1904 
4o3 
A Spasm of Sense. 
“Girls are fools! Yes, they are. I 
know, because I was one myself once. 
“How’d I get over it? 
“I’ll tell you. An old woman brought 
me to my senses, and it’s because I was 
so terribly grateful to her afterwards 
that I dare to meddle with other folks’ 
affairs sometimes, now I am an old 
woman myself. 
“You see, I was in love with a young 
fellow, but I wa’n’t quite so much in 
love with him as I thought I was. 
That’s all that saved me. You know, 
when a girl is really in love she just 
can’t reason. I wa’n’t quite so far gone 
as that. If I had been, Grandma Stet¬ 
son’s talk wouldn’t have done me no 
good. 
“Henry—that was the young man’s 
name—had been keeping company with 
me for some time, and he was pleasant 
and bright, and I liked him first rate, 
and finally he made me think we was 
awful much in love with each other. So 
we was engaged, and we kinder planned 
to be married the next September—that 
was in March. 
“Now Henry was a good enough fel¬ 
low. He was a member of the church, 
and he didn’t have no bad habits, and 
he’d had a good education, for them 
days. So far he was all right, but— 
well, he was one of these folks that’s 
most always out of a job. He’d got 
plenty of ability, he could turn his hand 
to most anything, but he wa’n’t over 
and above fond of work, and he’d never 
stick to anything but a little while. His 
folks supported him, and he let ’em, 
even though they wa’n’t really able to 
do it. He tried teaching school, one 
term, but the boys acted bad and he 
give it up. He tried canvassing, but he 
didn’t like that. He did bookkeeping, 
but he was careless and made mistakes, 
and lost his job. He got a chance to 
work in the post office, but that didn’t 
just suit him. The doctor wanted a 
driver, and Henry got the place, but he 
had to harness the horse and take care 
of him, and he didn’t like that, so he 
give it up. And that’s the way it went. 
He got lots of good places, but in every 
one of ’em he’d either not do his work 
good enough, or he’d get sick of it or 
not like it. 
“All this fretted me terribly, for I was 
real ambitious. I wa’n’t but 19 then, 
and I was smart and capable, if I do 
say it. There wa’n’t so many ways for 
a girl to earn money in them days as 
there is now, but I managed to find 
plenty to do, even if the pay was pretty 
small sometimes. Mother had a big 
family, and so I helped her with the 
work more than enough to pay my 
board. There was a strawshop at the 
village, and they put out the work, so 
I sewed hats, and in the busy season I 
earned considerable. Then when there 
wa’n’t any of that to do, I’d sew for the 
neighbors, and a few times I had a 
chance to take care of sick folks. 
“Henry used to come in and sit down 
and watch me working, and he’d be so 
pleasant and talk so entertaining that 
I liked real well to have him there. 
“I was saving every cent I could 
towards getting married. Henry was 
supposed to be doing the same, but he 
wa’n’t earning anything, most of the 
time, and he dressed pretty well—a 
good deal better than I did. 
“Well, things was going on this way 
when Grandma Stetson was took sick 
and I went to take care of her. She 
was sick quite a while, and I stayed 
with her till she got all well. She knew 
all about my being engaged to Henry, 
and the day before I was going home 
she begun to talk with me about my 
getting married. She’d asked me a good 
deal about Henry, and she knew him 
pretty well, too. 
“ ‘Well,’ she says, ‘I s’pose you expect 
to be real happy after you are married. 
You are a good worker, Asenath, and 
you are strong and healthy, so maybe 
you will be happy. I’d kinder like to 
talk over plans with you. Maybe I can 
help you about how to manage.’ 
“She waited a minute, and then she 
says, ‘How do you intend to support 
your husband?’ and she looked at me 
with her sharp, bright eyes. 
“I couldn’t think of a thing to say. 
“‘What!’ she cried; ‘do you mean to 
say you haven’t thought anything about 
it? Well, well! You’d better think 
about it. Of course if you was going 
to marry a man that could support you 
it would be different. You wouldn’t 
have nothing to worry about. You’d 
have your housework and cooking and 
sewing to ’tend to, and that would keep 
you busy, if you did it as it ought to 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER. 
be done. But seeing as you are going 
to marry some one that won’t support 
you, it makes it harder. You’ll have to 
do your housework and support him, 
too. Now you want to think how's the 
best way to do it. You’ll probably have 
to live in the village—there’s more 
chances to get work there—unless you 
keep on with making hats and bunnits. 
Now, if you live in the village you can 
get different things to do. How’d you 
like to take in washings? Maybe Hen- 
ry’d be willing to go and get ’em and 
carry ’em home, and that would be a 
lot of help. Or you could go out scrub¬ 
bing. Lots of rich folks have a woman 
come in once a week to wash floors and 
such. You might do that. Maybe Hen- 
ry’d stay at home and keep the fires 
going while you was gone. And then 
Henry’ll be hanging around the stores 
and post office, and he’ll find lots of 
chances for you to get work to do. Or 
you might take boarders. You are a 
first-rate cook, and there’s good money 
in boarders, and lots of work, too. 
Henry’s real agreeable, and he’d make 
it pleasant for ’em.’ 
‘Well, I didn’t know what to say. I 
felt sort of dazed. I’d kinder had an 
idea that when we was married Henry’d 
spunk up and get a job and keep it. 
I’d never once thought that I’d have to 
work as hard after I was married, and 
maybe harder, than I was working be¬ 
fore. 
“I didn’t say a word to Grandma, but 
I tell you 1 did a lot of thinking, and 
that night I didn’t sleep but precious 
little. I come to my senses fast, after 
1 got started. 
“When I went home my mind was 
made up. I felt terribly to think of 
giving Henry up, but I couldn’t bear 
the idea of the kind of life Grandma 
had mapped out for me, either. So I’d 
studied up a way out of it. I’d have a 
talk with Henry and tell him that when 
he got steady work and was able to 
support me I’d marry him, and not be¬ 
fore. It kinder r’iled me to think how 
hard I’d worked, and how he’d just set 
round and let me—and hadn’t lifted a 
finger himself. I reasoned that if he 
would do as 1 wanted him to, it would 
make a man of him and would be a 
good deal better for him than it would 
be to have me support him. 
“I hadn’t told anybody when I was 
coming home, but that night Henry’d 
heard I’d got back and he come to see 
me. 
“I dreaded to have my talk with him, 
but I knew I’d got to, so I begun soon 
after he got there. 
“I’d thought, perhaps, it would make 
him feel bad, so I put it to him as deli¬ 
cate as I knew how, but I’d never 
thought of his getting mad. He walked 
around the room real wrathful. Finally 
he come and stood in front of me. 
“ ‘We planned to be married in Sep¬ 
tember,’ he says, real stern. ‘And’—he 
went on, slow and impressive—‘we’ll be 
married in September or not at all.’ 
“Well, I was pretty high-spirited 
when I was young, and what he said, 
and the way he said it, made my temper 
white hot in a minute. I just stood up 
and looked down on him—I was a little 
mite taller than he was—and I said, 
very clear, so he couldn’t help but un¬ 
derstand, ‘It will be never, then,’ and 
I made a little bow and went out of the 
room and left him. 
“Of course I thought my heart was 
broke, for a while. I did hope that he’d 
see I was in the right of it. I waited 
to hear that he’d gone to work in earn¬ 
est. I almost expected that it would 
make a man of him. 
“But, good land! You can’t make 
something out of nothing, and there 
wa’n’t the makings of a man in him. 
“So before long I give up all hope. I 
pretended I didn’t care, and by and by 
I really didn’t care. That’s the way it 
works sometimes. You make believe to 
feel the way you know you ought to, 
and pretty soon you find you really do 
feel that way. 
“So my heart wa’n’t broke that time. 
And Henry’s wa’n’t either, for he mar¬ 
ried another girl inside of a year, and 
she takes boarders and supports him in 
fine style. She seems to enjoy it, and 
I’m glad she does, and I’m dreadful glad 
she’s got the job instead of me.” 
SUSAN BROWN ROBBINS. 
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