything was arranged that Mattie found she was expected to pay her own passage. She drew four hundred dollars, and went to ilea with a heavy heart. The next six months were a simple record of an imaginary invalid's whims and unreasonable tyranny; and Mattie took under these circumstances her first lessons in that knowledge which teaches— How salt the savour is of others' bread How hard the passage to descend and climb By others stairs.  And in spite of all Mattie's efforts and humiliations, she did not please. Mrs. Dayton and her niece parted at last on very bad terms. . _  She.had still nine hundi:ed dollars. and she found herself one morning in June in a New York boarding-house, asking her heart twenty times an hour: "What shall I do with it?" One morning she lifted a paper and eagerly ran her eye over the " Wants.' This paragraph supplied her with the idea on which rested a very prosperous future