Mrs. Sherman

“ They drove down to the store to attend to the day's marketing. While Mrs. Sherman was ordering her groceries, Lloyd went to the back of the [240] store, where one of the clerks was teaching tricks to a bright little fox-terrier. She was so interested in the performance that she did not know when Miss Allison came in, or how long she and her mother stood discussing her.
"Yes," said Mrs. Sherman, "she has been brave about it. She never complained but once, and that to me this morning. But we know how unhappy she is. Jack and papa worry about her all the time. They want me to take her to Florida. ”

“ From that same chest came a dress and hat which Mrs. Sherman had worn in a tableau years before as a Dresden shepherdess, which transformed Betty into the prettiest little Bo-Peep that could be imagined. ”

“ The waiter, who was changing their plates, could not resist this temptation to show off the little English he knew. "Hes name is Hero, mademoiselle," he answered. "He vair smart dog. He know evair sing somebody say to him, same as a person."
"You'll probably see him as we go out to the carriage," said Mr. Sherman. "He follows the Major constantly."
As soon as breakfast was over, Mrs. Sherman went up to her room for her hat. Lloyd, who had worn hers down to breakfast, wandered out into the hall to wait for her. ”

“ Dr. Sherman was, during the evening, called to the door, when he received a parcel from London, carriage paid, which the man said he had promised to place in the Doctor's own hand. The worthy man wondering from whom it could possibly come, retired to his own room and opened it. It contained Mrs. Willoughby's portrait and the pocket book; the latter he locked up carefully; the former he was carrying to Helen: who being engaged with Mrs. Sherman in the adjoining room, he showed it to Sir Horace Mortimer, with whom he had just been conversing about Helen, and her orphan charge. ”

“ Sherman kept the captain prisoner. "Captain Woodhouse, you see, would not be so likely to come in touch with those troublesome persons as one in command of a post, like myself." The most delicate irony barbed this speech, lost to all but the one for whom it was meant.
"Oh, I know I'm going to hear something very exciting," Mrs. Sherman chortled. "Kitty, you'd better hush up Willy Kimball for a while and come over here. You can improve your mind better listening to the general."
Crandall soon was the center of a group. ”

“ As Margaret came on this one for the third time, Mrs. Sherman, who seemed a little resentful about something, said: ‘That is his friend, Mary Carton.’
‘He told me about her. He has a book she gave him. So that is she? How interesting! I pity these poor country people. It must be hard to keep from getting stupid.’
‘My friend is not at all stupid,’ said Sherman.
‘Does she speak with a brogue? I remember you told me she was very good. It must be difficult to keep from talking platitudes when one is very good.’
‘You are quite wrong about her. You would like her very much,’ he replied. ”

“ Sherman was down before her son. A spare, delicate-featured woman, with somewhat thin lips tightly closed as with silent people, and eyes at once gentle and distrustful, tempering the hardness of the lips. She helped the servant to set the table, and then, for her old-fashioned ideas would not allow her to rest, began to knit, often interrupting her knitting to go into the kitchen or to listen at the foot of the stairs. ”

“ The fortune-telling began immediately after dinner. Miss Allison sat one side of a screen, and one by one the palms were thrust through a narrow opening for her to examine. Mrs. Sherman sat beside her, so neither of them saw the amused glances the children exchanged behind the screen, whenever her prophecies contradicted what the old gypsy had told them.
"I can judge of your chief characteristics by your hands," she said, "and it is wonderful how much palmistry reveals in that way; but I shall have to draw on my imagination for your future fortunes." ”

“ Mrs. Sherman and her son had but a small round of acquaintances—a few rich people, clients of the house of Sherman and Saunders for the most part. Among these was a Miss Margaret Leland who lived with her mother, the widow of the late Henry Leland, ship-broker, on the eastern side of St. Peter’s Square. Their house was larger than the Shermans, and noticeable among its fellows by the newly-painted hall door. Within on every side were bronzes and china vases and heavy curtains. In all were displayed the curious and vagrant taste of Margaret Leland. ”

“ Sherman, looking around from one to another with a distressed face.
"No, mothah," cried the Little Colonel, "Betty didn't go, and she tried to keep us from goin'. She said you wouldn't like it."
A loving smile of unspoken approval, that made Betty's heart glow with pleasure, lighted Mrs. Sherman's face for an instant. Then she turned to the others.
"Well, I'll send for Doctor Fuller immediately. If it proves to be the measles, we will turn the house into a hospital at once. If the old saying is true that misery loves company, then you ought to be a contented quartette." ”

“ Sherman cried, "Halt! front face!
Who are you? Speak, my gallant boy!"
"A drummer, sir:—Fifty-fifth Illinois."
"Are you not hit?" "That's nothing. Only send
Some cartridges: our men are out;
And the foe press us." "But, my little friend—"
"Don't mind me! Did you hear that shout?
What if our men be driven?
Oh, for the love of Heaven,
Send to my Colonel, General dear!"
"But you?" "Oh, I shall easily find the rear."
"I'll see to that," cried Sherman ”

“ See that hotel keeper lose his temper and tongue-lash that poor girl? Just what I tell you—these foreigners don't know how to be polite to ladies."
Henry J. Sherman—"yes, sir, of Kewanee, Illynoy"—mopped his bald pink dome and glared truculently at the insulting back of Joseph Almer. Mrs. Sherman, the lady of direct impulses who had contrived to stare Captain Woodhouse out of countenance in the Winter Garden not long back, cast herself despondently on the decrepit lounge and appeared to need little invitation to be precipitated into a
"Haven't I been Josepha for nearly a year?" ”

“ General Sherman always paid the most respectful attention to women in every rank and condition of life—the widow and the orphan, the young and the old. While he was often stern and abrupt to men, he was always kind and gentle to women, and he received from them the homage they would pay to a brother. His friendship for Grant I have already alluded to, but it extended in a lesser degree to all his comrades, especially those of West Point. No good soldier in his command feared to approach him to demand justice, and everyone received it if in his power to grant it. ”

“ Sherman, at the time the newspaper woman visited her, had reached the point where it would naturally occur to her to scan the horizon to observe how the other feminine celebrities of her environment were progressing, and her attention was especially called to the matter by the article on 'Progressive Women.' There she had the opportunity to behold them in their respective glories, and to be jealous of or indifferent to them, according to her judgment as to what each amounted to. ”

“ Sherman still bars her doors against the wanton, yet never fails to convince herself that she is an infallible judge of virtue. If there are rumors and whisperings in advance, she invariably takes the bull, or, more accurately speaking, the heifer, by the horns and puts the inquiry. ”

“ Sherman had offered him a partnership in one of his enterprises, with headquarters in Louisville. It was a very flattering offer, still Phil hesitated. Personally, he preferred the position in the far West, which his former chief had been urging him all winter to accept. His previous training fitted him for one as well as the other, but he had always loved the West, always felt its lure.
It was when he considered Mary, that Mr. Sherman's offer appealed to him most. ”

“ Sherman is such a distinguished-looking man. I admire iron-gray hair and mustaches. Indeed, every one would be very much interested in anything you were to say. You are a woman of ideas—a progressive woman. The public is interested in progressive women, and I think such women owe it to the public to let them understand and appreciate them. ”

“ After General Grant's funeral was over I spent the evening with General Sherman and he told me of his plans for the future; that he wanted to move quietly from St. Louis and locate in New York. He said that he thought he should enjoy New York very much, and his youngest son was then finishing his course at Yale, and the change would bring him near to New Haven. After that the General arranged by correspondence for his rooms on the parlor floor, Twenty-fifth street side. He came here with Mrs. Sherman and the daughters, and the youngest son used to come in frequently from Yale. ”

“ Most of the old fellows who really saw service felt that way, Morris. War isn’t funny. It’s what Sherman said it was! Now, I’ve said things to you, my boy, that I never meant to say to any one. I hope you won’t think hard of me for telling you of your father and my sister. But ever since I’ve known you, I’ve thought about it constantly,—your mother may know about Margaret Merriam. ”

“ Sherman became again silent, finding no fragment of romance in such a discourse.
In the next week or two he saw much of Miss Leland. He met her almost every evening on his return from the office, walking slowly, her racket under her arm. They played tennis much and talked more. Sherman began to play tennis in his dreams. Miss Leland told him all about herself, her friends, her inmost feelings; and yet every day he knew less about her. ”

“ As another natural result of Sherman's nervous energy, he has acquired the habit of decision in the most perfect degree, and his peculiar organization has tended to make him practical as well as petulant. He never seems to reason, but decides by intuition, and, in this respect, has something of the mental as well as bodily peculiarities of the gentler sex, who are said to decide intuitively. But Sherman is by no means a woman—he would have been a shrew had he been—and possesses not one particle of the sex's beauty or gentleness. Sherman jumps at conclusions with tremendous logical springs ”

“ There was a slight resentment in Sherman’s voice. The other noticed it, and said, changing his manner from the insolent air of a young beauty to a self-depreciatory one, which was wont to give him at times a very genuine charm: ‘It is really a great pity, for you Shermans are a deep people, much deeper than we Howards. We are like moths or butterflies, or rather rapid rivulets, while you and yours are deep pools in the forest where the beasts go to drink. No! I have a better metaphor. Your mind and mine are two arrows. Yours has got no feathers, and mine has no metal on the point. ”

“ Mr. Appleton was waiting for them with the big farm wagon, into which he lifted Betty's Bob, whining in his hamper, Mrs. Sherman's trunk, and then Betty's shabby little leather one that had gone away half empty. It was coming back now, nearly bursting with all that her godmother had packed into it with the magic necklace, "for love's sweet sake."
"Shall we have to wait long for the carriage?" asked Lloyd, shading her eyes with her hand to look down the dusty road. "There is nothing in sight now." ”

“ Sherman looked at her, and went on in a bewildered, mechanical way: ‘My betrothed is a Miss Leland. She has a good deal of money. You know my mother always wished me to marry some one with money. Her father, when alive, was an old client of Sherman and Saunders. She is much admired in society.’ Gradually his voice became a mere murmur. He did not seem to know that he was speaking. He stopped entirely. He was looking at Mary Carton. ”

“ She had begun it while waiting for the others to finish dressing one morning, had added a few pages that afternoon, and finished it the next evening at bedtime.
"Heah is my lettah to Joyce, mothah," she said, as she kissed her good night. "Won't you look ovah it, please, and see if all the words are spelled right? I want to send it in the mawnin."
Mrs. Sherman laid the letter aside to attend to later, and forgot it until long after Lloyd was asleep, and Mr. Sherman had come up-stairs. Then, seeing it on the table, she glanced rapidly over the neatly written pages. ”

“ Sherman lectures before farmers' institutes and on demonstration trains, is a member of the State Agricultural College faculty, contributes largely to horticultural and agricultural publications, and takes an active part in the work of California's women's clubs. She was but twenty-five years of age when she began this work, and now is an attractive, interesting woman, of middle life, who has always insisted that the mental side is the side in which to put one's best efforts. ”

“ From 5,000 to 7,000 of these people accompanied the triumphal return of Sherman's expedition, and I defy any human being with as much feeling in his bosom as even Legree in Mrs. Stowe's immortal story to look on such a scene unmoved. Old men with the frosts of 90 years upon their heads, men in the prime of manhood, youth, and children that could barely run, women with their babies at their breasts, girls with the blood of white men in their veins, old women tottering feebly along, leading children and grandchildren, dear to them as our own sons and daughters are to us. ”