Universal

“Mr. Bullfrog,” said she, not unkindly, yet with all the decision of her strong character, “let me advise you to overcome this foolish weakness and prove yourself to the best of your ability as good a husband as I will be a wife. You have discovered, perhaps, some little imperfections in your bride. Well, what did you expect? Women are not angels’ if they were, they would go to heaven for husbands—or, at least, be more difficult in their choice on earth.”

“But why conceal those imperfections?” interposed I, tremulously.

“Now, my love, are not you a most unreasonable little man?” said Mrs. Bullfrog, patting me on the cheek. “Ought a woman to disclose her frailties earlier than the wedding-day? Few husbands, I assure you, make the discovery in such good season, and still fewer complain that these trifles are concealed too long. Well, what a strange man you are! Poh! you are joking.”

“But the suit for breach of promise!” groaned I.

Exclaimed my wife

“Ah! and is that the rub?” exclaimed my wife. “Is it possible that you view that affair in an objectionable light? Mr. Bullfrog, I never could have dreamed it. Is it an objection that I have triumphantly defended myself against slander and vindicated my purity in a court of justice? Or do you complain because your wife has shown the proper spirit of a woman, and punished the villain who trifled with her affections?”

“But,” persisted I, shrinking into a corner of the coach, however, for I did not know precisely how much contradiction the proper spirit of a woman would endure “but, my love, would it not have been more dignified to treat the villain with the silent contempt he merited?” “That is all very well, Mr. Bullfrog,” said my wife, slyly, “but in that case where would have been the five thousand dollars which are to stock your dry goods store?”

“Mrs. Bullfrog, upon your honor,” demanded I, as if my life hung upon her words, “is there no mistake about those five thousand dollars?” “Upon my word and honor, there is none,” replied she. “The jury gave me every cent the rascal had, and I have kept it all for my dear Bullfrog.”

“Then, thou dear woman,” cried I, with an overwhelming gush of tenderness, “let me fold thee to my heart! The basis of matrimonial bliss is secure, and all thy little defects and frailties are forgiven. Nay, since the result has been so fortunate, I rejoice at the wrongs which drove thee to this blessed lawsuit, happy Bullfrog that I am!”

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Of course this query could have no reference to my situation; yet, unreasonable as it may appear, I confess that my feelings were not altogether so ecstatic as when I first called Mrs. Bullfrog mine. True, she was a sweet woman and an angel of a wife; but what if a gorgon should return amid the transports of our connubial bliss and take the angels place!

I recollected the tale of a fairy who half the time was a beautiful woman and half the time a hideous monster. Had I taken that very fairy to be the wife of my bosom? While such whims and chimeras were flitting across my fancy I began to look askance at Mrs. Bullfrog, almost expecting that the transformation would be wrought before my eyes.

Bottle of Kalydor

To divert my mind I took up the newspaper which had covered the little basket of refreshments, and which now lay at the bottom of the coach blushing with a deep-red stain and emitting a potent spirituous fume from the contents of the broken bottle of Kalydor. The paper was two or three years old, but contained an article of several columns in which I soon grew wonderfully interested.

It was the report of a trial for breach of promise of marriage, giving the testimony in full, with fervid extracts from both the gentlemans and ladys amatory correspondence. The deserted damsel had personally appeared in court, and had borne energetic evidence to her lovers perfidy and the strength of her blighted affections. On the defendants part, there had been an attempt, though insufficiently sustained, to blast the plaintiffs character, and a plea, in mitigation of damages, on account of her unamiable temper. A horrible idea was suggested by the ladys name.

“Madam,” said I, holding the newspaper before Mrs. Bullfrogs eyes —and, though a small, delicate and thin-visage man, I feel assured that I looked very terrific—“Madam,” repeated I, through my shut teeth, “were you the plaintiff in this cause?”

“Oh, my dear Mr. Bullfrog!” replied my wife, sweetly; “I thought all the world knew that.”

“Horror! horror!” exclaimed I, sinking back on the seat.

Covering my face with both hands, I emitted a deep and deathlike groan, as if my tormented soul were rending me asunder. I, the most exquisitely fastidious of men, and whose wife was to have been the most delicate and refined of women, with all the fresh dewdrops glittering on her virgin rosebud of a heart! I thought of the glossy ringlets and pearly teeth, I thought of the Kalydor, I thought of the coachmans bruised ear and bloody nose, I thought of the tender love-secrets which she had whispered to the judge and jury, and a thousand tittering auditors, and gave another groan.

“Mr. Bullfrog!” said my wife.

As I made no reply, she gently took my hands within her own, removed them from my face and fixed her eyes steadfastly on mine.

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“Come, sir! bestir yourself! Help this rascal to set up the coach,” said the hobgoblin to me; then, with a terrific screech to three countrymen at a distance, “Here, you fellows! Aint you ashamed to stand off when a poor woman is in distress?”

The countrymen, instead of fleeing for their lives, came running at full speed, and laid hold of the topsy-turvy coach. I also, though a small sized man, went to work like a son of Anak. The coachman, too, with the blood still streaming from his nose, tugged and toiled most manfully, dreading, doubtless, that the next blow might break his head. And yet, be mauled as the poor fellow had been, he seemed to glance at me with an eye of pity, as if my case were more deplorable than his. But I cherished a hope that all would turn out a dream, and seized the opportunity, as we raised the coach, to jam two” of my fingers under the wheel, trusting that the pain would awaken me.

“Why, here we are all to rights again!” exclaimed a sweet voice, behind. “Thank you for your assistance, gentlemen.—My dear Mr. Bullfrog, how you perspire! Do let me wipe your face.—Dont take this little accident too much to heart, good driver. We ought to be thankful that none of our necks are broken!”

“We might have spared one neck out of the three,” muttered the driver, rubbing his ear and pulling his nose, to ascertain whether he had been cuffed or not. “Why, the womans a witch!”

Riding habit

I fear that the reader will not believe, yet it is positively a fact, that there stood Mrs. Bullfrog with her glossy ringlets, curling on her brow and two rows of Orient pearls gleaming between her parted lips, which wore k most angelic smile. She had regained her riding-habit and calash from the grisly phantom, and was in all respects the lovely woman who had been sitting by my side at the instant of our overturn. How she had happened to disappear, and who had supplied her place, and whence she did now return, were problems too knotty for me to solve.

There stood my wife: that was the one thing certain ^mong a heap of mysteries. Nothing remained but to help her into the coach and plod on through the journey of the day and the journey of life as comfortably as we could. As the driver closed the door upon us I heard him whisper to the three countrymen.

“How do you suppose a fellow feels shut up in the cage with a she- tiger?”

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This was spoken in a more decided tone than I had happened to hear until then from my gentlest of all gentle brides. At the same time she put up her hand and took mine prisoner, but merely drew it away from the forbidden ringlet, and then immediately released it. Now, I am a fidgety little man and always love to have something in my fingers; so that, being debarred from my wifes curls, I looked about me for any other plaything. On the front seat of the coach there was one of those small baskets in which travelling ladies who are too delicate to appear at a public table generally carry a supply of gingerbread, biscuits and cheese, cold ham, and other light refreshments, merely to sustain nature to the journeys end. Such airy diet will sometimes keep them in pretty good flesh for a week together. Laying hold of this same little basket, I thrust my hand under the newspaper with which it was carefully covered.

“Whats this, my dear?” cried I, for the black neck of a bottle had popped out of the basket.

“A bottle of Kalydor, Mr. Bullfrog,” said my wife, coolly taking the basket from my hands and replacing it on the front seat.

Possibility of doubting

There was no possibility of doubting my wifes word, but I never knew genuine Kalydor such as I use for my own complexion to smell so much like cherry-brandy. I was about to express my fears that the lotion would injure her skin, when an accident occurred which threatened more than a skin-deep injury. Our Jehu had carelessly driven over a heap of gravel and fairly capsized the coach, with the wheels in the air and our heels where our heads should have been. What became of my wits I cannot imagine: they have always had a perverse trick of deserting me just when they were most needed; but so it chanced that in the confusion of our overthrow I quite forgot that there was a Mrs. Bullfrog in the world. Like many mens wives, the good lady served her husband as a stepping-stone. I had scrambled out of the coach and was instinctively settling my cravat, when somebody brushed roughly by me and I heard a smart thwack upon the coachmans ear.

“Take that, you villain!” cried a strange, hoarse voice. “You have ruined me, you blackguard! I shall never be the woman I have been.”

And then came a second thwack, aimed at the drivers other ear, but which missed it and hit him on the nose, causing a terrible effusion of blood. Now, who or what fearful apparition was inflicting this punishment on the poor fellow remained an impenetrable mystery to me. The blows were given by a person of grisly aspect with a head almost bald and sunken cheeks, apparently of the feminine gender, though hardly to be classed in the gentler sex. There being no teeth to modulate the voice, it had a mumbled fierceness—not passionate, but stern —which absolutely made me quiver like calves-foot jelly.

Who could the phantom be? The most awful circumstance of the affair is yet to be told, for this ogre or whatever it was had a riding-habit like Mrs. Bullfrogs, and also a green silk calash dangling down her back by the strings. In my terror and turmoil of mind I could imagine nothing less than that the Old Nick at the moment of our overturn had annihilated my wife and jumped into her petticoats. This idea seemed the more probable since I could nowhere perceive Mrs. Bullfrog alive, nor, though I looked very sharp about the coach, could I detect any traces of that beloved womans dead body. There wouldnt have been a comfort in giving her Christian burial.

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Besides the fundamental principle already hinted at, I demanded the fresh bloom of youth, pearly teeth, glossy ringlets, and the whole list of lovely items, with the utmost delicacy of habits and sentiments, a silken texture of mind, and, above all, a virgin heart. In a word, if a young angel just from Paradise, yet dressed in earthly fashion, had come and offered me her hand, it is by no means certain that I should have taken it. There was every chance of my becoming a most miserable old bachelor, when by the best luck in the world I made a journey into another State, and was smitten by and smote again, and wooed, won and married the present Mrs. Bullfrog, all in the space of a fortnight.

Owing to these extempore measures, I not only gave my bride credit for certain perfections which have not as yet come to light, but also overlooked a few trifling defects, which, however, glimmered on my perception long before the close of the honeymoon. Yet, as there was no mistake about the fundamental principle aforesaidJI soon learned, as will be seen, to estimate Mrs. Bullfrogs deficiencies and superfluities at exactly their proper value.

My bride

The same morning that Mrs. Bullfrog and I came together as a unit we took two seats in the stage-coach and began our journey toward my place of business. There being no other passengers, we were as much alone and as free to give vent to our raptures as if I had hired a hack for the matrimonial jaunt.

My bride looked charming in a green silk calash and riding-habit of pelisse cloth; and whenever her red lips parted with a smile, each tooth appeared like an inestimable pearl. Such was my passionate warmth that—we had rattled out of the village, gentle reader, and were lonely as Adam and Eve in Paradise I plead guilty to no less freedom than a kiss. The gentle eye of Mrs. Bullfrog scarcely rebuked me for the profanation. Emboldened by her indulgence, I threw back the calash from her polished brow and suffered my fingers, white and delicate as her own, to stray among those dark and glossy curls which realized my daydreams of rich hair.

“My love,” said Mrs. Bullfrog, tenderly, “you will disarrange my curls.”
“Oh, no, my sweet Laura,” replied I, still playing with the-glossy ringlets. “Even your fair hand could not manage a curl more delicately than mine. I propose myself the pleasure of doing up your hair in papers every evening at the same time with my own.”

“Mr. Bullfrog,” repeated she, “you must not disarrange my curls.”

Read More about The First Crusade part 19

Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804 – 1864)

Hawthorne was born at Salem, Mass., in 1804. He came of an old Puritan family, and to the end of his life was influenced by his early environment and his New England temperamental heritage. Before he went abroad as consul for the American government he had written a number of stories and sketches of New England life, and in 1850 had won many readers and considerable fame with his novel, The Scarlet Letter. Hawthornes stories, which are essentially American in subject matter, are among the masterpieces of our literature of fiction. Hawthorne understood, as few others have done, the limitations and the possibilities of the form.

Mrs. Bullfrog is one of his most delightful tales. It is reprinted from Mosses from an Old Manse, 1837, by permission of Houghton Mifflin & Company.

Mrs. Bullfrog

From Mosses from an Old Manse

It makes me melancholy to see how like fools some very sensible people act in the matter of choosing wives. They perplex their judgments by a most undue attention to little niceties of personal appearance, habits, disposition, and other trifles which concern nobody but the lady herself. An unhappy gentleman resolving to wed nothing short of perfection keeps his heart and hand till both get so old and withered that no tolerable woman will accept them. Now, this is the very height of absurdity.

A kind Providence has so skillfully adapted sex to sex and the mass of individuals to each other that, with certain obvious exceptions, any male and female may be moderately happy in the married state. The true rule is to ascertain that the match is fundamentally a good one, and then to take it for granted that all minor objections, should there be such, will vanish if you let them alone. Only put yourself beyond hazard as to the real basis of matrimonial bliss, and it is scarcely to be imagined what miracles in the way of reconciling smaller incongruities connubial love will effect.

For my own part, I freely confess that in my bachelorship I was precisely such an over-curious simpleton as I now advise the reader not to be. My early habits had gifted me with a feminine sensibility and too exquisite refinement. I was the accomplished graduate of a dry-goods store where by dint of ministering to the whims of the fine ladies, and suiting silken hose to delicate limbs, and handling satins, ribbons, chintzes, calicoes, tapes, gauze and cambric needles, I grew up a very ladylike sort of a gentleman. It is not assuming too much to affirm that the ladies themselves were hardly so ladylike as Thomas Bullfrog. So painfully acute was my sense of female imperfection, and such varied excellence did I require in the woman whom I could love, that there was an awful risk of my getting no wife at all or of being driven to perpetrate matrimony with my own image in the looking glass.

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