A Few Short Sketches | Page 6

father also, to always send this individual some useful gift on Christmas Day; therefore the inkstand from Italy was sent over the next morning. It failed to give what might be termed complete satisfaction, but the old neighbor had not been satisfied for a small matter of fifty years. Therefore George held himself, and he was perfectly right, blameless.
It was easy enough to slip the picture of a pretty Dancer, who, in that long ago day, was all the rage among the young men about town--into the silver frame, heart-shape, but what could he do with her picture? It was much prior to the time of the cigarette craze and cigarette pictures--so he could not send it to one of those at that time uncreated establishments, to be copied and sent broadcast. He was something of an artist. He cleverly tinted the thing another color--made her eyes blue instead of brown, and changed her golden sunlit wealth of hair into a darker, if not richer shade. It was a full-length picture. Her trim figure was shown to advantage. Her slender white hands were clasped above her bosom, and there was a look of heavenly resignation on her serenely beautiful brow. He cruelly sent it to the editor of "Godey's Ladies' Magazine," and it was blazoned forth as a fashion plate, much enlarged and with many frills, in the following February number of that then valuable and highly fashionable periodical. In return he received their check for five dollars, drawn upon a National Bank of Philadelphia, and with a note stating that while the customary price was two dollars and fifty cents they felt constrained to send him a sum commensurate with the merits of the fancy picture which he had kindly forwarded them, and that they would be pleased to hear from him again, which they never did--nor their check either; for, while he was too poor to have kept it, yet he was too proud to cash it. I am told that it hangs in a Boston museum, framed with a rare collection of postage stamps--one of his many gifts to that edifying institution while yet alive.
Her final gift, the scarf-pin, with the big pearl and little diamonds, met with some mysterious disposition. In telling me the story in the French cafe, he hesitated, spoke vaguely, and finally refused to state just what he had done with the pin. He may have dropped the pearl, like Cleopatra, in a goblet of ruby wine and drained the contents with the dissolved jewel for dredges and for luck, and he may have given the pretty little diamonds to news boys or small negroes wandering haphazard about the highways of his town. Anyhow, this much is sure, it was given away--that much he made clear.
When he fell upon the letters with an idea of burning them--which I believe is more general than the returning of them--he fortunately bethought himself of publishing them--just as they were. And lo! then was born his "Perfected Letter Writer," which enabled him to leave a bequest of many thousand dollars to Harvard College, where he was educated, and also a certain sum of money to be discreetly distributed each year among the deserving and bashful young men of Boston, between the ages of eighteen and twenty-three, to be used by them in making Christmas gifts to worthy young women of their choice.
As might have been expected, that clause of his will was successfully contested, on account of its vagueness, by his brother and sister, who morally, if not legally, cheated the "Bashful Young Men of Boston" out of a unique and much deserved, much needed inheritance. This cure for heart-break must be a severe but effectual one. When I met George Addison in Paris, then an old man, he was as rosy as a ripe apple, and just as mellow. He was gracious, kindly, and had learned well the difficult art of growing old with grace, and without noise. He dated his success, his happiness too, from the moment he made the resolution to trample on his feelings and rid himself in that novel method of every tangible vestige of that past, which he got rid of by gift, not burial. Therefore, he had no ghostly visitors--no useless regrets.
Florence Barlowe, with malice toward all and charity to none, devoted her outward self to good works of the conventional kind. She had several offers, but she never married, and she never forgave George Addison for his failure to speak for that which he might have had for the asking. Pride, not love, was the ruler of her heart--if she had one.
To those who have this Christmas tide the heart-ache, and the heart-break of love gone another way, let them try this new cure, and remember the happy, successful