Vistas of New York. Brander Matthews
the church, but even down-town, too. I ain’t afraid of them any more, and I can tell a conductor to let me out at the corner now without wishing to go through the floor of the car. Fact is, I’ve found out how little importance I am. Up at Auburnvale people knew me; I was old John Forthright’s only son; I was an individual. Here in New York I am nobody at all, and everybody is perfectly willing to let me alone. I think I like it better here; and before I get through I’ll force these New-Yorkers to know me when they see me in the street—just as they touch each other now and whisper when they pass old Ezra Pierce.
Write soon and tell me there’s nothing the matter with you. I’m all right and I’d send you my love—but you got it all already.
JACK.
VIII
NEW YORK, Nov. 16, 1894.
DEAR MIRIAM,—I asked you to write me soon, and yet you’ve kept me waiting ten days again. Even now your letter has come I can’t seem to get any satisfaction out of it. I have never known you to write so stiffly. Is there anything the matter? Are you worried at home? Is your mother sick or your father?
I wish I could get away for a week at Thanksgiving to run up and see you. But we are kept pretty busy at the store. There isn’t one of the firm hasn’t got his nose down to the grindstone, and that’s where they keep ours. That’s how they’ve made their money; it’s all good training for me, of course.
All the same I’d like to be with you this Thanksgiving, even if it isn’t as beautiful a day as last Thanksgiving was. I don’t know when I’ve enjoyed a dinner as I did your mother’s that night, but I guess it wasn’t the turkey I liked so much or the pumpkin pie, but the welcome I got and the sight of the girl who sat opposite to me and who wouldn’t tell me what she had wished for when we pulled the wishbone. I think it was only that morning in church when I looked across and saw you at the organ that I found out I had been in love with you for a long while. You were so graceful, as you sat there and the sunlight came down on your beautiful brown hair, that I wanted to get up and go over on the spot and tell you I loved you. Then at dinner your fiery eyes seemed to burn right into me, and I wondered if you could see into my heart that was just full of love of you.
It is curious, isn’t it, that I didn’t get a chance to tell you all these things for nearly six months? I don’t know how it was, but first one thing and then another made me put off asking you. I was afraid, too. I dreaded to have you say you didn’t care for me. And you were always so independent with me. I couldn’t guess what your real feelings were. Then came that day in June when I mustered up courage at last! Since then I’ve been a different man—a better man, I hope, too.
But I don’t know why I should write you this way in answer to a letter of yours that was too short almost to be worth the postage!
JACK.
IX
NEW YORK, Dec. 2, 1894.
DEAR MIRIAM,—You don’t know how much good it did me to get your long letter last week. You wrote just like your old self—just like the dear little girl you are! I was beginning to wonder what had come over you. I thought you had changed somehow, and I couldn’t understand it.
Of course, I wished I was in Auburnvale on Thanksgiving. I’d like to have seen you sitting in the seats and singing with your whole soul; and I’d have liked to hear your father preach one of his real inspiring sermons that lift up the heart of man.
To be all alone here in New York was desolate—and then it rained all the afternoon, too. It didn’t seem a bit like a real Thanksgiving.
I went to church, of course, but I didn’t think Dr. Thurston rose to the occasion. He didn’t tell us the reasons why we ought to be grateful as strongly as your father did last year.
Coming out of church it had just begun to rain, and so there was a crowd around the doors. As I was just at the foot of the stairs I tripped over Miss Stanwood’s dress. I tell you it made me uncomfortable when I heard it tear. But these New York girls have the pleasantest manners. She didn’t even frown. She smiled and introduced me to her father, who seemed like a nice old gentleman. He was very friendly, too, and we stood there chatting for quite a while until the crowd thinned out.
He said that if I really wanted to understand some of the Sunday-school lessons I ought to go to the Holy Land, since there are lots of things there that haven’t changed in two thousand years. He’s been there and so has his daughter. He brought back ever so many photographs, and he’s asked me to drop in some evening and look at them, as it may help me in making the boys see things clearly. It was very kind of him, wasn’t it? I think I shall go up some night next week.
I’ve been here nearly three months now, and Mr. Stanwood’s will be the first private house I shall have been to—and in Auburnvale I knew everybody and every door was open to me. I feel it will be a real privilege to see what the house of a rich man like Mr. Stanwood is like. I’ll write you all about it.
And some day I’ll buy you a house just as fine as his. That some day seems a long way off, sometimes, don’t it?
JACK.
X
NEW YORK, Dec. 4, 1894.
DEAR MIRIAM,—You have never before answered so promptly, and so I write back the very day I get your letter.
I begin by saying I don’t understand it—or at least I don’t want to understand it. You ask me not to accept Mr. Stanwood’s invitation. Now that’s perfectly ridiculous, and you know it is. Why shouldn’t I go to Mr. Stanwood’s house if he asks me? He’s a rich man, and very influential, and has lots of friends. He’s just the kind of man it’s very useful for me to know. You ought to be able to see that. I’ve got to take advantage of every chance I get. If I ever start in business for myself, it will be very helpful if I could find a man like Mr. Stanwood who might be willing to put in money as a special partner.
Fact is, I’m afraid you are jealous. That’s what I don’t like to think. But it seems to me I can see in your letter just the kind of temper you were in last Fourth of July when I happened to get in conversation with Kitty Parsons. Your eyes flashed then and there was a burning red spot on your cheeks, and I thought I’d never seen you look so pretty. But I knew you hadn’t any right to be mad clear through. And you were then, as you are now. I hadn’t done anything wrong then, and I’m not going to do anything wrong now. Jealousy is absurd, anyhow, and it’s doubly absurd in this case! You know how much I love you—or you ought to know it. And you ought to know that a rich man like Mr. Stanwood isn’t going to ask a clerk in Fassiter, Smith & Kiddle’s up to his house just on purpose to catch a husband for his daughter.
I guess I’ve got a pretty good opinion of myself. You told me once I was dreadfully stuck up—it was the same Fourth of July you said it, too. But I’m not conceited enough to think that a New York girl like Miss Stanwood would ever look at me. I don’t trot in her class. And a railroad president isn’t so hard up for a son-in-law that he has to pick one up on the church steps. So you needn’t be alarmed about me.
But if it worries you I’ll go some night this week and get it over. Then I’ll write you all about it. I guess there’s lots of things in Mr. Stanwood’s house you would like to see.
So sit down and write me a nice letter soon, and get over this jealousy as quick as you can. It isn’t worthy of the little girl I love so much.
Your