AURELIA'S UNFORTUNATE YOUNG MAN. 255 



So she extended the time once more, and he broke his other leg. 



It was a sad day for the poor girl when she saw the surgeons reverently bearing 

 away the sack whose uses she had learned by previous experience, and her heart 

 told her the bitter truth that some more of her lover was gone. She felt that the 

 field of her affections was growing more and more circumscribed every day, but 

 once more she frowned down her relatives and renewed her betrothal. 



Shortly before the time set for the nuptials another disaster occurred. There 

 was but one man scalped by the Owens River Indians last year. That man was 

 Williamson Breckinridge Caruthers, of New Jersey. He was hurrying home with 

 happiness in his heart, when he lost his hair for ever, and in that hour of bitterness 

 he almost cursed the mistaken mercy that had spared his head. 



At last Aurelia is in serious perplexity as to what she ought to do. She still loves 

 her Breckinridge, she writes, with truly womanly feeling — she still loves what is left 

 of him — but her parents are bitterly opposed to the match, because he has no 

 property and is disabled from working, and she has not sufficient means to support 

 both comfortably. " Now, what should she do .' " she asks with painful and anxious 

 solicitude. 



It is a delicate question; it is one which involves the lifelong happiness of a 

 woman, and that of nearly two-thirds of a man, and I feel that it would be assuming 

 too great a responsiblity to do more than make a mere suggestion in the case. How 

 would it do to build to him .' If Aurelia can afford the expense, let her furnish 

 her mutilated lover with wooden arms and wooden legs, and a glass eye and a wig, 

 and give him another show ; give him ninety days, without grace, and if he does not 

 break his neck in the meantime, marry him and take the chances. It does not seem 

 to me that there is much risk, any way, Aurelia, because if he sticks to his singular 

 propensity for damaging himself every time he sees a good opportunity, his next 

 experiment is bound to finish him, and then you are safe, married or single. If 

 married, the wooden legs and such other valuables as he may possess revert to the 

 widow, and you see you sustain no actual loss save the cherished fragment of a 

 noble but most unfortunate husband, who honestly strove to do right, but whose 

 extraordinary instincts were against him. Try it, Maria. I have thought the 

 matter over carefully and well, and it is the only chance I see for you. It woulij 



