There are some good people who deny the doctrine of total depravity, who
don’t see how it is possible for a man deliberately to be a hypocrite.
They say that a man can’t live unless he has some good in him. I shall
not dispute with these worthy people, because, in a free country, every
man has a right to his own opinion, provided he does not happen to think
that he may buy tickets in lotteries out of Wall street, and appropriate
his neighbor’s goods without the formalities made and provided in the
righteous common law of our social code; but I must say that if goodness
is necessary to keep people alive, some folks have the gift of living on
“small means;” and it becomes my duty to introduce a young gentleman
eminently gifted in this particular.
Sylvester Wilson was a young man who had a laudable wish for his own
advancement, but, unfortunately for his piety, he was entirely
indifferent to the means that contributed to his getting ahead, provided
the world made no complaint of him. The opinion of those about him, with
two-thirds the facts concealed from them, was a moral law for him, and
he had no other. His father was a bad, ambitious and unscrupulous man,
and the hereditary transmission of qualities would have charmed Fowler,
though the qualities proved that he was “bad, born bad, and had no
business here” but to make mischief. He was, however, an excellent
dissembler, and passed for a pious and exemplary young man, punctual at
church, and designed for the ministry. His family were friends of the
Evans family.
“Well, mother, have you wormed any thing out of old Aunty Evans about
that red-haired horror’s adoption?” said Sylvester Wilson, to his mother
one day, when she had been taking an old-fashioned cup of tea with Mrs.
Evans.
“How _can_ you, Sylvester!” said his mother, a good deal disturbed. “The
child is very well, I am sure.”
“Frights generally have good health.”
“I meant that she was very well-looking. She has changed much in the two
years she has lived with her cousin. Her hair is deepening its color,
her eyes do not squint any more, and she is very plump and fresh.”
“All the better for me—fourteen, is she? She will get better still,
perhaps, in two or three years. But about the cash, mother—will that
old hunks of a cousin portion her? If so, I am his man.”
“Mrs. Evans thinks he considers her as good as his own child now,” said
Mrs. Wilson. “You are to be three years in the University, my child, and
you can’t think of a wife till that time is past.”
“I don’t know what harm _thinking_ is to do a fellow. I am not in the
University yet, and I don’t exactly see how I am to be there, unless I
find a gold mine. If I could get employed to give lessons to that
fox-pate, I might earn some money, and borrow more, and get an education
and independence at last. One can’t expect beauty and tin together.”
Success was all Mrs. Wilson asked for her son, and his life-plans did
not seem to her at all profane. And he succeeded in obtaining the place
he sought. He gave Fanny lessons in music and mathematics. It was a
great triumph when Fanny got leave of Cousin Charles to learn music. She
had thought of a piano, and dreamed of one, and thumped on one that
belonged to a young friend for a long time—but she had no idea of ever
being the happy possessor of a mine of music.
At Christmas, just about two years from the time when she came to live
with her cousin, she made a little “Christmas box” for her best friend.
It contained a pair of slippers, a watch-holder, and a lamp-mat, all
worked by herself. They had grown very pretty under her skillful
fingers, but the coarse canvas had not changed more under her hands than
she had changed since she had lived in this happy home. And she was
daily improving. When Charles Evans found this Christmas gift on his
table, he resolved to give Fanny just what she should ask for, and so he
said, “I have only got you a book for Christmas, Fanny, but if you think
of any thing else that you want, you must tell me.”
“And will you really give it me?” said Fanny, and her deep-blue eyes
seemed melting in their own lustre.
“To be sure I will, because I have said so.”
“Well, then, dear, good Cousin Charles, buy me a piano.”
“Buy you a winter full of thunder storms—why you will bang me deaf.”
“But not dumb, I’ll bet any thing—you will always be able to scold your
poor Cousin Fanny. But I shall play when you are away.”
“I rather think you will when you get a piano. Why do you know what a
deal of money one of those thunderers costs?”
Fanny began to be frightened. She did not know, but she was really like
the child who cried for the moon. The tears came into her eyes as she
thought of herself two years ago. She looked up at her cousin, with her
grateful soul beaming from her beautiful eyes, and smiling through her
tears, she said, “Cousin, I was very wrong to ask such an impossible
thing—will you buy me a canary-bird?”
“Do you give up all claim to the piano if I do?”
“O, yes, to be sure. Please to forget it. Indeed, I did not mean to be a
silly girl.”
Thus ended the talk of the piano; but the next afternoon an elegant
piano and a beautiful canary-bird, were domesticated in Mr. Evans’s
quiet parlor—and Fanny was perfectly wild with delight. That was a
wonderful era in her life—a time to date from forever after—though
Cousin Charles brushed her off as if she had been a whole swarm of black
flies, when she ran to his room, on his return in the evening, to
overwhelm him with thanks, and tears, and crazy rejoicings.
“Bless me, Fanny,” said he, “you had better make up your mind whether
you are going to melt, or fly away, or go to a lunatic asylum; and when
you have concluded, just come and let me know, will you? I can do
without you till then.”
The next thing to the piano must be a music-teacher. Young Wilson had
played his cards skillfully. He had interested Charles Evans in his
fortunes, and he engaged him from motives of benevolence, to teach
Fanny. To do him justice, he was a good teacher. But Evans was cheated.
He did not think it possible that the fellow could have thought but to
teach Fanny, that he might mend his small means—a most praiseworthy
object in the young man, and one that Evans felt anxious to assist him
in attaining. Though Fanny had grown very pretty, and was daily
improving, yet her cousin was hardly conscious of it. He thought of her
as a mere child as she was, and a very ugly child as she had been; and
it never once entered his mind that any young man could have designs
upon the heart of the little one. Young Wilson interested him, not
because he knew him, but because he did not know him. He saw him
struggling to get an education, and pay for it himself, and he was glad
to have an excuse to offer him assistance.
Evans had small love for music, but mathematics was a pet of the first
magnitude with him, and for the sake of this branch of study, he
compromised and gave the girl her music. So he said; but the truth was,
he wished Fanny to be happy. And he had his wish. The bird and the piano
were all the time new, and she could never for a moment, asleep or
awake, cease to rejoice in either. She kept her word not to play when
Mr. Evans was at home. But then this was no great privation, for the
bird sang like mad all the morning, and he went away early, and she
managed to tire herself so thoroughly during the day, that she was very
willing to go patiently and quietly into figures for the evening. Mr.
Evans was quite satisfied, for as he said he saw Fanny always at her
“sums,” and never was disturbed by drums or thunder.
Wilson found himself of just as much social importance to Fanny as a
piano or an algebra. She would have been just as much interested in a
calculating machine; and if her piano could have taught her to play on
it, she would have been neither better or worse pleased than now. To be
sure she was glad when her Aunt Evans told her of the struggles of young
Wilson to educate himself that she had him for a teacher, but she never
thought enough of him to mention him to Mr. Evans; first, because she
seldom needed his help in her mathematical studies, and of music she
never spoke to her cousin.
Wilson was prudent and careful. He had good hope of getting into the
University—in time of a pulpit, and a rich wife. No word, or look, or
overt act ever revealed to Fanny or her friends, that he had designs on
the fortune of Mr. Evans, through a marriage with his ward. For months
he labored assiduously, when an accident occurred that changed the face
of his fortune, though, perhaps, it did not materially affect Fanny. A
merchant uncle of Wilson, who lived at New Orleans, found himself in
need of an assistant, in consequence of failing health. He was a man of
wealth, and Wilson considered his fortune assured by this chance—and so
the church lost the chance of adding to her ornaments another of those
paste gems that bring the real jewels into disrepute.