at he was getting into
some business with Mr. Fisk that must be transacted in the evening--a
thing she didn't like, the man being considered so overpoweringly
fascinating.

I don't know whether Mr. Fisk belonged to the Woman's Righters or not,
but there was a good deal of talk about him, such as would have
compelled any religious society in Vermont to get up an investigation
and some extra prayer-meetings, which he wouldn't have liked, being
mostly given contrary-wise. But the one thing he hadn't done was to join
a church, and, you see, nobody in particular had a right to call him to
account but his wife, and she didn't.

Some people were mean enough to hint that his system of married life
wasn't just the thing for a couple brought up in the purifying
atmosphere of a Vermont village, and went so far as to turn up their
noses because he lived about the Opera House and she in Boston, close to
the very heart of the Hub, as if any woman could get further away from
original sin than that.

But these slanderers knew as well as could be, that Mr. Fisk had a free
pass on the telegraph and steam communication with his wife every day.
Besides, didn't the newspapers give his most private actions to an
admiring public, every few hours, and couldn't she read how blameless
and self-sacrificing his life was.

Besides being a great financier and seafaring man, our Vermont pedler
took up social life as a specialty, and distinguished himself among the
high fashionables. The moral ideas that he had brought from Down East,
were just as dashing as his Wall-street corners. He still kept the
telegraph wires quivering with conjugal messages, and when he took
domestic ease and the fresh salt air on the Jersey sea-coast, at Long
Branch, in a high-swung carriage, with four seats, and stable help in
trainer's clothes, wasn't his wife at another watering-place, called
Newport, with a high-swinging carriage of her own, all cushioned off
with silk, and with her gold-mounted harness rattling over six horses,
just as black and shiny as his?

If that isn't conjugal sympathy, such as goes down among the upper crust
of New York, I don't know what is.

Just the same number of horses, just the same swing in her carriage,
just the same people--no, I am a little out there. She had relations in
the seats, and he hadn't always.

But then, what is all that compared to a great many fashionable,
married folks in New York--so extravagantly fond of each oth