Betrothal -- Fiction; Courtship -- Fiction; Middle West -- Fiction; United States -- Social life and customs -- Fiction
"I reckon you've gathered from my remarks," said Powell, "that I
consider success chiefly from a monetary standpoint, but I don't. The
main business of life is living, and the trouble with the world is that
it is too busy getting ready to live to find the time for life; it has
tied itself up with a thousand chains of its own forging and it has had
to postpone living from time to time until most people have put the
beginning of life at the gateway of death; meanwhile they're busy
gathering things, like magpies, and those that gather the most are
considered the best; they have come to think that people are divided
into two classes, good and bad; the good are those who own, the bad
those who don't, and the good think their business is to put down the
bad. Now, here in Gordon County, we have about everything a man needs;
the spring comes and the summer, and the autumn and the winter; the rain
falls and the winds blow and the sun shines, and I've noticed that
Lighttown gets about as much rain as Main Street, and Gooseville about
as much wind as Scioto Street; the sun seems to shine pretty much alike
on the niggers loafing in Market Space and on old Selah Dudley and Judge
Blair, bowing like Christians to each other in the Square. The trees are
the same color wherever they grow, and I don't see any reason why people
shouldn't be happy if they'd only let one another be happy. Now, I would
have lived, but I didn't have time. I thought when I began that I'd have
to do as the rest were doing, get hold of things, and I saw that if I
did, I'd have to get my share away from them; well, I made a failure of
that, being too soft inside someway; that was all right too, but
meanwhile I was wasting time, and putting off living--now it's too
late."
Marley looked at him in perplexity, not knowing how to take him.
"I know," he said presently. "But what am I going to do? I can live all
right, but I have to do better than that; I want to get married."
"Married," mused Powell, "married! Well, I got married."
Marley was interested. He had never heard Powell speak of his wife, and
he feared what he was about to say; for that instant Powell's standing
in his estimation trembled.
"And that was the only sensible thing I ever did."
Marley felt a great relief.
"But I don't know that I did right by Mary; I didn't do her any good, I
reckon; still, she's borne up somehow; I wish I had a sky full of
sunlight to pour over her."
Powell walked to his window, and looked across into the Court-House yard
where the leaves were falling slowly from the Maple-trees. Marley hoped
that he would go on, and say more of his wife, but he was silent.
Presently he turned about.
"Well, Glenn," he said; "I see you're stuck on staying in Macochee, and
I don't blame you; and you want to get married, and that's all right.
Maybe I can help you do it."
"How?" said Marley, eagerly.
"I've got a scheme."
"What is it?"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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