LITERATURE.

Globe, Volume VIII, Issue 841, 5 March 1877, Page 3

LITERATURE.

I'VE FIGURED IT UP.

(Danebury News)

TIIE day after New Year's, Mr Whiting came home to dinner and electrified his wife with—

' I have sworn off drinking, Matilda' ' You have ?' said his wife, hardly believing her senses.

'Yes, sir-ee,' he animatedly leplied. 'l've sworn oil', sworn off this very day, and that's the last of it, by hokey.' Mr Whiting sat down to the table, with a self-satisfied air, and rubbed his hands in a self satisfied way, and briskly continued—- ' I've been thinking over this thing all the morning, and I've come to the conclusion that I've made a fool of myself long enough. Why, the money I spend in liquor would very soon get me a house. I've figured it up. Take fifty or sixty cents a day, an' I tell you it counts up mighty fast. It costs me about 165 dollars a year, an' in eight years that would get me a comfortable place, to say nothing of the adornments and comforts generally which such a sum would bring.' ' Are you sure you can stick to it ?' inquired his wife, with some anxiety. ' Sure of it! Gracious ! I guess lam sure of it. I ain't been figuring this thing for nothing. Oh, I shall do it. I'm like a ilint, I am, when I get started. I've got. a will like a perary lire—there's no fighting against it. Yes, sir, I've figured this thing up from bottom to top, and from top to bottom, and I'm bound to do it. I kuow when I figure, aud I've figured this thing right down to a fine pint, you bet.' Mr Whiting continued his dinner, his face shining and his heart warmed with the greatness of his purpose. When he got on his coat and started for work, he observed to his wife —

' I'll get you a pair of vases in a few days, Matilda, an' a set of furs, an' I'm going to have a French clock aq big as a cook stove, an' a conservatory with the biggeßt smelling flowers in the laud. An', I guess, I'll get a piauny, and Ja horse,' perhaps, a couple of dogs, an' I don't know but a cow. I've figured this thing up,' an' there's no use talking ; money is to be saved. It makes me mad enough to kick my shoulder oat of joint when I thinkt wha a fool I've been all these years, Why, hang it all, we might 'av had an ice house of our own, and been living in a hotel. This is the solemn truth, or 1 am a tattooed galoot from some archipelago, by hokey.' And Mr Whiting glowed all over with the great excitement. ' Dear, dear Tom,' cried his delighted wife, as she threw her arms about his neck, and sobbed aloud.

• Don't cry,' Tildy,' he hastily exclaimed, while he vainly strove to keep back the tears from his own eyes. ' It's all right, you know,' he went on, in an assuring voice, and gently stroking her hair, 'l've figured it up, an' I'm going to do it. Don't cry, Tildy. It's right. I've figured it up, an' you can depend on me.' And disengaging her arms, he departed to his work, his heart lighter and gladder than it had been for some years. ' By George,' he said to himself, suddenly pousing, and slapping his leg. ' This is what may be called living.' And he went on again, looking happier than before. Pie came home to tea. There was not that hopeful, bouyant expression in his face that wa3 there at noon. He looked distrustfully about the room, as he pulled off his coat.

' Ain't that supper ready yet ?' he gruilly inquired, 'lt will bo in a minute,' replied Mrs Whiting. Pie threw his coat on one chair, and his hat in another, and heavily sank into a third. For a moment he sat there contemplating the tiro. Then he arose and wanted to know what in thunder was the matter with that stove—the house was as cold as a barn. Mrs Whiting looked at him with astonishment. But if she was amazed now she was more than dumbfounded before bed time. He said the biscuit was as heavy as lead, that the tea was slop, and that the preserves were worse than chopped up oilcloth. The room was either too hot or too cold. Everything belonging to him had been misplaced. He picked up nothing. He snatched it up. He laid down nothing. He threw it down. He growled when he spoke, and he spoke but little. The poor woman was in an agony of apprehension. In all the years of their wedded life she had never seen him act like this. He grow worse as the hour:; advanced, and tin ally wound up by emphatically declaring that ho ' might as well be iu a lunatic asylum, a fittin.' spectacles to pink-eyed taters for his board, as to live in such a house.' Then he went to bed. At breakfast ntxfc morning Mrs Whiting quietly observed — 'Tom, you figured it ail out yesterday, didn't you ?' Ho made no reply. ' Well, I've been figuring, too, and I—l think we can get along without the vases, and the piano, and the French clock, and the other things, and as for living in a hotel and owning an ice house I haven't the faintest desire.' Audtbeyavo doing without these things /or the present. MY MISFORTUNE AT MARSH COMMON. It was in the good old times, before competitive examinations were even dreamt of, that I was placed in a Government office. A little parliamentary influence provided me my berth, and punctual attendance, and a knowledge oj the. multiplication table, enabled mc to keep it. I was uow alone iu

the world. One after another my relations had passed away, and left me a waif in the vast ocean of London life. At the age of thirty I had gained a wonderful experience of furnished lodgings, for I had lived in every parish and had searched almost every ! street in the huge city and its environs, and yet I had never found real comfort. At one time an energetic cornet-player drove me from my den A brutal fiddler was my next enemy. Once again I fled from the fascinations of a widowed landlady. At another time I escaped minus my books and various personal belongings, for there was an execution in the the house. A solitary life had thus become so hateful to me that I was induced to advertise myself in the Times as a being that wished to board with a quiet family, within easy distance of Somerset House. I received some hundreds of letters in reply, out of which I chose one as being most suitable to my wants ; and, after an exchange of references and other solemn ceremonies, I was duly installed as a boarder in tho house of Mrs Vere. My new home was at a place called Marsh Common, about eight miles from town. It was what is generally called a rising place, and consisted of a tract of gorse patched land of some five miles in circumference. It was surrounded by modern villas of every conceivable pattern, mostly tenanted by rich retired tradesmen.

I must now give a slight description of the household of which 1 became a member. Mrs Vere had been left a widow with two grown up daughters to provide for, and but a small income upon which to manage it. She made no secret of the fact that it was in order to add to her slender means she had received me into her house. She was, if anything, rather proud of her honourable poverty, and very careful to inform me that the Veres had, through countless generations, never been induced to take a boarder before. There were also children in the house. Mrs Vere's elder daughter had married an officer in the Bengal Engineers, and had, like most Anglo-Indian mothers, to send her children- -two little girls —to be reared in their natural climate. These little ones wore a great delight to me, and by dint of my success in mending a dilapidated doll's house, aud various articles of doll life pertaining thereto, we soon became fast friends.

Mrs Vere was, unfortunately for herself, one of those proud unhappy people who are constantly striving to appear more important than they really arc. iSho had a wonderful idea of what she called ' society, 5 and few indeed were the familits at Marsh Common that she cared to visit. Luckily she had also a certain respect for wealth ; and the fact that the Thompsons at the other side of the Common were rich, very rich, almost absolved them from the otherwise heinous offence of making their money by soap boiling. There was an inner reason too why Mrs Vere condescended to visit the Thompsons. She had daughters, and the Thompsons had sons, and though, according to her usual mode of reasoning, she would rather see her dear girls starve than marry into a family connected in any way with trade, the circumstance that the sons had been to college, and had not actually personally boiled soap, had a certain soothing effect on the anxious mothers' mind. After the ice had been broken the two families, in spite of the way in which each despised the other, soon became intimate, and it was at this time that I came upon the scene. Whether it was that Mrs Vere exaggerated the official position which J held I know not, but certain is it that the Thompsons paid marked attention to me personally. These attentions, after a time, assumed a somewhat awkward phase, for I found that whenever I went to the house Mrs Thompson would purposely leave me alone with one of her daughters, and close the door on us with a kind of ' bless-you-my-children' smile. Now this was, to a man of my sedate and retiring disposition, a most trying thing, more particularly as the daughter she selected for this performance was not the ene I should myself have chosen. Mrs Thompson had no dearth of daughters. She had been an eminently fruitful vine ; in fact, ' doctor and nurse ' had been, for the first fourteen years of her married life, annual items inher household expenses. The youngest of her children was now about twenty, and I should have certainly preferred a tendril nearer to that age than the one forced upon me, who was of a much earlier vintage. There was no disguising the fact that, in spite of all their financial advan tagos, these girls were very unattractive, not to say stupid; but money, like the virtue of dealing with it liberally, covers a multitude of sins. I confess that I was not averse to the idea of proposing to one of these nymphs, and financial considerations were not the least part of my calculations in the matter. 1 found life at Marsh Common rather expensive. I made many acquaintances, and most of them were far more like Crcesus in their circumstances than ever I could hope to be. It naturally followed that I was led by them to join in pursuits far beyond my means, and which my scanty official salary wonld not permit. [ was fast drifting into a state of impecuniosity, from which I saw no outlet but one, and that alternative was marriage, not for money, but with money as a comfortable adjunct. I had this constant nightmare—poverty or a Miss Thompson ; and I had so far decided in my own mind on the latter lesser evil that it only remained for me to consider which of the Thompson family kind Fate and my own discretion should assign to me. About this time a circumstance occurred which, for acme days, banished matrimonial schemes from my mind. The cuildren at Mrs Vere's were taken suddenly ill. At first it was thought that a mere heat rash had affected them, but the doctor soon pronounced ic decided measles, I remembered the time when I myself had that complaint. I was at a boarding school, and rather looked upon measles as a pleasant relief from my lessons than otherwise. I had for my companion another measly boy, who wa3 as great a mischief lover as myself. The only part of the business to which, I remember, we objected v/aa the injunction to remain still and keep warm; which latter, by aid of frequent bolster matches, wo fully adopted, to the evident disregard of ihe former part of the command. We also delied the doctor in the matter of drinks. lie prescribed barleywater and other vapid abominations, but we slacked our incessant thirst with sly, but deep pulls at the water jug. Cold water in such cases is supposed to have a fatal effect; but we were living instances to the contrary, and not a little proud of knowing, as wo thought, better than the doctor. My two little friends were, however, fortunately of

the gentler sex, and not so prone to quarrel with their enforced rest. They were much pleased when I sat for a time each evening by their little cots, and read or invented fairy stories for them.

About a week after the children were taken ill, invitations came to us for a grand ball at the Thompson's. Mr Thompson had for some years been a member of- the Common Council (ill-natured people called him a very common councillor) ; however, the omission of a few h's, and other Howers of our language, did not prevent him becoming an alderman, and his recent elevation to this dignity first suggested the idea of this ball, which was to eclipse anything of the kind which Marsh Common had ever seen. Moreover, two of the dear girls were to be presented at a Drawing-room a fortnight afterwards, and the conjunction of these two happy events induced the Thompsons to break forth into festivity. For the next few days all was bustle and confusion at Mra Vere's. The little invalids were now quite convalescent, so that there was no hindrance to the grand business of dressmaking, which seemed to occupy all the thoughts and energies of every one in the house but 1113'self. I almost regretted that ray modest toilet for the coming event merely consisted of funereal black, such an in: euse pleasure did it seem to these ladies to change their minds a dozen times a 3 to the particular hues in which they intended to appear. At last the eventful evening arrived—l <ay eventful, for I had resolved that by the events of this night should my after-life be governed. I had fixed upon.the particular Miss Thompson I meant to honour by an offer of my hand, and I felt about as happy a 8 a criminal must feel when a judge is ab mt to pass sentence upon hi a>. ITo be continued.)