Year: 1873

That had to be the subject of the first
chapter. That was always the first chapter
with Mrs. Ardory. She was woman of
acute sensbillties. Everything shocked her.
For my part, | can never laugh at people
who have sensibility without being sensible.
They must suffer great deal, both from
their sensibility and their lack of sense. 1t
is adouble misfortune; let us pity them. But
1t selhshness and Incidence hide their heads
behind sensibiity, let US blame, even at the
risk of being shocking to sensibility


did not say that Mrs. Ardory was self
lsh. Some readers are always in a hurry to
jump to conclusions about people. To say
that Mrs. Ardory was selfish would be H.
bel, SANDER, a defamation of a most tender
hearted creature. Poor dear Mrs. Ardory
was bundle Of sympathey, an unfailing
fountain of pity, fathomess ocean of phil
anthropy. She wept and lamented over the
condition of the poor, the sick, the bereaved,
the widow and the fatherless. When her
children came in OF a morning, shouting with
delight because the white snow was eagerly
piling itself up higher and higher and yet
higher on the garden fence, and fairly smoth-
ering the dark green cedars with massive
and matchless whiteness, poor Mrs. Ardory
clasped her pale hands in distress, and sigh
ed, "What day for people out of coall"
Pm sure you couldn't say she was not benev-
olent She never failed to burden everybo-
dy about her with her sympathy for the
poor She wouldn't suffer people who had
comforts to enjoy them so long as there
were people who hadn't them. She seemed
to be saying Perpetually: "Let us all be
unhappy together"


Mrs. Ardorys -sensibities were phlan-
thropic. Her husbands father had the good
fortune to be simple-hearted old truckman,
and, though Mrs. Ardory's husband was
quite wealthy, Mrs. Ardory found it a great
thorn in her side that Ardory the elder
wouldn't give up his low calling and be a
gentlemanly y dependent on his son. 1t would
seem so much better. 1t was all an eccen-
tricity-so she told her frends-this per-
sistence of the old man in the ignobe bus-
ness of earning an honest livelihood when
his son was ready to take care of his parents
that is, though she did not say it, to give
them . gradged pittance, to keep them in a
state OF genteel good-for- nothingness. And
at last, when her mother-in-law, a woman OF
sturdy will Of her own, died, Mrs. Ardory
attacked the old man, who was Of an easy
temper, and besought aud beseiged him, for
the sake OF her delicate and refined sensib-
lities, which were SO shocked by his course,
to yield to her entreaties, sell his old truck,
put faithful Bob up at auction, aud come
and hte with them. 1t made people ask so4
many questions, you know, about the why
and the wherefore, for the old man to live
alone. Questions that reflected upon her
character for benevolence were dreadful
shock to Mrs. Ardorys sensibilities, And
SO the old man, unwilling to cut down the
bridge behind him, hired out his horse and
truck, put &C. To Let, Furnished over the
door of his shabby little house. and became
sertof chore-boy IN his sons family ;he roll
ed the baby-csrriage aud hoed in the garden,
and was miscellaneous utility, man about
the house, All for the sake of Mrs. Ardury's
sensibilities.


But Mrs. Ardory's sensibilities were more
than ever shocked by his lack Of polish. She
did not like to have her father-in-law in the
house when there was company; he was
sure to do something very shocking So
the old man, who had too much sense to
mention his sensibilities, who had never
use the word sensiblity in his life, and who
really thought it meant some fearful disease
when his daughter-in-law used 1.-THE old
man. having sensibilities. nevertheless, staid
out Of the parlor when there was company,
only went to .he table to keep from shock
ing Mrs. ArdoFy by staying away and when
at the table swallowed but little dinner
awkwardly aad in silence, taking pains to
shovel his potatoes up with the back Of his
knife for fear Of not being polite, cooling his
coffee by blowing on it in his saucer. as his
master taught him, and yet feeling that, do
what he would to be weli-mannered, he was
somehow shocking the sensibihtjes of his
daughter in-law all the time afs


Without any society-too high up for the
servants, too low down for the fanily-the
old man had nothing left for him to do but
to go on shocking sensibilities all the time.
Perhaps, there Is DO way Of passing ones
lifetime more unpleasant than to- spend il
in being an object of dislike People who
are stumbling-blocks always feel it more
keenly than those who stub their toes
against them. 1t is far worse to be in the