LITMIR.BIZ

      CHAPTER I.

       Table of Contents

      Oh, ye! who sunk in beds of down,

       Feel not a want but what yourselves create,

       Think for a moment on his wretched fate,

       Whom friends and fortune quite disown.—Burns.

      Mr. Elton was formerly a flourishing trader, or, in country phrase, a merchant, in the village of ———. In the early part of his life he had been successful in business; and having a due portion of that mean pride which is gratified by pecuniary superiority, he was careful to appear quite as rich as he was. When he was at the top of fortune's wheel, some of his prying neighbours shrewdly suspected, that the show of his wealth was quite out of proportion to the reality; and their side glances and prophetic whispers betrayed their contempt of the offensive airs of the purse-proud man.

      The people in the village of ——— were simple in their habits, and economical in their modes of life; and Mr. Elton's occasional indulgence in a showy piece of furniture, or an expensive article of dress for himself or for his wife, attracted notice, and, we fear, sometimes provoked envy, even from those who were wiser and much better than he was. So inconsistent are men—and women too—that they often envy a display of which they really despise, and loudly condemn the motive.

      Mrs. Elton neither deserved nor shared the dislike her husband received in full measure. On the contrary, she had the good-will of her neighbours. She never seemed elated by prosperity; and, though she occasionally appeared in an expensive Leghorn hat, a merino shawl, or a fine lace, the gentleness and humility of her manners, and the uniform benevolence of her conduct, averted the censure that would otherwise have fallen on her. She had married Mr. Elton when very young, without much consideration, and after a short acquaintance. She had to learn, in the bitter way of experience, that there was no sympathy between them; their hands were indissolubly joined, but their hearts were not related; he was 'of the earth, earthy'—she 'of the heavens, heavenly.' She had that passiveness which, we believe, is exclusively a feminine virtue, (if virtue it may be called,) and she acquiesced silently and patiently in her unhappy fate, though there was a certain abstractedness in her manner, a secret feeling of indifference and separation from the world, of which she, perhaps, never investigated, certainly never exposed the cause.

      Mr. Elton's success in business had been rather owing to accidental circumstances, than to his skill or prudence; but his vanity appropriated to himself all the merit of it. He adventured rashly in one speculation after another, and, failing in them all, his losses were more rapid than his acquisitions had been. Few persons have virtue enough to retrench their expenses, as their income diminishes; and no virtue, of difficult growth, could be expected from a character where no good seed had ever taken root.

      The morale, like the physique, needs use and exercise to give it strength. Mrs. Elton's had never been thus invigorated. She could not oppose a strong current. She had not energy to avert an evil, though she would have borne any that could have been laid on her, patiently. She knew her husband's affairs were embarrassed; she saw him constantly incurring debts, which she knew they had no means of paying; she perceived he was gradually sinking into a vice, which, while it lulls the sense of misery, annihilates the capacity of escaping from it—and yet she silently, and without an effort, acquiesced in his faults. They lived on, as they had lived, keeping an expensive table, and three or four servants, and dressing as usual.

      This conduct, in Mrs. Elton, was the result of habitual passiveness; in Mr. Elton, it was prompted by a vain hope of concealing from his neighbours a truth, that, in spite of his bustling, ostentatious ways, they had known for many months.

Скачать книгу