LITERATURE.

Globe, Volume VIII, Issue 997, 5 September 1877, Page 3

LITERATURE.

——♦ HOW OUR POLLY WAS WON. Prom the Dublin “ University Magazine.” {Concluded.) Whatever might be said, there could be no doubt that Mary did wisely in abridging the interval as far as practicable, as it was certain to be an unquiet time for her. It was not in human nature —at least in brotherly and sisterly human nature—to forbear the raillery which such remarkable inconsistency between theory and practice invited. Accordingly, there was not an hour in the day in which the bride elect had not to run the gauntlet of small jokes—venerable almost as the institution itself—but which acquired new point from the special circumstances of the case. Bow did Jack manage to obtain a hearing ? —by what magic extort a consent ? Had he agreed to let her off answering to the ‘serve, honour, and obey,’ clause? Wouldn’t she deem it fitting to go to church in a sheet, like other penitents? And how was the worsted work ever to be finished ? she couldn’t have the heart to put another chubby Hebrew into the river after this ! ’ Mary bore it all without retort, much to the surprise—perhaps a little to the disappointment —of her tormentors. Indeed, lur patient endurance shamed us out of this small banter before the week was out; and at its end as warm and uumixed wishes for her happiness attended her to the altar as ever waited on the meekest and most docile of brides.

The ceremony had for spectators a rather numerous gathering of young fellows who had each, at one time or other, evinced an incipient willingness to figure it in a more prominent character than fortune now assigned them. Curiosity, or what better motive charity might credit them with, doubtless drew them there; but there were not wanting two or three to regard Jack with a kind of compassionate awe, which would have been touching had that reckless individual evinced the least consciousness of the hour And she was really pretty —as an irate wooer once told her, with an odd mixture of candour and compliment, ‘To be at once so pretty and so vixenish was an abuse of good gifts, which would surely be visited on her sooner or later, in the shape of small-pox, or a tartar spouse.’ Pollj. had managed to escape the one ; it remained to be seen whether she caught the other. The wedding went off with the customary smiles and tears ; and with its bustle passed away the wonder of the matter—only to be recurred to occasionally, when some ultraconnubial endearments between the pair suggested a passing speculation upon how Polly was wooed and won.

One circumstance which in some degree tended to keep it alive, was the fact that Mary’s modest dot was still unclaimed when considerably mme than a twelvemonth and a day had passed and gone. ‘ I’ll give them till they want their first perambulator,’ said my father, ‘ to make the discovery that there’s room to lay out a

couple of thousands on even such a modest menage as theirs. We shall see ! ’ When my father grows oracular, we begin to look out for portents. And sure enough one was not long in coming, in the shape of a visit from '.\!ary without her husband. The pair, since their marriage, had so invariably been seen in company, that one without the other seemed as significant as the single crow. Nor did Mary’s face belie the augury—when it was not engrossed by her companion; for though Jack was absent, she was not alone. it was the index of cross currents of feeling, which apparently some strong purpose was tossing, now snbmerged and lost to sight, and again coming to the surface, and seemingly about to declare itself. In their weakness and wavering Mary’s eyes were frequently averted upon a certain object lying in her lap ; from which they always returned strengthened and steadied. The certain object was ‘baby,’ who lay there dimpling and crooning at intervals, with supreme indifference to the idolatrous homage he was receiving from the circle of (morally) prostrate worshippers. * Lower the blind a little, please,’ said Mary, abruptly, and in the quick tones of one who half distrusted herself. ‘ I want to tell you something I know you are all curious to learn ; how Jack and I came together. ’Tis not a boast I have to make, but a confession,’ she added, hastily, and with a heightened color, as a half smile rose to more than one pair of lips present. ‘ Some of you, .1 remember, considerately suggested that I ought to go to church in a sheet; and you were not far wrong. I felt so then, but wanted the strength to confess it. The strength has come to me since ; and here is the bringer of it. ’ And Mary’s eyes moistened, and her brow flushed again, as she bent over the little one. When she raised her head and spoke again, it was in a more assured tone. * Jack was always good to me, f i om a boy —far better than I deserved —always ready to fight my battles, when bigger lads than himself pestered me with their nonsense. I used fo think then, if he had only had the sense to be a girl, I could have been very f nd of him. But when, as we both grew up, he in turn began to whisper silly things in my ear, I lost patience, and thought they were all alike. In that I was wrong. Jack differed from the others in this—as I soon found, to my vexation—storming had no effect on him; if driven away one day, he rctui ned the next, ‘You, who had watched the bitter skirmishing—hitter on my side, I mean—that went on between us for years, can judge something of my exasperation at this persistence. At last a day came when Jack asked me to end it all by becoming his wife. * I spare you the unpleasantness and my self the humiliation of detailing the transports of passion the proposal threw me into. In my madness I accused him of scheming to get the trifle of dowry he might count upon withjme. For the first time Jack was angry with me—not heated and violent, but very white and quiet. ‘ Mary, ’ —he spoke in cold and even tones —‘you have said words which will for ever be a bar to my accepting assistance from your father, however trilling ;’ and left men—l concluded for ever; and though rather ashamed of having made an accusation I myself did not believe, the conviction that it would put an end to his prosecution consoled me. ‘ But Jack judged otherwise. I think he knew I was not sincere in making it, or he never could have deemed me worthy to be his wife after that. ‘ A long period of coolness ensued—or rather, total alienation, for neither spoke to the other ; at the end of which, seizing the opportunity of being alone with me—for you had all left the room from some cause or other —he unexpectedly renewed his proposal. Astonishment held me dumb ; which, I suppose, with the‘usual conceit of his sex, he interpreted in his own favor. Thus encouraged, he endeavored to possess himself of my hand. But that action broke the spell; and instead of carrying it, as he apapreutly purposed, to his lips, it made its' way unaided to his ear, and spoke in ringing tones a most emphatic—No 1 ‘ My fingers tingled to their tips—but my heart ached worse when I stole a glance at his face as he was leaviugjthe room—without a word. ‘ I was pained—and I was puzzled. It was not anger, and it was not sorrow I read there. It haunted me long after he was gone Then, for the first time I think, the doubt dawned upon me, that possible his patient endurance merited more consideration at my hands. The more I dwelt upon it the less satisfied was I with my own conduct. Need I say it ended in the con viction that I was utterly in the wrong ?’ Here Mary broke down ; as though the recollections called up were too humiliating to shape in speech. But a brief consultation with the oracle lying in her lap—to effect which it appeared necessary to approach her lips very close to his—inspired her afresh. ‘ I could not yet bring myself to confess it in words; but I resolved to evince my contrition in a kinder manner. I was disappointed. He would not give me the opportunity. From the day of that unlucky box on the ears Jack took no notice of me, though, as you know, he was constantly coming here. This was harder to bear than downright quarrelling. I thought, if he would hut say how much he despised me, it would be a relief. Dear fellow 1 I know not how much wiser he was than I. ‘ You must not expect me to relate bow the gulf between us was bridged ; nor which first made a sign to the other- to come over. I could not tell you —there are some things I have never told Jack .’ ‘There was no need,’interrupted a voice that made us all start. Turning in its direction, who should we see, but that unblushing individual, eyeing our group with saucy intelligence. How long he had been in the room he declined to say ; but doubtless long enough to be vastly edified by what he heard. ‘ There was no need, Mary, ’ said he, while she he addressed suddenly discovered something in baby’s condition that required her closest attention ‘there was no xreed to toll Jack, for Jack knew all about it long ago. Rless your ’cute little soul! as though he hasn’t read you like a book from the moment you fell into that cardinal mistake of making free with his ears ! Cheer up, little woman ! Jack holds it to be the luckiest blow fortune ever dealt him.’ ‘ You’ve heard Polly's confession,’ continued he, addressing the rest of us ; ‘ now, please, listen to mine. I had a wise grand father, and he used to say, ‘ Every woman is to be won, take her by the light end (he

had four wives himself, and ought to know); only the same end is not the right end of every woman. ’

‘ That’s the mistake the bunglers make. Because this woman is deaf to flattery, and that one proof against entreaty; this pines for an unattainable mate, and that cannot make up her mind from the multitude she may pick up—simple swains grow thin upon it, and whine about the cruelty of the sex. Simpletons ! not to know that if a man fails in this prime aspiration of his life the fault is his own. He is either too stupid to discern the right end of a woman from the wrong, or too lazy to make the necessary effort to seize and keep hold of it. There is no such thing as female obstinacy. ’Tis a myth - a bogey - a shape of mist that bars one man’s path, while another can puff it into thin air with a breath. The most acidulous old maid and the sweetest young one are alike in this, that both only await the application of the special solvent prescribed by the immutable laws of chemical affinities to dissolve into the raptures of love. I myself, from my short experience ’ Bow much longer Mr Eagge would have enlarged on his text is uncertain, had not a shrill protest, swelled by every female tongue present, drowned the further enunciation of such pernicious doctrine. Even Mary clapped her hands over her lips, and held them there, till by a mute token of the eyes he intimated that he surrendered —but was not beaten.

Possibly the lesson may not be without its uses to others, who have not succeeded to such a rich inheritance of grand-paternal wisdom as Mr Jack Eagge.