FullReads

It was yet early in the evening; her children slept; the poor woman put on her bonnet and shawl, and started at once for the office of the news paper. The publisher was just closing his sanctum, but he gave the information the widow required, and favorably impressed with Mrs. Glenn’s appearance and manner, the publisher, a quaker, interrogated her on various points of her present condition, prospects, etc. and observed, that but for her children, he had no doubt of the widow’s suiting the old man exactly.

“But thee must not be neglected, or discarded from honest industry, because of thy responsibilities, which God hath given thee,” said the quaker. “If thy lad is stout of his age, and a good boy, I will provide for him; he may learn our business, and be off thy charge, and thee may be enabled to keep thy two female children about thee.”

On the following Monday, the widow signified her intention of writing a few lines as an applicant for the situation of housekeeper, and afterwards to consult with the publisher in regard to her boy, Martin, and then bidding the courteous quaker farewell, she sought her humble domicil, with a much lighter heart than she had lately carried from her distressed and lonely home.

In an ancient part of the Quaker city, facing the broad and beautiful Delaware river, stood a venerable mansion; but few of this class now remain in Philadelphia, and the one of which we now speak, but recently passed away, in the great conflagration that visited the city in 1850. In this substantial and stately brick edifice, lived one of the wealthy and retired ship brokers of Quakerdom. He was very wealthy, very eccentric, very good-hearted, but passionate, plethoric, gouty, and seventy years of age. Mr. Job Carson had lived long and seen much; he had been so engrossed in clearing his fortune, that from twenty-five to forty, he had not bethought him of that almost indispensable appendage to a man’s comfort in this world–a wife. He was the next ten years considering the matter over, and then, having built and furnished himself a costly mansion, which he peopled with servants, headed by a maiden sister as housekeeper, Job thought, upon the whole–to which his sister added her strong consent–that matrimony would greatly increase his cares, and perhaps add more noise and confusion to his household, than it might counterbalance or offset by probable comfort in “wedded happiness,” so temptingly set forth to old bachelors.

“No,” said Job, at fifty, “I’ll not marry, not trade off my single blessedness yet; at least, there’s time enough, there’s women enough; I’m young, hale, hearty, in the prime of life; no, I’ll not give up the ship to woman yet.”

Another ten years rolled along, and the thing turned up in the retired merchant’s mind again–he was now sixty, and one, at least, of the objections to his entering the wedded state, removed–for a man at sixty is scarcely too young to marry, surely.

“Ah, it’s all up,” quoth Job Carson. “I’m spoiled now. I’ve had my own way so long, I could not think of surrendering to petticoats, turning my house into a nursery, and turning my back on the joys, quiet and comforts of bachelorhood. No, no, Job Carson–matrimony be hanged. You’ll none of it.” And so ten years more passed–now age and luxury do their work.

“O, that infernal twinge in my toe. O, there it is again–hang the goat, it can’t be gout. Dr. Bleedem swears I’m getting the gout. Blockhead–none of my kith or kin ever had such an infernal complaint. O, ah-h-h, that infernal window must be sand-bagged, given me this pain in the back, and–Banquo! Where the deuce is that nigger–Banquo-o-o!”

“Yis, massa, here I is,” said a good-natured, fat, black and sleek-looking old darkey, poking his shining, grinning face into the old gentleman’s study, sitting, playing or smoking room.