The Booming of Acre Hill And Other Reminiscences of Urban and Suburban Life

II

MISS HEN­DER­SON'S STAN­DARD

Miss Flo­ra Hen­der­son was born and bred in Boston, and, like Mr. Au­gus­tus Richards, had reached the age of thir­ty with­out hav­ing yield­ed to the al­lure­ments of mat­ri­mo­ny. This was not be­cause she had not had the op­por­tu­ni­ty, for op­por­tu­ni­ty she had had in great­est mea­sure. She made her first ap­pear­ance in so­ci­ety at the age of sev­en­teen, and for ev­ery year since that in­ter­est­ing oc­ca­sion she had av­er­aged four pro­pos­als of mar­riage; and how many pro­pos­als that in­volved, ev­ery per­son who can mul­ti­ply thir­teen by four can eas­ily dis­cov­er. So­ci­ety said she was stuck up, but she knew she wasn't. She did not re­ject men for the mere love of it. It was not van­ity that led her to say no to so many ador­ing swains; it was sim­ply the fact that not one in all the great num­ber of would-​be pro­tec­tors rep­re­sent­ed her no­tions as to the style of man with whom she could be so hap­py that she would un­der­take the task of mak­ing him so.

Miles Daw­son, for in­stance, was the kind of man that any or­di­nary girl would have snapped up the mo­ment he de­clared him­self. He had three safe-​de­posit box­es in town, and there was ev­idence in sight that he did not rent them for the pur­pose of keep­ing cigars in them. He had sev­er­al hors­es and car­riages. He was a reg­ular at­ten­dant up­on all the so­cial func­tions of the sea­son, and at many of them he ap­peared to en­joy him­self huge­ly. At the mu­si­cals and pure­ly lit­er­ary en­ter­tain­ments, how­ev­er, Miles Daw­son al­ways looked, as he was, ex­treme­ly bored. Once Miss Hen­der­son had seen him yawn at a Shel­ley read­ing. He was, in short, of the earth earthy, or per­haps, to be more ac­cu­rate, of the horse horsey. In­tel­lec­tu­al plea­sures were naught to him but foun­tains of en­nui, and be­ing a very hon­est, frank sort of a per­son, he took no pains to con­ceal the fact, and it ru­ined his chances with Miss Hen­der­son, at whose feet he had more than once laid the con­tents of the de­posit-​box­es--fig­ura­tive­ly, of course--as well as the use of his sta­bles and him­self. The fact that he looked like a Greek god did not in­flu­ence her in the least; she knew he was by na­ture a far cry from any­thing Greek or god­like, and she would have none of him.

Had he had the men­tal qual­ities of Hen­ry Web­ster, the fa­mous schol­ar of Cam­bridge, it might have been dif­fer­ent, but he hadn't these any more than Hen­ry Web­ster had Daw­son's Greek god­li­ness of per­son.

As for Web­ster, he too had laid bare a heart full of af­fec­tion be­fore the cold gaze of Miss Flo­ra Hen­der­son, and with no more pleas­ing re­sults to him­self than had at­tend­ed the suit of his hand­some ri­val, as he had con­sid­ered Daw­son.

“I think I can make you hap­py,” he had said, mod­est­ly. “We have many traits in com­mon. We are both ex­treme­ly fond of read­ing of the bet­ter sort. You would prove of in­es­timable ser­vice to me in the ad­vance­ment of my am­bi­tion in let­ters, as well as in the ed­uca­tion­al world, and I think you would find me by na­ture re­spon­sive to ev­ery wish you could have. I am a lover of mu­sic, and so are you. We both de­light in the study of art, and there is in us both that in­her­ent love of na­ture which would make of this earth a very par­adise for me were you to be­come my life's com­pan­ion.”

Then Miss Flo­ra Hen­der­son had looked up­on his stern and ex­treme­ly home­ly face, and had un­con­scious­ly even to her­self glanced rapid­ly at his un­couth fig­ure, and could not bring her­self to an­swer yes. Here was the in­tel­lec­tu­al man, but his phys­ical short­com­ings for­bade the ut­ter­ance of the word which should make Hen­ry Web­ster the hap­pi­est of men. Had he writ­ten his pro­pos­al he would have stood a bet­ter chance, though I doubt that in any event he could have suc­ceed­ed. Then he could have stood at least as an ab­stract men­tal­ity, but the in­tru­sion of his phys­ical self de­stroyed all. She re­fused him, and he went back to his books, op­pressed by an over­whelm­ing sense of lone­li­ness, from which he did not re­cov­er for one or two hours.

So it went with all the oth­ers. No man of all those who sought Miss Hen­der­son's fa­vor had the god­like grace of Miles Daw­son, com­bined with the strong in­tel­lec­tu­al­ity of Hen­ry Web­ster, with the added virtues of wealth and ami­abil­ity, stead­fast­ness of pur­pose, and all that. It seemed some­times to Miss Flo­ra Hen­der­son, as it had of­ten seemed to Mr. Au­gus­tus Richards, that the stan­dard set was too high, and that an all-​wise Prov­idence was no longer send­ing the per­fect be­ing of the ide­al in­to the world, if, in­deed, He had ev­er done so.

Both the man and the wom­an were yearn­ing, they came fi­nal­ly to be­lieve, af­ter the unattain­able, but each was strong enough of char­ac­ter to do with noth­ing less ex­cel­lent.