Fresh Leaves

Fanny Fern

Fanny Fern

Fresh Leaves

PREFACE

Every writer has his parish. To mine, I need offer no apology for presenting,

First, a new story which has never before appeared in print;

Secondly, the “hundred-dollar-a-column story,” respecting the remuneration of which, skeptical paragraphists have afforded me so much amusement. (N. B. – My banker and I can afford to laugh!) This story having been published when “The New York Ledger” was in the dawn of its present unprecedented circulation, and never having appeared elsewhere, will, of course, be new to many of my readers;

Thirdly, I offer them my late fugitive pieces, which have often been requested, and which, with the other contents of this volume, I hope will cement still stronger our friendly relations.

В В В В FANNY FERN.

A BUSINESS MAN’S HOME; OR, A STORY FOR HUSBANDS

CHAPTER I

“There’s your father, children.”

The piano was immediately closed by the young performer, and the music-stool put carefully away, that the new-comer might have an unrestricted choice of seats; a wide space was immediately cleared before the grate which had been carefully replenished with coal but half an hour before; a stray cricket was hastily picked up and pushed beneath the sofa, and an anxious glance was thrown around the room by Mrs. Wade as her husband entered the room.

“Too much light here,” said the latter, as he turned down the gas burner. “I hate such a glare. Waste of coal, too; fire enough to roast an ox, and coal seven dollars a ton;” and Mr. Wade seized the poker and gave the grate a vindictive poke.

Mrs. Wade sighed – she had too long been accustomed to such scenes to do any thing else. It was not the first time, nor the second, nor the hundredth, that her unwearied endeavors to make home cheerful had been met with a similar repulse; the young people, so gay but a moment before, skipped, one by one, out of the room, closing the door noiselessly behind them as culprit-like they glided away.

“Heigh-ho,” muttered Mr. Wade, as he threw himself down, boots and all, on the sofa, “heigh-ho.”

“Does your head ache?” asked his patient wife.

“I want my tea,” growled Mr. Wade, without deigning a reply.

Mrs. Wade might have answered – most women would – that it had been ready this half-hour. She might also have said that she had just come up from the kitchen, where she had been to see that his favorite dish of toast was prepared to his liking. She might also have said that she did not like to order tea till he had signified his wish for it – but as I said before, Mrs. Wade had been too long in school not to have learned her lesson well. So she merely touched her forefinger to the bell, for Betty to bring in the tea.

It was strong and hot – Mr. Wade could not deny it; – the milk was sweet; so was the butter, the toast was unexceptionable, and enough of it; the cake light, and the sweetmeats unfermented. Poor, ill-used Mr. Wade – he was in that most provoking of all dilemmas to a petulant temper, there was nothing to fret about.

“There’s the door bell,” he exclaimed, inwardly relieved at the idea of an escape-valve; “now I suppose I shall be talked deaf by that silly Mrs. Jones and her daughter, or bored by that stupid Mr. Forney; it’s very strange that a man can not enjoy his family one evening free from interruption.”

No such thing – Mr. Wade was cheated out of a fresh growl; the new arrival being a carpet-bag, and its accessory, Mr. John Doe, a brother-growler, whom Mr. Wade would rather have seen, if possible, than a new gold dollar. Mr. John Doe, as sallow as a badly-preserved pickle, and about as sweet – a man all nerves and frowns – a walking thunder-cloud, muttering vengeance against any thing animate, or inanimate, which had the temerity to bask in the sunshine. Mr. John Doe, a worse drug than any in his apothecary’s shop, who believed in the eternal destruction of little dead babies; turned the world into one vast charnel-house, and reversed the verdict of Him who pronounced