improved with returned health, the air seemed full of husbands. Everybody that had any business with me, if he happened not to have a wife, immediately proposed to take me in that relation. All the married men of my acquaintance jested with me on the subject, and their wives followed in the same silly iteration. I actually felt myself of some consequence, whether by nature or by accident, until it became irksome."
"How did all your suitors contrive to get time for courtship?" I laughingly inquired.
"O, time was the least of their requirements. You know, perhaps, that there was an Oregon law, or, rather, a United States law, giving a mile square of land to a man and his wife: to each, half. Now some of the Oregonians made this "Donation Act" an excuse for going from door to door to beg a wife, as they pretended, in order to be able to take up a whole section, though when not one of them ever cultivated a quarter section, or ever meant to."
"And they come to you in this way? What did they say? how did they act?"
"Why, they rode a spotted cayuse up to the door with a great show of hurry, jangling their Mexican spurs, and making as much noise as possible. As there were no sidewalks in Portland, then, they could sit on their horses and open a door, or knock at one, if they had so much politeness. In either case, as soon as they saw a woman they asked if she were married; and if not, would she marry? there was no more ceremony about it."
"Did they ever really get wives in that way, or was it done in recklessness and sport? It seems incredible that any woman could accept such an offer as that."
"There were some matches made in that way; though, as you might conjecture, they were not of the kind made in heaven, and most of them were afterwards dissolved by legislative action or decree of the courts."
"Truly you were right, when you said women are not idealized in primitive conditions of society," I said, after the first mirthful impulse created by so comical a recital had passed. "But how was it, that with so much to disgust you with the very name of marriage, you finally did consent to take a husband? He, certainly, was not one of the kind that came riding up to doors, proposing on the instant?"
"No, he was not: but he might as well have been for any difference it made to me," said Mrs. Greyfield, with that bitterness in her tone that always came into it when she spoke of Seabrook. "You ask 'how was it that I at last consented to take a husband?' Do you not know that such influences as constantly surrounded me, are demoralizing as I said? You hear a thing talked of until you become accustomed to it. It is as Pope says: You 'first endure, then pity, then embrace.' I endured, felt contempt, and finally yielded to the pressure.
"Why, you have no idea, from what I have told you, of the reality. My house as I have already mentioned, was one room in a tenement. It opened directly upon the street. In one corner was a bed. Opposite the door was a stove for cooking and warming the house. A table and two chairs besides my little sewing-chair completed the furnishing of the apartment. The floor was bare, except where I had put down an old coverlet for a rug before the bed. Here in this crowded place I cooked, ate, slept, worked, and received company and offers!
"Just as an example of the way in which some of my suitors broached the subject I will describe a scene. Fancy me kneeling on the floor, stanching the blood from quite a serious cut on Benton's hand. The door opens behind me, and a man I never have seen before, thrusts his head and half his body in at the opening. His salutation is 'Howdy!'—his first remark, 'I heern thar was a mighty purty widder livin' here; and I reckon my infurmation was correct. If you would like to marry, I'm agreeable.'"
"How did you receive this candidate? You have not told me what you replied on these occasions," I said, amused at this picture of pioneer life.
"I turned my head around far enough to get one look at his face, and asking him rather crossly 'if there were any more fools where he came from,' went on bandaging Benton's hand."
The recollection of this absurd incident caused the narrator to laugh as she had not often laughed in my hearing.
"This may have been a second Werther," I remarked, "and surely no Charlotte could have been more unfeeling than you showed yourself. It could not be that a man coming in that way expected to get any other answer than the one you gave him?"
"I do not know, and I did not then care. One day a man, to whose motherless children I had been kind when opportunity offered, slouched into my room without the ceremony of knocking and dropping into a chair as if his knees failed him, began twirling his battered old hat in an embarrassed manner, and doing as so many of his predecessors had done—proposing off-hand. He had a face like a terra-cotta image, a long lank figure, faded old clothes, and a whining voice."
"He told me that he had no 'woman,' and that I had no 'man,' a condition that he evidently considered deplorable. He assured me that I suited him 'fustrate;' that his children 'sot gret store by me,' and 'liked my victuals;' and that he thought a 'heap' of my little boy. He also impressed upon me that he had been 'considerin' the 'rangement of jinin' firms for some time. To close the business at once, he proposed that I should accept of him for my husband then and there."
"And pray, what did you say to him!"
"I told him that I did not know what use I had for him, unless I should put him behind the stove, and break bark over his head."
This reply tickled my fancy so much that I laughed until I cried. I insisted on knowing what put it into her mind to say that.
"You see, we burned fir wood, the bark of which is better to make heat than the woody portion of the tree; but is never sawed or split, and has to be broken. I used to take up a big piece, and bring it down with a blow over any sharp corner to knock it into smaller fragments, and something in the man's appearance, I suppose, suggested that he might be good for that, if for nothing else. I did not stop to frame my replies on any forms laid down in young ladies' manuals; but they seemed to be conclusive as a general thing."
"I should think so. Yet, there must have been some, more nearly your equals, attracted by your youth and beauty, loving you, or capable of loving you, to whom you could not give such answers, by whom such answers would not be taken."
"As I look back upon it now, I cannot think of any one I might have taken and did not, that I regret. There were men of all classes nearly; but they were not desirable, as I saw it then, or as I see it now. It is true that I was young, and pretty, perhaps, and that women were in a minority. But then, too, the men who were floating about on the surface of pioneer society were not likely to be the kind of men that make true lovers and good husbands. Some of them have settled down into steady-going benedicts, and have money and position. The worst effect of all this talk about marrying was, that it prepared me to be persuaded against my inner consciousness into doing that which I ought not to have done. My truer judgment had become confused, my perceptions clouded, from being so often assailed by the united majority who could not bear to see poor, little minority go unappropriated. But come, let us have our cakes and lemonade. You need something to sustain you while I complete the recital of my conquests."
I felt that she needed a brief interval in which to collect her thoughts and calm a growing nervousness that in spite of her efforts at pleasantry would assert itself in various little ways, evident enough to my observation. A saucepan of water was set upon the hot coals on the hearth, the lemons cut and squeezed into two elegant goblets, upon square lumps of sugar that eagerly took up the keen acid, and grew yellow and spongy in consequence. A sociable little round table was rolled out of its seclusion in a corner, and made to support a tray between us, whereon were such dainty cakes and confections as my hostess delighted in.
There was an air of substantial comfort in all the arrangements of my friend's house that made it a peculiarly pleasant one to visit. It lacked nothing to make it home-like, restful, attractive. The house itself was large and airy, with charming views; the furniture sufficiently elegant without being too fine for use; flowers, birds, and all manner of curios abounded, yet were never in the way, as they so often are in the houses of people who are fond of pretty and curious things, but have no really refined taste to arrange them. Our little ten-o'clock lunch was perfect in its appointments—a "thing of beauty," as it was of palatableness and