THE GIRL OF OUR PERIOD.
[Letter from Eva Van Arsdel to Mrs. Courtney.]
My Dear Friend and Teacher:--I scarcely dare trust myself to look at
the date of your kind letter. Can it really be that I have let it lie
almost a year, hoping, meaning, sincerely intending to answer it, and
yet doing nothing about it? Oh! my dear friend, I was a better girl
while I was under your care than I am now; in those times I really _did_
my duties; I never put off things, and I came _somewhere_ near
satisfying myself. Now, I live in a constant whirl--a whirl that never
ceases. I am carried on from day to day, from week to week, from month
to month, with nothing to show for it except a succession of what girls
call "good times." I don't read any thing but stories; I don't study; I
don't write; I don't sew; I don't draw, or play, or sing, to any real
purpose. I just "go into society," as they call it. I am an idler, and
the only thing I am good for is that I help to adorn a house for the
entertainment of idlers; that is about all.
Now Lent has come, and I am thankful for the rest from parties and
dancing; but yet Lent makes me blue, because it gives me some time to
_think_; and besides that, when all this whirligig stops awhile, I feel
how dizzy and tired it has made me. And then I think of all that you
used to tell me about the real object of life, and all that I so
sincerely resolved in my school-days that I would do and be, and I am
quite in despair about myself.
It is three years since I really "came out," as the phrase goes. Up to
that time I was far happier than I have been since, because I satisfied
myself better. You always said, dear friend, that I was a good scholar,
and faithful to every duty; and those days, when I had a definite duty
for each hour, and did it well, were days when I liked myself better
than now. I did _enjoy_ study. I enjoyed our three years in Europe, too,
for then, with much variety and many pleasures, I had regular studies; I
was learning something, and did not feel that I was a mere do-nothing.
But since I have been going into company I am perfectly sick of myself.
For the first year it was new to me, and I was light-headed and thought
it glorious fun. It was excitement all the time--dressing, and going,
and seeing, and being admired, and, well--flirting. I confess I liked
it, and went into it with all my might,--parties, balls, opera, concerts
all the winter in New York, and parties, balls, etc. at Newport and
Saratoga in Summer. It was a sort of prolonged delirium. I didn't stop
to think about anything, and lived like a butterfly, by the hour. Oh!
the silly things I have said and done! I find myself blushing hot when I
think of them, because, you see, I am so excitable, and sometimes am so
carried away, that afterward I don't know what I may have said or done!
And now all this is coming to some end or other. This going into company
can't last forever. We must be married--that's what we are for, they
say; that's what all this dressing, and dancing, and flying about has
got to end in. And so mamma and Aunt Maria are on thorns, to get me off
their hands and well established. I have been out three seasons. I am
twenty-three, and Alice has just come out, and it is expected, of
course, that I retire with honor. I will not stop to tell you that I
have rejected about the usual number of offers that young ladies in my
position get, and I haven't seen anybody that I care a copper for.
Well, now, in this crisis, comes this Mr. Sidney, who proposed to me
last Fall, and I refused point-blank, simply and only because I didn't
love him, which seemed to me at that time reason enough. Then mamma and
Aunt Maria took up the case, and told me that I was a foolish girl to
throw away such an offer: a man of good character and standing, an
excellent business man, and so immensely rich--with such a splendid
place at Newport, and another in New York, and a fortune like Aladdin's
lamp!
I said I didn't love him, and they said I hadn't tried; that I _could_
love him if I only made up my mind to, and why wouldn't I try? Then papa
turned in, who very seldom has anything to say to us girls, or about any
family matters, and said how delighted _he_ should be to see me married
to a man so capable of taking care of me. So, among them all, I agreed
that I would receive his visits and attentions _as a friend_, with a
view to trying to love him; and ever since I have been banked up in
flowers and confectionery, and daily drifting into relations of closer
and closer intimacy.
Do I find myself in love? Not a bit. Frankly, dear friend, to tell the
awful truth, the thing that weighs down my heart is, that if this man
were not so _rich_, I _know_ I shouldn't think of him. If he were a poor
young man, just beginning business, I know I should not give him a
second thought; neither would mother, nor Aunt Maria, nor any of us. But
here are all these worldly advantages! I confess I am dazzled by them. I
am silly, I am weak, I am ambitious. I like to feel that I may have the
prize of the season--the greatest offer in the market. I know I am
envied and, oh, dear me! though it's naughty, yet one does like to be
envied. Besides, to tell the truth, though I am not in love with him, I
am not in love with anybody else. I respect him, and esteem him, and all
that, in a quiet, negative sort of way, and mother and Aunt Maria say
everything else will come--after marriage. Will it? Is it right? Is this
the way I ought to marry?
But then, you know, I must marry somebody--that, they say, is a fixed
fact. It seems to be understood that I am a sort of helpless affair, to
be taken care of, and that now is my time to be disposed of; and they
tell me every day that if I let this chance go, I shall regret it all my
life.
Do you know I wish there were convents that one could go out of the
world into? Cousin Sophia Sewell has joined the Sisters of St. John,
and says she never was so happy. She does look so cheerful, and she is
so busy from morning till night, and has the comfort of doing so much
good to a lot of those poor little children, that I envy her.
But I cannot become a Sister. What would mamma say if she knew I even
thought of it? Everybody would think me crazy. Nobody would believe how
much there is in me that never comes to light, nor how miserable it
makes me to be the poor, half-hearted thing that I am.
You know, dear friend, about sister Ida's peculiar course, and how very
much it has vexed mamma. Yet, really and truly, I can't help respecting
Ida. It seems to me she shows a real strength of principle that I lack.
She went into gay society only a little while before she gave it up, and
her reasons, I think, were good ones. She said it weakened her health,
weakened her mind; that there was no use in it, and that it was just
making her physically and morally helpless, and that she wanted to live
for a purpose of her own. She wanted to go to Paris, and study for the
medical profession; but neither papa, nor mamma, nor any of the family
would hear of it. But Ida persisted that she would do something, and
finally papa took her into his business, to manage the foreign
correspondence, which she does admirably, putting all her knowledge of
languages to account. He gives her the salary of a confidential clerk,
and she lays it up, with the intention finally of carrying her purpose.
Ida is a good, noble woman, of a strength and independence perfectly
incomprehensible to me. I can desire, but I cannot do; I am weak and
irresolute. People can talk me round, and do anything with me, and I
cannot help myself.
Another thing makes me unhappy. Ida refused to be confirmed when I was,
because, she said, confirmation was only a sham; that the girls were
just as wholly worldly after as before, and that it did no earthly good.
Well, you see, I was confirmed; and, oh dear me! I was sincere, God
knows. I wanted to be good--to live a higher, purer, nobler life than I
have lived; and yet, after all, it is I, the child of the Church, that
am living a life of folly, and show, and self-indulgence; and it is Ida,
who doubts the Church, that is living a life of industry, and energy,
and self-denial.
Why is it? The world that we promise to renounce, that our sponsors
promised that we should renounce--what is it, and where is it? Do those
vows mean anything? if so, what? I mean to do all that I ought to; but
how to know what? There's Aunt Maria, my god-mother, she did the
renouncing for me at my baptism, and promised solemnly that I should
abjure "the vain pomp and glory of the world, with all covetous desires
of the same; that I should not follow, or be led by them;" yet she has
never, that I can see, had one thought of anything else but how to
secure to me just exactly those very things. That I should be first in
society, be admired, followed, flattered, and make a rich, splendid
marriage, has been her very heart's desire and prayer; and if I _should_
renounce the vain pomp and glory of the world, really and truly, she
would be utterly heart-broken. So would mamma.
I don't mean to lay all the blame on them, either. _I_ have been
worldly, too, and ambitious, and wanted to shine, and been only too
willing to fall in with all their views.
But it really is hard for a person like me to stand alone, against my
own heart, and all my relatives, particularly when I don't know exactly,
in each case, what to do, and what not; where to begin to resist, and
where to yield.
Ida says that it is a sin to spend nights in dancing, so that one has to
lie in bed like an invalid all the next day. She says it is a sin to run
down one's health for no good purpose; and yet we girls all do
it--everybody does it. We all go from party to party, from concert to
ball, and from ball to something else. We dance the German three or four
nights a week; and then, when Sunday comes, sometimes I find that there
is the Holy Communion--and then I am afraid to go. I am like the man
that had not on the wedding garment.
It seems to me that our church services were made for _real_
Christians--people like the primitive Christians, who made a real thing
of it; they gave up everything and went down and worshiped in the
catacombs, for instance. I remember seeing those catacombs where they
held their church far down under ground, when I was in Rome. There would
be some meaning in _such_ people's using our service, but when I try to
go through with it I fear to take such words on my lips. I wonder that
nobody seems to feel how awful those words are, and how much they must
mean, if they mean anything. It seems to me so solemn to say to God, as
we do say in the communion service, "Here we offer and present unto
Thee, O, Lord, _ourselves_, our souls and bodies, to be a reasonable,
holy, and living sacrifice unto Thee"----
I see so many saying this who never seem to think of it again; and, oh,
my dear friend, I have said it myself, and been no better afterward, and
now, alas, I too often turn away from the holy ordinance because I feel
that it is only a mockery to utter them, living as I do.
About this marriage. Mr. Sydney is not at all a religious man; he is all
for this world, and I don't think I shall grow much better by it.
I wish there were somebody that could strengthen me, and help me to be
my better self. I have dreams of a sort of man like King Arthur, and the
Knights of the Holy Grail--a man, noble, holy, and religious. Such an
one I would follow if I broke away from everyone else; but, alas, no
such are in our society, at least I never have met any. Yet I have it in
me to love, even to death, if I found a real hero. I marked a place in a
book the other day, which said:
"There is not so much difficulty in being willing to die for one, as
finding one worth dying for."
I haven't, and they laugh at me as a romantic girl when I tell them what
I would do if I found my ideal.
Well, I suppose you see how it's all likely to end. We drift, and drift
and drift, and I shouldn't wonder if I drifted at last into this
marriage. I see it all before me, just what it will be,--a wonderful
wedding, that turns all New York topsy turvy--diamonds, laces,
cashmeres, infinite flowers, and tuberoses of course, till one's head
aches,--clang and ding, and bang and buzz;--triumphal processions to all
the watering-places; tour in Europe, and then society life in New York,
_ad infinitum_.
Oh, dear, if I only could get up some _enthusiasm_ for him! He likes me,
but he don't like the things that I like, and it is terribly slow work
entertaining him--but when we are married we shan't see so much of each
other, I suppose, and shall get on as other folks do. Papa and mamma
hardly ever see much of each other, but I suppose they are all right.
Aunt Maria says, love or no love at the beginning, it all comes to this
sort of jog-trot at the end. The husband is the man that settles the
bills, and takes care of the family, that's all.
Ida says--but I won't tell you what Ida says--she always makes me feel
blue.
Do write me a good scolding letter; rouse me up; shame me, scold me,
talk hard to me, and see if you can't make something of me. Perhaps it
isn't too late.
Your affectionate bad girl, EVA.
* * * * *
[Letter from Mrs. Courtney to Eva Van Arsdel.]
_My Dear Child_:--You place me in an embarrassing position in asking me
to speak on a subject, when your parents have already declared their
wishes.
Nevertheless, my dear, I can but remind you that you are the child of an
higher than any earthly mother, and in an affair of this moment you
should take counsel of our holy Church. Take your prayer-book and read
her solemn service, and see what those marriage vows are that you think
of taking. Are these to be taken lightly and unadvisedly?
I recollect, when I was a young girl, we used to read Sir Charles
Grandison, and one passage in the model Harriet Byron's letters I copied
into my scrap-book. Speaking of one who had proposed to her, she says:
"He seems to want the mind that I would have the man blessed with that I
am to vow to love and honor. I purpose whenever I marry to make a very
good, and even dutiful wife; must I not vow obedience, and shall I break
my marriage vow? I would not, therefore, on any consideration, marry a
man whose want of knowledge might make me stagger in the performance of
my duty to him; who would, perhaps, command from caprice or want of
understanding what I think unreasonable to be complied with."
I quote this because I think it is old fashioned good sense, in a
respectable old English novel, worth a dozen of the modern school. To
me, there is indicated in your description of Mr. Sydney, just that lack
of what you would need in a husband, which would make difficult, perhaps
impossible, the performance of your marriage vows. It is evident that
his mind does not impress yours or control yours, and that there are no
mental sympathies between you.
That a man is a good business man; that he is fitted to secure the rent
or taxes of the house one lives in, and to pay one's bills, is not all.
Think, my child, that this man, for whom you can "get up no enthusiasm,"
whose company wearies you, is the one whom you are proposing to take by
the hand before God's altar, and solemnly promise that _forsaking all
others_, you will _keep only unto_ him, so long as you both shall live,
to love, to honor, and to obey. Can you do it?
You say you can get up no enthusiasm for this man, yet you have a
conception of a man for whom you could leave all things; whom you
_could_ love unto the death.
It is out of just such marriages, made by girls with just such hearts as
yours, that come all these troubles that are bringing holy marriage
into disrepute in our times. A woman marries, thoughtlessly and
unadvisedly, a man whom she consciously does not love, hoping that she
_shall_ love him, or that she shall do as well as others do; then by
accident or chance she is thrown into the society of the very one whom
she could have loved with enthusiasm, and married, for himself alone.
The modern school of novels are full of these wretched stories, and
people now are clamoring for free divorce, to get out of marriages that
they never ought to have fallen into.
Amid all this confusion the Church stands from age to age and teaches.
She shows you exactly what you are to promise; she warns you against
promising lightly, or unadvisedly, and I can only refer my dear child to
her mother's lessons. Marriage vows, like confirmation vows, are
recorded in Heaven, and must not be broken.
The time for reflection is before they are made. Instead of clamoring
for free divorce, as a purifier of marriage, all Christians should
purify it as the church recommends, by the great care with which they
enter into it. That is my doctrine, my love. I am a good old English
Church-woman, and don't believe in any modern theories. The teachings of
the prayer-book are enough for me. I know that, in spite of them all,
there are thoughtless confirmation vows and marriage vows daily uttered
in our church, but it is not for want of clear and solemn instruction.
But you, my love, with your conscientiousness, and good sense, and
really noble nature, will I am sure act worthily of yourself in this
matter.
Another consideration I suggest to you. This man, whom I suppose to be a
worthy and excellent man, has his rights. He has the right to the whole
heart of the woman he marries--to whom at the altar he gives himself and
all which he possesses. A woman who has what you call an enthusiasm for
a man, can do much with him. She can bear with his faults; she can
inspire and lead him; she can raise him in the scale of being. But
without this enthusiasm, this real love, she can do nothing of the kind;
it is a thing that cannot be dissembled, or affected. And after
marriage, the man who does not find this in his wife, has the best
reason to think himself defrauded.
Now, if for the sake of possessing a man's worldly goods, his advantages
of fortune and station, you take that relation when you really are
unable to give him your heart, you act dishonestly. You take and enjoy
what you cannot pay for. Not only that, but you deprive him through all
his life of the blessing of being really loved, which he might obtain
with some other woman.
The fact is, you have been highly cultivated in certain departments;
your tastes would lead you into the world of art and literature. He has
been devoted to business, and in that way has amassed a fortune, but he
has no knowledge, and no habits that would prepare him to sympathise
with you.
I am not here undervaluing the worth of those strong, sterling qualities
which belong to an upright and vigorous man. There are many women who
are impressed by just that sort of power, and admire it in men, as they
do physical strength and courage; it dazzles their imagination, and they
fall in love accordingly. You happen to have another kind of fancy--he
is not of your sort.
But there are doubtless women whom he would fully satisfy; who would
find him a delightful companion who, in short, would be exactly what you
are not, in love with him. My dear, men need wives who are _in love_
with them. Simple tolerance is not enough to stand the strain of married
life, and to marry when you cannot truly love is to commit an act of
dishonesty and injustice. Remembering, therefore, that you are about to
do what never can be undone, and what must make or mar your whole
future, I speak this in all sincere plainness, because I am, and ever
must be,
Your affectionate and true friend,
M. COURTNEY.
[Ida Van Arsdel to Mrs. Courtney.]
_My Dear Friend_:--I am glad you have written as you have to Eva. It is
perfectly inexplicable to me that a girl of her general strength of
character can be so undecided. Eva has been deteriorating ever since she
came from Europe. This fashionable life is to mind and body just like a
hotbed to tender plants in summer, it wilts everything down. Eva was a
good scholar and I had great hopes of her. She had a warm heart; she has
really high and noble aspirations, but for two or three years past she
has done nothing but run down her health and fritter away her mind on
trifles. She is not half the girl she was at school, either mentally or
physically, and I am grieved and indignant at the waste. Her only chance
of escape and salvation is to marry a true man.
But when people set out as a first requisite that the man _must_ be
rich, how many are the chances of finding that?
The rich men of America are either rich men's sons, who, from all I have
seen of them, are poor trash enough, or business men, who have made
wealth by their own exertions. But how few there are who make money, who
do not sacrifice their spiritual and nobler natures to do it? How few
with whom the making of money is not the beginning, middle, and end of
life, and how little can such men do to uphold and elevate the moral
nature of a wife!
Mr. Sydney is a man, heart, soul, and strength, interested in that
mighty game of chance and skill by which, in America, money is made. He
is a railroad king--a prince of stocks--a man going with a forty
thousand steam power through New York waters. He wants a wife--a
brilliant, attractive, showy, dressy wife, to keep his house and
ornament his home; and he is at Eva's feet, because she is, on the
whole, the belle of his circle. He chooses _en Grand Seigneur_, and
undoubtedly he is as much in love with her as such a kind of man can be.
But, in fact, he knows nothing about Eva; he does not even know enough
to know the dangers of marrying such a woman. With all her fire, and all
her softness, all her restless enthusiasms, her longings and
aspirations and inconsistencies, what could he do with her? The man who
marries Eva ought to know her better than she knows herself, but this
man never would know her, if they lived together an age. He has no
traits by which to estimate her, and the very best result of the
marriage will be a mutual _laisser aller_ of two people who agree not to
quarrel, and to go their own separate ways, he to his world, and she to
hers; and this sort of thing is what is called in our times a good
marriage.
I am out of patience with Eva for her very virtues. It is her instinct
to want to please and to comply, and because mamma and aunt Maria have
set their heart on this match, and because she is empty-hearted and
tired, and _ennuyeuse_, she has no strength to stand up for herself. Her
very conscientiousness weakens her; she doubts, but does not decide. She
has just enough of everything in her nature to get her into trouble, and
not enough to get her out. A phrenologist told her she needed
destructiveness. Well, she does. The pain-giving power is a most
necessary part of a well organized human being. Nobody can ever do
anything without the courage to be disagreeable at times, which I have
plenty of. They do not try to control me, or enslave me. Why? Because I
made my declaration of independence, and planted my guns, and got ready
for war. This is dreadfully unamiable, but it did the thing; it secured
peace; I am let alone. I am allowed my freedom, but everybody interferes
with Eva. She is conquered territory--has no rights that anybody is
bound to respect. It provokes me.
As to the religious part of your letter, dear friend, I thank you for
it. I cannot see things as you do, however. To me it appears that in our
day everything has got to be brought to the simple test of, What good
does it do? If baptism, confirmation and eucharist make unworldly,
self-denying, self-sacrificing people just as certainly as petunia-seed
make petunias, why, then, nobody will have any doubt of their necessity,
and the church will have its throngs. I don't see now that they do. Go
into a fashionable party I have been in, and watch the girls, and see if
you can tell who have been baptized and confirmed, and who have not.
The first Christians carried Christianity over all the pomp and power of
the world simply by the unworldly life they lived. Nobody doubted where
the true church was in those days. Christians were a set of people like
nobody else in the world, and whenever and wherever and by whatever
means that _kind of character_ that they had is created, it will have
power.
I like the Episcopal Church, but I cannot call it _the_ church till I
see evidences that it answers practically the purpose of a church better
than any other. For my part I go to hear a dreadfully heretical preacher
on Sunday, who lectures in a black-coat in a hall, simply because he
talks to me on points of duty, which I am anxious to hear discussed.
Eva, poor child, wears down her health and strength with night after
night in society, and spends all her money on dress; doing no earthly
thing for any living creature, except in the pleasure-giving way, like a
bird or a flower, and then is shocked and worried about me because I
read scientific works on Sunday.
I make conscience of good health, early hours, thick shoes, and mental
and bodily drill, and subjection. Please God, I mean to do something
worthy a Christian woman before I die, and to open a path through which
weaker women shall walk out of this morass of fashion-slavery, and
subjection, where they flounder now. I take for my motto that sentence
from one of Dr. Johnson's allegories you once read to us: "No life
pleasing to God that is not useful to man." I hope, my dear friend, I
shall keep the spirit of Christ, though I wander from the letter. Such
words as you have spoken to me, however, can never come amiss. Perhaps
when I am old and wiser, like many another self-confident wanderer, I
may be glad to come back to my mother's house, and then, perhaps, I
shall be a stiff little church-woman. At all events I shall always be
your loving and grateful pupil. IDA.
[Eva Van Arsdel to Isabel Convers.]
_My Dear Belle_: Thanks for your kind letter with all its
congratulations and inquiries,--for though as yet I have no occasion for
congratulation, and nothing to answer to inquiry, I appreciate these all
the same.
No--Belle, the "old sixpence" is not gone yet,--you will have to keep to
your friend a while longer. I am not engaged, and you have full liberty
to contradict that report everywhere and anywhere.
Mr. Sydney is, of course, very polite, and very devoted, very much a
friend of the family and all that, but I am _not_ engaged to him, and
you need never believe any such thing of me till you hear it directly,
under my own hand and seal.
There have been a lot of engagements in our set lately. Lottie
Trevillian is going to marry Sim Carrington, and Bessie Somers has at
last decided to take old Watkins--though he is twenty-five years older
than she,--and then there's Cousin Maria Elmore has just turned a
splendid affair with young Livingstone, really the most brilliant match
of the winter. I am positively ashamed of myself, under these
circumstances, to be sitting still, and unable to report progress. My
old infelicity in making up my mind seems to haunt me, and I dare say I
shall live to be a dreadful example.
By the by, I have had a curious sort of an adventure lately. You know
when I was up at Englewood visiting you last summer, I was just raving
over those sonnets on Italy, which appeared in the "_Milky Way_" over
the signature of "X." You remember those verses on "Fra Angelico" and
the "Campanile," don't you? Well, I have found out who this X is. It's a
Mr. Henderson that is now in New York, engaged on the staff of "_The
Great Democracy_." We girls have noticed him once or twice walking with
Jim Fellows--(you remember Jim;) Jim says he is a perfect hermit,
devoted to study and writing, and never goes into society. Well, wasn't
it odd that the fates should have thrown this hermit just in my way?
The other morning I came over from Brooklyn, where I had been spending
three days with Sophia, and when I got into the car who should I see but
this identical Mr. Henderson right opposite to me. I took a quiet note
of him, between whiles thinking of one or two lines in his sonnet. He is
nice-looking, manly, that is, and has fine dark eyes. Well, do you know,
the most provoking thing, when I came to pay my fare I found that I had
no tickets nor small change--what could have possessed me to come so I
can't imagine, and mamma makes it all the worse by saying it's just like
me. However, he interposed and arranged it for me in the nicest and
quietest way in the world. I was going up to call at Jennings', the
other side of the Astor House, to see about my laces, but by the time we
got there, there came on such a rain as was perfectly dreadful. My dear,
it was one of those shocking affairs peculiar to New York, which really
come down by the bucketful, and I had nothing for it but to cross
Broadway as quick as I could to catch a Fifth Avenue omnibus, and let my
lace go till a more convenient season.
Well, as I stepped out into the storm, who should I find quite beside me
but this gentleman, with his umbrella over my head. I could see at the
moment that it had one of those quaint handles that they carve in
Dieppe. We were among cars, and policemen, and trampling horses, and so
on, but he got me safe into an up-town omnibus, and I felt so much
obliged to him.
I supposed, of course, that there it might end, but, would you believe
it, quite to my surprise, he got into the omnibus too! "After all," I
said to myself, "perhaps his route lies up town like mine." He wasn't in
the least presuming, and sat there very quietly, only saying, "Permit
me," as he passed up a ticket for me when the fare was to be paid, so
saving me that odious necessity of making change with my great awkward
bill. I was mortified enough--but knowing who it was, had a sort of
internal hope that one day I could apologize and make it all right, for,
my dear, I determined on the spot that we would invite him to our
receptions, and get Jim Fellows to make him come. I think there is no
test of a gentleman like the manner in which he does a favor for a
stranger lady whom the fates cast upon his protection. So many would be
insufferably presuming and assuming--he was just right, so quiet, so
simple, so unpretentious, yet so considerate.
He rode on very quietly till we were opposite our house, and then was on
duty again with his umbrella, up to the very door of the house, and
holding it over me while we were waiting. I couldn't help expressing my
thanks, and asking him to walk in; but he excused himself, giving his
card, and saying he would be happy to call and inquire after my health,
etc.; and I gave him mine, with our Wednesday receptions on it, and told
him how pleased mamma would be to have him call. It was all I could do
to avoid calling him by his name, and letting him see how much I knew
about him; but I didn't. It was rather awkward, wasn't it?
Now, I wonder if he will call on Wednesdays. Jim Fellows says he is so
shy, and never goes out; and you know if there is anything that can't be
had, that is the thing one is wild to get; so mamma and all of us are
quite excited, and wondering if he will come. Mamma is all anxiety to
apologize, and all that, for the trouble I have given him.
It's rather funny, isn't it--an adventure in prosaic old New York? I
dare say, now, he has forgotten all about it, and never will think of
coming into such a trifling set as we girls are. Well, I will let you
know if he comes.
Ever your affectionate EVA.