It was in vain that he pleaded his later engagements;
it was in vain that his new wife raised her shrillest
remonstrances, not unmingled with expressions of vehement
indignation at the revelation of her husband’s
real position; the witch wife was inexorable; go he
must, and that speedily. Fully impressed with
a belief in her supernatural power of compelling obedience,
and perhaps dreading more than witchcraft itself the
effects of the unlucky disclosure on the temper of
his New England helpmate, he made a virtue of the
necessity of the case, bade farewell to the latter
amidst a perfect hurricane of reproaches, and mounted
the white horse, with his old wife on the pillion
behind him.
Of that ride Burger might have written a counterpart
to his ballad:—
“Tramp,
tramp, along the shore they ride,
Splash,
splash, along the sea.”
Two or three years had passed away, bringing no tidings
of the unfortunate husband, when be once more made
his appearance in his native village. He was
not disposed to be very communicative; but for one
thing, at least, he seemed willing to express his gratitude.
His Ohio wife, having no spell against intermittent
fever, had paid the debt of nature, and had left him
free; in view of which, his surviving wife, after
manifesting a due degree of resentment, consented to
take him back to her bed and board; and I could never
learn that she had cause to regret her clemency.
“A
beautiful form is better than a beautiful face;
a
beautiful behavior is better than a beautiful form;
it
gives a higher pleasure than statues or pictures;
it
is the finest of the fine arts.”
EMERSON’S
Essays, Second Series, iv., p. 162.
A few days since I was walking with a friend, who,
unfortunately for himself, seldom meets with anything
in the world of realities worthy of comparison with
the ideal of his fancy, which, like the bird in the
Arabian tale, glides perpetually before him, always
near yet never overtaken. He was half humorously,
half seriously, complaining of the lack of beauty
in the faces and forms that passed us on the crowded
sidewalk. Some defect was noticeable in all:
one was too heavy, another too angular; here a nose
was at fault, there a mouth put a set of otherwise
fine features out of countenance; the fair complexions
had red hair, and glossy black locks were wasted upon
dingy ones. In one way or another all fell below
his impossible standard.
