Mrs. Sanford

“ About five o'clock a young lady called to see Mrs. Sanford, and they seemed very intimate with each other. When they entered the sitting-room, Mrs. Sanford said:
"Ida, let me introduce to you Mr. Ingham; this is Miss Ida Musgrove, Mr. Ingham."
"Mrs. Sanford has spoken of you in such complimentary terms, Miss Ida," said Ingham, "that I have been very anxious to meet you."
"Now, how can you be so foolish, May," said Miss Ida, addressing Mrs. Sanford; "you always talk about me so extravagantly that people are very much disappointed when they meet me." ”

“ It was Mrs Sanford. She took both my hands in hers--standing in front of her relatively I was a mere mite--and looked me up and down.
"There isn't much of you, and you're ridiculously young."
"The first fault I am afraid is incurable. But the second I can grow out of. Many people do." ”

“ Few couples were ever more ill-assorted than Dr. Sanford and his wife; but the husband bore with admirable patience the follies which experience had taught him it was idle to hope to eradicate. His keen sense of humor aided him in this forbearance, and a remark of his wife's more than usually grotesque, had no other visible effect upon him than to provoke a quiet smile about the corners of his lips. The doctor was unspeakably fond of his children, and in them found something of the companionship denied him with his wife. ”

“ You seem to be particularly charmed with the fortune of Major Sanford, with the gayety of his appearance, with the splendor of his equipage, with the politeness of his manners, with what you call the graces of his person. These, alas! are superficial, insnaring endowments. As to fortune, prudence, economy, and regularity are necessary to preserve it when possessed. Of these Major Sanford is certainly destitute—unless common fame (which more frequently tells the truth than some are willing to allow) does him great injustice. ”

“ Now that he has driven her out of her wits by his brutality, he closes his door against her, even when she crawls back on her knees. But don’t you despise her.” She stood before him, looking down into his face for a moment. “Be just as sweet and gentle to her as you can. If she ever goes wrong again, it will be the world’s fault or her husband’s,—not her own. Tell her from me that I trust her and believe in her, and that I send her my love.”
Sanford listened to her with ill-concealed admiration. It was when she was defending or helping some one that she appealed to him most. ”

“ I think we will all be better for fresh air, and Mrs. Truscott will be down in a moment." Mrs. Stannard spoke decidedly, and he had no course but to obey, even though he did not see the grateful look in Miss Sanford's eyes. He much preferred the confidential flavor which was possessed by a parlor interview, but there was no help for it. Following the lead of his hostess, he stepped out upon the piazza just as Mrs. Truscott, bright, animated, and happy, came fluttering down the stairs waving the captain's letter. Miss Sanford glanced up at her bonny face, and smiled sympathetically. ”

“ Richman entered. "My friendship for you, my dear Eliza," said she, "interests me so much in your affairs that I cannot repress my curiosity to know who has the honor of your hand this evening." "If it be any honor," said I, "it will be conferred on Major Sanford." "I think it far too great to be thus bestowed," returned she. "It is perfectly astonishing to me that the virtuous part of my sex will countenance, caress, and encourage those men whose profession it is to blast their reputation, destroy their peace, and triumph in their infamy." "Is this, madam, the avowed design of Major Sanford?" ”

“ Do as you wish. I hated him from the moment he refused to give me a divorce. I could even watch you cut up his body!"
I struggled to rise in the coffin, gasping for the breath of life, and then the lid was pried off, and, summoning all my dying strength, I rose to my feet, waving my arm wildly back and forth, and inhaling a great breath of life-giving night air.
The doctor let the shovel fall to the ground without a word, and staggered back and sank to his knees, while my wife gave a hideous scream of terror. ”

“ Sanford's brain refused this statement entirely, and he blinked.
"I guess you're Irish," he meditated.
"I am. Do you be gettin' out of your tub now, an' Onnie'll dry you," she offered.
"I can't," he said firmly; "you're a lady."
"A lady? Blessed Mary save us from sin! A lady? Myself? I'm no such thing in this world at all; I'm just Onnie Killelia."
She appeared quite horrified, and Sanford was astonished. She seemed to be a woman, for all her height and the extent of her hands. ”

“ An unusual situation, even the most trivial, which delivers shallow minds to reflection, is for them full of uneasiness. To be given up to self is the most frightful of catastrophes to him who finds self an utter stranger. If Mrs. Sanford had no great power of reasoning, she was not without a fancy which fear stirred into activity ”

“ I tremble at the precipice on which you stand, and must echo and reëcho the seasonable admonition of the excellent Mrs. Richman, "Beware of the delusions of fancy." You are strangely infatuated by them! Let not the magic arts of that worthless Sanford lead you, like an ignis fatuus, from the path of rectitude and virtue.
I do not find, in all your conversations with him, that one word about marriage drops from his lips. This is mysterious. No, it is characteristic of the man. ”

“ Charles Sanford had grown an old man, though he was scarcely sixty-three, an age when many men are in their prime. There was a stoop in his shoulders as if the burden of life were heavy, and his hair was as white as snow, while upon his face was a look which only daily discipline, patiently borne, can ever write upon the human visage And patiently had he borne it, until he almost forgot that he was bearing it, and then one day it was removed and by the lightness and freedom he felt, he knew how heavy it had been. ”

“ The substitution of friendship, in the place of love, for Major Sanford, I find productive of agreeable sensations. With him, he assures me, it is a far more calm and rational pleasure. He treats me with the affection and tenderness of a brother, and his wife, who exceeds him in professions of regard, with all the consoling softness and attention of a sister. Indeed, their politeness has greatly contributed to revive the cheerfulness of my natural disposition. I believe the major's former partiality to me as a lover is entirely obliterated ”

“ If I am to blame for obeying the reckless impulse to double-bar the door separating us—to divide myself from you by a gulf so wide that expectancy, desire, and hope would perish in attempting to cross it, you are scarcely the one to upbraid me for the deed. More marriages are contracted in desperation than from mutual love. I said: 'If I am ever cured, it will be by this means.' Miss Sanford was not unpropitious to my advances. I will not insult your common-sense by pretending that her evident partiality flattered or attracted me—much less that I ever felt one throb of tenderness for her. ”

“ In all the regiment no woman was so looked up to and loved as she.
Grace Truscott had known her well by reputation, though this was their first meeting. It seemed not a little strange to Miss Sanford that they should be going thus suddenly and unceremoniously to be the guests of a lady whom neither of them had ever seen, but "'tis the way we have in the Army," was the laughing response when she ventured to speak of it, and any hesitancy or embarrassment she might have felt vanished at the instant when their hostess appeared on the piazza and both her hands were outstretched in welcome. ”

“ Scarcely had he stopped speaking than Harris appeared at the window.
"If you please, Miss Molly, Miss Nora and the young gentlemen asked me to tell you that they've gone off for the day, and won't be back till the evening."
"We also," observed Mr Sanford, "will go off for the day. You see, the stars in their courses are on the side of Miss Winston. I came over on my machine; if you'll jump on yours we'll be off!"
He seemed to imagine that I could rush off to the other side of the county just as I was. Masculine persons do have such curious notions--even when they are grown up. ”

“ Rome was not built in a day. You cannot do everything at once. It is quite certain that you cannot be ninety in five minutes. I was perfectly aware that Mr Sanford was twenty-five. It is not a time of life against which I have a word to say. I feel sure that it is a delightful age. But I cannot understand why persons who are twenty-five should consider themselves so immensely superior to persons who are only seventeen. Or, if they are superior, and are known to be, that is no reason why they should show it.
On my birthday Mr Sanford gave me a box of gloves. ”

“ I consider my time too valuable to be spent in cultivating acquaintance with a person from whom neither pleasure nor improvement is to be expected. His profuseness may bribe the unthinking multitude to show him respect; but he must know that, though
"Places and honors have been bought for gold,
Esteem and love were never to be sold."
I look upon the vicious habits and abandoned character of Major Sanford to have more pernicious effects on society than the perpetrations of the robber and the assassin. These, when detected, are rigidly punished by the laws of the land. ”

“ Sanford has made a place for itself in the sun, but it will never find a bigger place so long as its sons do nothing but chant its praises and condemn any one as disloyal who happens to mention its very numerous faults. ”

“ She had grown to believe with Sanford that if one could impress the possibility of these truths upon the friends one loved, so that they, and only they, could tiptoe back into their houses, keep their blinds closed and their servants hidden, and so delude the balance of the world—those they did not love, the uncongenial, the tiresome, the bumptious, and the aggressive—into believing that they had fled ”

“ Again, my Eliza, will we ramble together in those retired shades which friendship has rendered so delightful to us. Adieu, my friend, till then. Be cheerful, and you will yet be happy.
LUCY SUMNER. LETTER LIII. TO MRS. LUCY SUMNER. HARTFORD. Gracious Heaven! What have I heard? Major Sanford is married! Yes; the ungrateful, the deceitful wretch is married. He has forsworn, he has perjured and given himself to another. That, you will say, is nothing strange. It is characteristic of the man. ”

“ Among the first to alight was Sanford, in a shining new silk hat and a new suit of clothes. He was smiling gaily as he fought his way through the crowd to his wife's side. "Hello!" he shouted. "I thought I'd see you all here."
"W'y, Jim, ain't you cuttin' a swell?"
"A swell! Well, who's got a better right? A man wants to look as well as he can when he comes home to such a family."
"Hello, Jim! That plug 'll never do."
"Hello, Vance! Yes; but it's got to do. Say, you tell all the fellers that's got anything ag'inst me to come around to-morrow night to the store. ”

“ Sanford,' I says. 'They're all doin' it. If you're goin' to train hosses you've got to get in the band wagon. If you can't give the owner a run fur his money he'll find somebody to train 'em who can!'
"'Do you mean to tell me, suh, the wonderful courage displayed by that mayah when the time came, was false?' says ole man Sanford, pointin' at Très Jolie's stall. 'Ah saw strong men, the backbone of this state, suh,' he says, 'watch that mayah come home with tears in their eyes. ”

“ Sanford.”
Sanford watched her silently as she drew her cloak about her and turned to the door. The pathos of the shrinking girlish figure overcame him. He began to wonder if there were something under it all that even Captain Joe did not know of. Then he remembered the tones of compassion in Mrs. Leroy’s voice when her heart had gone out to this girl the morning before, as she said, “Poor child, her misery only begins now; it is a poor place for a tired foot.” ”

“ Sumner—a visit from Major Sanford. My mamma, Miss Granby, and myself were sitting together in the chamber. Miss Granby was entertaining us by reading aloud in Millot's Elements of History, when a servant rapped at the door, and handed in the following billet:—
"Will Miss Wharton condescend to converse a few moments with her once-favored Sanford? He is but too sensible that he has forfeited all claim to the privilege. He therefore presumes not to request it on the score of merit, nor of former acquaintance, but solicits it from her benevolence and pity." ”

“ But when sermons began to take the place of sandwiches, and moral admonitions and questionings were administered in lieu of lemonade and lady-fingers, Miss Sanford's kindergarten dissolved in air and the would-be gentle monitress in disappointed tears. Uncle Will had whimsically striven to console her with the promise of better luck when school stopped in June, but Aunt Marion had smilingly though silently shaken her head. She knew Priscilla's propensities of old. She had convictions, said Aunt Marion, and theories as to how children should be taught to see the serious side of life. ”

“ They were all enthusiastic over West Superior and Duluth, and their wonderful development was the never-ending theme of discussion in Wilson's store.
II The first two years of the bank's history were solidly successful, and "Jim" and "Nellie" were the head and front of all good works, and the provoking cause of most of the fun. No one seemed more care-free.
"We consider ourselves just as young as anybody," Mrs. Sanford would say, when joked about going out with the young people so much; but sometimes at home, after the children were asleep, she sighed a little. ”