Page:Peterson Magazine 1869B.pdf/106

 IN PURSUIT OF A PARSON.

BY FRANK LEE BENEDICT.

My name is Anthony Morris. I am an artist by profession, and a successful one; whether thanks to my talent or my good luck, I leave to those amiable critics, my friends, to decide.

I might be older, and the innocent and ribald jokes of a callow, younger brother lead me to believe that I might be younger; but I suppose when a man chooses to relate a few of his little experiences, he is not bound to set down his age, so I will not reveal my years exactly, but go on with my story.

I have had my pitfalls, but I have escaped them, thanks to keeping my wits about me. I don't pretend to dislike woman, nor to set пр for a hermit. I have met with a bereavementI have lost a friend, and the species is becoming rarer every day.

I have lost a friend-that's his picture yonder, back of the big easel, with a broken pipe and the stem of a wineglass suspended over it by a black ribbon, as a sorrowful memento where he is concerned, and a dismal warning to such lucky birds as still remain on the list of freemen.

I have lost a friend, and I could better have spared a better fellow. I never thought him perfect, and I never pretended to. I am proud to recollect that I did my duty by him, and never failed to point out his little errors, such as crooked temper, writing verses, and being weak in the head where the female tribe were concerned ; but, for all that, I was fond of him.

He usually told the truth, except about himself; and when he was not in his cross mood, or his cranky mood, or his poetical fit, or possessed by his dumb devil, or scampering after a petticoat, he was as reasonable an old dog as one could wish to see ; if he happened to be in the humor of using such common sense as had fallen to his share.

But he is gone- I shall never see him again. It is a little sad to me to think I shall never meet that careless face any more; never hear that somewhat reckless and unmanageable tongue, which had a trick of telling things that other people only think; never laugh in listening to his laugh, which was sure to ring out on the most improper occasions- never any more; and, the worst of it is, that I cannot even say a requiescat in pace when I think of him and his mournful taking off.

It was not that our friendship ended in a quarrel. No, I was faithful to him to the last, stood by him up to the final moment. I did my duty, and I never shall have to reproach myself where he is concerned.

Not the slightest badge of outward mourning is permitted me, save those warning relics that hang over his picture yonder: Owing to the prejudices of an ignorant, superstitious world, my lips are sealed against emitting so much as a sigh in reviewing his fate, except in the society of the gradually narrowing band of select spirits that still frequents my snug old studio.

I said never any more should I meet his careless face, or hear his unchecked laugh —never. But, ah! in place of that, I know that some time in the future there will appear before me a carelined countenance, a stiff, Puritanical figure, like a wooden image of virtue, innocent of the smell of pipes, guiltless of gorgeous scarfs and disreputable breakfast- coats, and he will claim to be the friend I have lost, and in the eyes of the world I shall have to acknowledge him as such ; but here, in the retiracy of my sanctum, I shall refuse to accept this sententious animal, trying to conceal a subdued air under an affectation of seriousness and dogmatic assertion.

You know now what has happened to himhe is married, married ! It were idle, and would be too painful to speculate upon the depths of degradation to which he may sink, after having made the first fatal plunge into a gulf deeper than that wherein Curtius sank, and without the consciousness of duty fulfilled, which supported the sallow old Roman.

I may live to see him deprived of a latch-key ; grown familiar as a man-milliner in the booking up of dresses ; accustomed to rushing about with footstools, nay, with that peculiar, one- sided appearance I have so frequently observed in married men, and which I solemnly believe to be owing to the fact of their having to sleep on the hard edge of the bedstead, instead of being permitted a rightful share of bolster and mattress. Worse even than that may lie beyond- I may go to make a duty visit, perfectly conscious that I shall be regarded in horror by his legal owner as a tempter and lost spirit come up out of the Pandemonium of his past life; and while