Rensselaer Union, Volume 7, Number 23, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 February 1875 — MR. GRIFFIN’S VALENTINE. [ARTICLE]

MR. GRIFFIN’S VALENTINE.

BY ROSE TERRY COOKE.

Mr. Griffin was an old bachelor and a stock-broker, a man whose soul was absorbed in money. It stood with him for all other pleasures and objects in life. Living in New York, he never sought any amusement but the roar and struggle of the Stock Exchange. He never stopped to look at a picture, a gem, or a blossom in anybody’s window on his way down town. He was the terror of apple-selling boys and bouquet girls; not one of them dared offer him their small wares, nor did any little boot-black venture to pipe an invitation toward this forbidding specimen, however muddy his thick boots were. As for love or love-making, they were as far from Mr. Griffin’s thoughts as any other too-expensive luxury. He lived in the third story of a small brick house, one of a block'in a side street, almost up to Central Park. He boarded with a widow, a meek and shiny woman, w T ho, nevertheless, had a taste for money as well as Mr. Griffin, and contrived to make him pay a good price for board. But a day was at hand when Mrs. Blivins should lose her pfofitable boarder. Mr. Griffin, although one might not have supposed it, had a . mother up in the country, Probably he would have loved her if he could have loved anybody. He went once a year to see her and stayed a full week. His traveling expenses were not quite as much as his board, so he perhaps made half a dollar by the operation, got a week’s pure air gratis, and, always taking his “ run,” as he called it, in the dull season, he lost no business. But one day his mother died. He had to go home to the funeral, and staying his week out, ostensibly to settle her affairs, he made a great discovery —it really had cost his mother less to live a week, servant and all, than it did him. Melindy Barker was a stout, smart woman of thirty, fresh and pleasantlooking. She had lived with old Mrs. Griffin five years and done all the work, besides being, in good, set Yankee phrase, “ one of the family.” Mr. Griffin owned a tenement house in the city and just now the fourth-story flat was vacant; nor had he any applications for it, since it was now July. He walked up and down gravel path a good many times, withruis hands in his pockets, meditating. If he had smoked he would have fumigated the idea, but he never smoked —small vices are expensive. At last he invited Melindy to go back to New York and keep house for him. There was his furniture, that would sell for nothing, but was quite good enough forbim and would save buying. Melindy would have half a dollar a week more wages—for he did not dare to offer her the pittance that she had hitherto accepted, though what he did offer bore but small relation to the city tariff of wages, but he knew well that to one’s self was the intent of all country immigration to the city. Melindy pondered the request deeply over her cooking-stove and washtub. She had longed a. great while to “go to New York.” She had been under the grim rule of Mrs. Griffin, in Peterstown, long enougtfpEhat straggling country village oftered no prospect to Melindy’s ambition or hopes. A vague outlook flattered her with ideas of shops, visiting, dress, not impossible matrimony. She decided to go. We pass over in wise silence the scene of struggle, dirt, confusion and squalor presented to homesick Melindy by the aspect of that fourth-story flat in East street, but she had good courage and a deal of “ faculty." She insisted on cheap papers, to be selected by herself, and got them, on condition ot putting them up herself; she “struck" foru pail of whitewash and a brush as a permanent institution; she refused to cook a dinner till the plumber had been sent for to mend a leaky water-pipe. And Mr. Griffin growled audibly over the exterminators and polishers and powders of sundry sorts he was forced tp buy— at the point of the bayonet, so to speak. But the plumber! When Mr. Griffin, grinding his teeth, stopped to order that useful and unreliable man's immediate presence, little did he think that he had laid the first brick of Melindy’s dream-castle, and the corner-stone

of his own disquiet and disturbance. So fate spins its web out of our own substance, fastens it to our own cornices and pillars, tangles us in the visible destruction, traps us in our tracks, and our last gasp is: “If I could only have known.” But we never do know. Fate also trapped the plumber for once in his life he kept a promise, rather wondering at himself while he did so; but August was not his busy season. He was an Englishman by parentage, though city born, and his keen eye, used to the slender, useless shapes ana pallid prettiness of New York lower class girls, was at once attracted by Melindy’s buxom figure, her fresh cheeks, her bright, clear, dark eyes and her prompt vigorous manners. John Perkins was a still man; but, like the Dutchman’s parrot, he “ thought the more,” and, while he went about his work in a silent and masterful manner that struck Melindy as the right way, she also perceived that he was a man of goodly presence, took ote of his appearance, and was pleased when he said he should call again and see how the faucet worked. He did call again. He offered to show Melindy the way to the Methodist church nearest her master’s house. He escorted her to weekly prayer-meeting after awhile as regularly as Friday came round. If we are rather hurrying our relation of a matter which seemed to Melindy as gradual and as natural as the course of the seasons, it is to demonstrate that she did have some small consolations and alleviations in her new life, before we relate its disagreeable features—for there were plenty of these. Mr. Griffin was scarce established in his new quarters before he began to find out —what many others have found before him—that housekeeping is more expensive for a small family than cheap boarding. Little expenses crept upon his purse daily that wrung his small soul bitterly. He could not well afford the time to enter into the details himself; but he felt forced to do it, and after a series of exhaustive calculations and the experiment of two of the longest months he had ever passed, he established a schedule of quantities and prices for Melindy’s guidance, one that she both scolded and laughed over, but all in vain.

“ I should like to know, Mr. Griffin, how ever you’re to have molasses cake once a week for your Sunday tea, and sweetnin’ in the pies, and sass to your griddles” (dear reader, she meant cakes fried on a griddle. It is an abstruse figure of speech), “ on a pint of molasses a week.” — “ Leave off the cake, then, Melindy,” responded the stern guardian of cents. “ And a pound of butter a week! My goodness gracious! Your mother and me used three.” “ Well, you won’t here. It is strange enough how little it cost you two to live in Peterstown, and what you spend here.” “Land alive! We jest about lived on garden sass, ’nd eggs, ’nd old hens, ’nd salt pork. We raised the sass in the garden ourselves, ’nd the chickens picked upa liven’ ’round the lots. We killed off all but two hens ’nd a rooster ’long in tllG ” “ Well, well, well!” growled Mr. Griffin. “ "We’ve got to live; but I won’t have extravagance.” “ And I won’t starve, neither,” stoutly answered Melindy. “I can get places enough where I’ll get good vittles and good wages, Mr. Griffin. But I calculate to stay with you for a spell, if you treat me halfway decent; ’cause I liked your mother real well, and I come here a purpose. But ” Mr. Griffin stopped the incipient threat. Melindy had cowed him. He looked with horror at the loss of time and money that would follow on another overturning of his household'goods. “ Well, well, Melindy, you sha’n’t starve; only do your best to save what you can. Living is awful in New York. I’m not .a rich man, Melindy, but I depend on you to stay. Yett promised for a year, you know.” Mr. Griffin told two lies in this brief speech; one was that he was not rich; the other was about Melindy’s promise. He had said: “I expect "you to stay with me one year, on trial,” and, being busied about some imminent matter, Melindy made no answer. “ Silence gives consent,” must be Mr. Griffin’s excuse for this lie. So Melindy stayed and economized and grew thin but happy; for after the five o’clock dinner was done her employer retired to the small parlor and studied the newspaper, made his plans for the next day’s campaign, summed up his gains and losses, gave that which he called his soul to the utter contemplation of stocks and bonds, hovered like a very busy and anxious bee over the respective morning-glory flowers of Harlem, Erie, Pacific, New York Central, Air-line, and so on, ad nauseam , betaking himself to the deadness of an over-wrought brain which took the place of sleep with him about ten o’clock, leaving Melindy free for prayer-meeting or for home-keeping —the day’s one rest for her—when sometimes a good book John Perkins lent her, sometimes the weekly paper from Peterstown, not unfrequently the presence of John Perkins’ himself, come tor “ a dish of talk,” as Melindy said, satisfied her honest, unexacting soul and kept her content. For it cannot be denied that at first Melindy was bitterly homesick. “York,” as a place of residence, had lost all the fair aspect distance lent it. Broadway and its fabled glories-were two good miles away from Melindy. She had neither time nor money to explore its magnificence; she had not even been to Barnum’s Museum. The ways of housekeeping in a citjr flat were entirely new to her and very hard. Her out-doors was gone, and every country housekeeper knows what a refreshing margin “ out-doors” is. Melindy grew pale, , sometimes listless. She began to save her money, to turn and twist her dresses, old and plain now, into some vague attempt at fashion. She would have been spoiled, washed out and pressed down into a drudge of the merest routine but for John Perkins. And there was something in Melindy that charmed John mightily. The rough old proverb that every Jack has

his Jill expresses, like many another proverb, a radical truth—that in every human being there is something attractive to some other of its kind—some grain of beauty that all eyes do not see, some inward loveliness unveiled only for the true worshiper, some awakenjng lor the right prince, some tiny spark from the great God shining that called us all ont of dust and quickened us to living souls. It was rare to John Perkins as an orchis on the pavement would have been to find a fresh nature like Melindy’s, a woman of nearly his own age who had never seen a theater, did not know tfie inside of a museum, was not even aware what a valentine was till John, one January evening, was telling of his last year’s experience in sending a valentine to a little crippled girl with whose mother he boarded. It was a new and bright idea to Melindy. Her life had been one long round of duty and work, with none of life’s foliations or blossomings; but she had a keen love of the beautiful, and yet half wakened and unfed. She loved to watch the scrap of sky from the kitchen windows; she had loved the whole wide arch in her country home; and here her strongest longing was for the springing flowers, the cool, fresh leaves, the glittering brook she had left behind. And as February drew near, and the shops glowed and glittered with gay note-paper and envelopes, costly valentines and cheap ones, John took her to meeting early one night, and persuaded her to go by way of the street cars, in order to walk down Broadway and be instructed into the art and mystery of valentines. I don’t know if she really went to meeting at all. Ido not much care. There are other divine influences at work in this world besides the ordinary means of grace, and I am sure more than one huskfed citizen that night got a refreshment to his soul quite unawares out of Melindy’s simple, bright face, glowing and smiling with a child’s delight at the brilliant treasures of the windows. If she did not get good she gave it; and that is more blessed, we know. But who shall paint Mr. Griffin’s disgust the next morning when Melindy, still absorbed in the novel and splendid idea of valentines, while pouring out his coffee at breakfast, stunned him with the innocent inquiry, “ Did you ever have a valentine, Mr. Griffin?”

The man glared at her. He laid down his knife and fork, and forgot to take the cup she held out to him. “I ! ! ! I have a valentine ! ! !” he thundered with explosive disgust. “ I ! ! Do you think there is a big enough fool in New York to send me one? A valentine, indeed! Nasty, extravagant, idle, useless things. Moneythrown into the gutter. Trash! stuff! folly ! nonsense! Have you lost your senses, woman? If anybody should send me one of the things, it would go into the fire quicker ! Don’t be a fool, Melindy.” With which mild remark he seized his cup of coffee and swallowed it, devoured his breakfast in silence, unbroken save by intermittent growls, squabbled with his overcoat, kicked his slippers violently into the corner, slammed the door behind him, and fled down street to his office, much as if the idea of some small pursuant fiend impelled his footsteps. Truth to tell, Mr. Griffin once hacl a valentine, and more than one, of defamatory and abusive character. He suspected always—and perhaps justly—that they were sent him by a clerk whom he had discharged, as the easiest way of venting his spite. There was this to be said in favor of the idea, that the literary part of the missives had been selected with an eye to Mr. Griffin’s special failings and meanness, and inclosed in a yellow envelope, to make sure of their being opened. He felt at once trapped and insulted, and when his greedy soul dwelt on the wasted money those gaudy billets had- cost it added another element to his pungent dislike of the whole tribe, and he swore within himself that if one ever entered his door again it should make short passage to the flames. Melindy was indignant enough; but she was also wise to know that an ang-y man had better be severely let alone, and she went her way and did her cUily duty, hoping devoutly that she should have a valentine, if Old Griffin, as she irreverently called him, did not; also feeling a certain surety that one would appear at its season—John Perkins had been so pleased with- her pleasure, so eager to find out which style she thought prettiest. —The tHth was a bright day for everybody, and Mr. Griffin took liis way to the office, being vexed in spirit with regard to a certain man whose credit he feared to be insecure and who owed him ten thousand dollars. The man was honest, hard-working and unfortunate—three facts of no‘more account to Mr. Griffin than his blue eyes, brown hair and English whiskers. To be pressed for this ten thousand dollars was a matter oflife anddeath to him; it was to put all he had to the hazard of a die;, but poor Mr. Griffin could not risk so much money. All .the long way down town he plotted his campaign against that luckless man. The brilliant valentines that drew his unwilling eye on either hand affected him as a red rag does a turkey. If he could have gobbled he would. He did growl, half audibly, and almost scared a weak-minded old lady on the other side of the omnibus out of her little wits. She thought he was crazy, and was afraid to get out, lest he should follow her, afraid to stay in lest he should attack; so she bore his presence in a quiver like a mold of jelly till he got out, and then almost fainted from relief. Perhaps he was crazy. I think he suffered from emotional insanity, myself. I think all insane people ought to be hung, and the wicked ones ppt into an asylum; and there 1 take my stand and leave the patient reader to classify Mr. Griffin. All that morning he bunted his prey- like a bloodhound. He tracked him from one place to another, and followed him up, determined on a personal interview, which, after all, he failed to obtain. The day was very mild, and Mr. Griffin got heated. His head began to

ache. He was as much surprised as a lamp-post could have been to feel a sharp pain in his lantern; but he was a coward ingrain, and the possibility of a sickness, and loss of time, expense of medicine, doctor’s bills and watchers, startled him. He believed in prevention; that sickness might cost him a coffin never came into his calculations. He was practically an utter skeptic, with God in hone of his thoughts, but the human aspect of sickness terrified him. He dropped a postal card into the nearest box, telling his clerk he should not be down again that day, went home in time to prevent a superfluous dinner being cooked, and went to sleep, being merely overtired and heated. In the meantime his clerk, who was a sharp-witted fellow, and had a brother in Washington, Congressional reporter for a New York paper, who with a certain fraternal interest occasionally sent him a bit of news in advance likely to be useful on the Stock Exchange, received a telegram that caused him to sit down and write a small note to his chief, as follows: Sear Sir— Congress will pass a bill to-morrow for a half million appropriation to baild a General Hospital for the inebriate Senators, and the Kanawha & Deseret Railroad Company own the land they have promised to build on. K. &V. shares will go up by to-morrow night like a rocket. Quick & Quaver have $9,000 on hand at 50. I would buy in to-night; but they are shut up, and I have to be off in the seven a. m. train to Albany. My father just dying there. So notify you, as time is money. Joseph Jones.

Now Mr. Griffin kept everything in his office under lock and key—paper, envelopes, and all—lest the clerk should unlawfully use and waste them out of office hours. He grudged the pen and ink; but these might be needed to fill up a telegram form or file a bill, and he reluctantly left out certain sheets of foolscap for possible exigencies. Mr. Joseph Jones, having a sweetheart and not having a disgust at valentines, had been inditing one that afternoon to his Susan, and on the first envelope had dfopped a dreadful blot between her two sweet names. Luckily, he had provided for mishaps and bought two, and the completed missive, neat and gay, lay on the table ready to send. But when he came to inclose his note to Mr. Griffin there was no envelope to be had. It was nihe o’clock and the drop-letter mail for early morning delivery would soon be closed; there was no help for it. Unaware of Mr. Griffin’s rage at valentines he scratched out Susan’s blotted name as best he mignt, and, writing his employer’s address under it, stamped both epistles, dropped them into the office, went home to bed, and left for Albany in the morning as unconscious of the fire he had kindled as any other sleepy man on the train. Now there was another valentine in that office, dropped before either of these two, among the 10,000 of its kind, that was meant to assail Melindy in a serious and sentimental manner. For #Dhn Perkins wa* 'Yhy and slow of speech; but his mind was set upon marrying Melindy, and he devised a valentine as a neat way of making the offer of his heart and hand gracefully and acceptably. Accordingly he bought a splendid sheet, garlanded with roses and garnished at top and bottom with two fat Cupids, one dressed in the simple drapery of a red and yellow bandana handkerchief about his middle, a very bent bow in one hand and a scroll in the other, while his brother was attired in an insufficient American flag, and held a portly quiver, bristling with arrows and another scroll inscribed with a legend like that above—the first verse being at the top, the other below: There is but only one, And I am only he, Who love but only one. And thou art only she. Requite me for the same 4 And say thou unto me: “I love but only one, And thou art only he.” But lest Melindy should consider this declaration as merely conventional and uncertain John inserted in the small garlanded space between the scrollbearers a terse but comprehensive sentence of his own, in good set terms: Dear Melindy—l mean it all as true as death. Will you marry me? 1 am cornin’to-night to know. Your Valentine, John Perkins. So morning came fraught with fate. Mr. Griffin’s head did not ache, but he was cross unspeakably. The fire burned bright in his grate, his toast was crisp, his coffee clear, but he growled and snapped “ like a real live bear,” as Melindy said. However, poetic justice overtook Mr. Griffin then and there. Melindy had gone on to the roof to take down her clothes, chiefly to keep out of reach of that bitter tongue; so he himself took in .the letters. Judge of his rage when he beheld oniyi:wo valentinesr Unmistakably —plump doves and forget-me-nots in the corners and even shameless Cupids gummifig down the flaps. One was directed to Melindy; one, although blurred and blotted and apparently redirected, to himself. This was adding insult to injury. He had laid matters in shch a train the day before that he fully expected his ten-thousand check by post and in lieu of it he got two paltry, disgusting valentines! Rage entered into his soul and the fire burned clear before him. On to its bright surface went both epistles in one second from his entrance. He did not stop once to consider till the flames had curled about them, devouring them utterly, and the light cinder floated upward. Then Mr. Griffin put on hat and coat and fled down town to his office, so disgusted and vexed that it gave him a certain savage pleasure to think that he had burned Melindy’s too; for what business had she with such foolery? First one knew she would be marrying some idiot and he should have to board again. Well he knew how much more comfortable and quiet his home was under her guidance than Mrs. Blivins’ house had ever beeh; and, as he had kept estimates down pretty well, now it was nearly as cheap. An angrier man he was when he got to his office than before. His clerk gone without a word of explanation; and a postal card in his letter-box announcing tbp failure of his poor debtor, whose creditors had taken the alarm from Mr. Griffin's own unconcealed anxisty the day before and all closed in upon him. Let us leave him and go to Melindy. All the morning she watched for the

postman, but he did hot come. In the afternoon he brought only a circular Melindy’s heart sunk. She did not know before how she had set it on the valentine. She hardly knew how much she had set it on John Perkins. But she was bitterly disappointed at this sudden fall of all her day dreams, and went about her work with a chokiug in her throat and a heat in her eyelids that made this saint’s day anything but a holiday to her. Nevertheless, her work was done faithfully as ever—the dinner cooked and served to her grizzly and growly master, and the dishes washed and her kitchen made bright and neat as ever before John Perkins came; but when he did come she turned upon him the coldest of shoulders. She was a woman who had no acting about her; her thoughts paraded on her face for general review always, and she had not brooded all day on her disappointment and John’s shortcomings for nothing. So he, little conversant with the war* of the sexj was hurt past speech. EHs simple soul took her curt manner for manifest rejection’; he was cut down utterly, and made but a short stay, leaving with the remark, flung back through the closing door, that he “ did wish she’ohave thought better of it!”

“ 1 don’t know what I had to think better of !” flouted Melindv, with a Jerk of the head. Then she flung her apron over her face and had a hard cry, forgot to turn off the water, though the night was down in the zeroes, and went to bed a miserable woman. I don’t know what John did do; but I know Mr. Griffin used very forcible language the next morning when Melindy told him the pipe had burst, and how furious he was to have to stop at the plumber’s on the way down and send John up for repairs. 1 also know that John went about noon and found Melindy sobbing so hard she did not hear him come in. Like a good many soft-hearted men, a woman’s tears washed down all his defenses. He fell to consoling her at once. The lost valentine came oat, and he mastered courage to recollect and repeat all its contents. lam afraid Melindy was effectually consoled, for John forgot the water-pipe for an hour, and her cheeks were much brighter than the dying coals in his little brazier when at last he put it down and went to work. But great was her curiosity about the lost treasure; and at last they both concluded Mr. Griffin probably had it in his pocket, having forgotten to deliver it. But what words shall paint the hapless man’s rage when, finding his clerk returned, he demanded explanations and received them! Quick & Quaver, as well as all the world, knew to-day that Congress had passed the appropriation, and the Kenawha & Deseret stock had, as Joseph Jones predicted, gone up like a rocket. Mr. Griffin raved, he swore, he rampaged, he talked of the poorhouse, he discharged hifi clbra&n the spot, he would have wept had he known how; and when at last he went home to dinner, exhausted and muttering like a spent thunder-storm, who should receive him but Melindy, eager and hurried with the question : “ Did you take a valentine for me from the postman, yesterday?” He was not too far gone to swear a vivid oath before he answered: “ Yes, I did!” “ Please give it to me.” “ Give it to you ? You infernal fool! I flung it intp the fire, and $9,000 with it.” “I am glad you did!” blazed Melindy. “You mean old thing! What business had you to burn my letters? I ain’t going to stand being sworn and cursed at and stinted and starved any more. I give you warning on the spot. I won’t live with a man like you. Your soul ain’t big enough to lose, anyway, for you can’t as much as find it, and I’ve stood it too long. Find some more help. I’m agoin’ to-morrow. So there!” This was the last drop. For once Mr. Griffin had overreached himself. He had been too small for his aggrandizement; and, if he could have brought his mind to persuade Melindy, she was past persuasion, packing her trunk even now for Peterstown. I should like to say that Mr. Griffin profited by this lesson—controlled his temper and broadened his ideas of life and living; but there are those whose eyes are blinded so that they cannot see, and be was one of them. In due time Melindy and John married, and prospered. Mr. Griffin went back to Mrs. Blivins’, made useless money, as before, was worse cheated by that wily widow, than ever, but never had another valentine.