The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems | Page 6

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