wishes; and finally, many people averred that while it would be easy to
sell the lands to the government for the benefit of the negro, by
resorting to the usual methods of influencing votes, Senator Dilworthy
was unwilling to have so noble a charity sullied by any taint of
corruption–he was resolved that not a vote should be bought. Nobody
could get anything definite from Laura about these matters, and so gossip
had to feed itself chiefly upon guesses. But the effect of it all was,
that Laura was considered to be very wealthy and likely to be vastly more
so in a little while. Consequently she was much courted and as much
envied: Her wealth attracted many suitors. Perhaps they came to worship
her riches, but they remained to worship her. Some of the noblest men of
the time succumbed to her fascinations. She frowned upon no lover when
he made his first advances, but by and by when she was hopelessly
enthralled, he learned from her own lips that she had formed a resolution
never to marry. Then he would go away hating and cursing the whole sex,
and she would calmly add his scalp to her string, while she mused upon
the bitter day that Col. Selby trampled her love and her pride in the
dust. In time it came to be said that her way was paved with broken
hearts.
Poor Washington gradually woke up to the fact that he too was an
intellectual marvel as well as his gifted sister. He could not conceive
how it had come about (it did not occur to him that the gossip about his
family’s great wealth had any thing to do with it). He could not account
for it by any process of reasoning, and was simply obliged to accept the
fact and give up trying to solve the riddle. He found himself dragged
into society and courted, wondered at and envied very much as if he were
one of those foreign barbers who flit over here now and then with a self-
conferred title of nobility and marry some rich fool’s absurd daughter.
Sometimes at a dinner party or a reception he would find himself the
centre of interest, and feel unutterably uncomfortable in the discovery.
Being obliged to say something, he would mine his brain and put in a
blast and when the smoke and flying debris had cleared away the result
would be what seemed to him but a poor little intellectual clod of dirt
or two, and then he would be astonished to see everybody as lost in
admiration as if he had brought up a ton or two of virgin gold. Every
remark he made delighted his hearers and compelled their applause; he
overheard people say he was exceedingly bright–they were chiefly mammas
and marriageable young ladies. He found that some of his good things
were being repeated about the town. Whenever he heard of an instance of
this kind, he would keep that particular remark in mind and analyze it at
home in private. At first he could not see that the remark was anything
better than a parrot might originate; but by and by he began to feel that
perhaps he underrated his powers; and after that he used to analyze his
good things with a deal of comfort, and find in them a brilliancy which
would have been unapparent to him in earlier days–and then he would make
a note, of that good thing and say it again the first time he found
himself in a new company. Presently he had saved up quite a repertoire
of brilliancies; and after that he confined himself to repeating these
and ceased to originate any more, lest he might injure his reputation by
an unlucky effort.
He was constantly having young ladies thrust upon his notice at
receptions, or left upon his hands at parties, and in time he began to
feel that he was being deliberately persecuted in this way; and after
that he could not enjoy society because of his constant dread of these
female ambushes and surprises. He was distressed to find that nearly
every time he showed a young lady a polite attention he was straightway