CHAPTER III.

MR. TRAP HOLDS FORTH AND COMES TO A CLIMAX.

"Logic forever!

That beats my grandmother, and she was clever."

"This lawyer, you know, could talk, if you please, Till the man in the moon would allow 'twas all cheese." OLIVER WEndell Holmes.

MRS. TRAP was very restless, very-first, she took the evening paper and tried to read, then she went to the window and looked out, and finally, taking that best of all sedatives, her knitting, she seated herself in her rocking-chair, occasionally glancing at Mr. Trap-who, with his hands full of papers, bills, and receipts, sat doing them up in separate packages.

"Mr. Trap," said she, suddenly dropping a stitch in her knitting, "Mr. Trap, are you really going to foreclose Mrs. Stuart's mortgage?"

It is my intention to do so," said Mr. Trap, dryly. 'But, Mr. Trap, is it right to deprive a widow of her shelter, particularly in her delicate health, when a little money paid down would save her a home, and perhaps keep her alive?"

"Right, right, madam, you're always preaching about right I shall do -what do you know about business affairs? nothing contrary to law. You do very well, madam, in your own sphere, but you nor any other woman know anything about business matters-what do you know about law? Law is law. I invited you, Mrs. Trap, to take charge of this establishment, to rule in the kitchen and preside in the parlor of my shirts, collars, clothes, and food, you have the arrangement, the control, but you are not to interfere with my business matters. I have made up my mind to be rich, cost what it may. Law is law." Mrs. Trap sighed, and mentally said, "Yes, law is law, and equity is equity." "Money does every thing," continued Mr. Trap, "money does every

thing; no matter how good you are, no matter how wise you are, who can do without money? Money only gives power, gives position, and position is every thing, Mrs. Trap. There are men in this city, courted and flattered, bowed to and fawned around, who if they were poor to-morrow, would not be tolerated in any decent society. Might makes right, and money is might. If women ruled affairs I wonder how our agricultural and commerical interests would prosper, or our government officials be paid; how many profitable investments made." Mr. Trap paused to take breath, and Mrs. Trap said mildly, "Remember the ser mon, my dear, last Sabbath morning's sermon, 'The love of money is the root of all evil.' ”

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Yes, yes," said he, "I could preach another from just as true a text, money is the root of all good. What good or goods can you get without it, 'tis not only the root of good, but the tree, and the branches and flowers-food, clothes, houses, lands, every thing. I will be a rich man before I die. In this city, we must make all the clear gain we can. I got this house by just such another operation. What a lawyer you'd make, madam! If we'd get along fast in the world, we must put people through, put 'em through. These ministers-why, they think just as much of money as we do-and they get it easy enough, too. If they can get a fat salary in a more fashionable church, they preach a farewell sermon to their beloved flock, and off they go, as they say,' to do more good in an enlarged sphere of usefulness.' I'm going to enlarge my sphere of usefulness, Mrs. Trap! I heard the Rev. Dr. Smoothers say the other day that proprietorship is inherent in man's nature. made some to be above others.'

• God

I tell you

You talk about Providence opening a door. you've got to open fortune's door yourself, or you may stand outside and freeze forever. I wonder if you had a note to pay at three o'clock to-morrow, if this bank of Providence would cash it. Put your bills in that bank of Providence, or that famous bank of Faith either, you'll neither get principal nor interest. There is a pretty heavy discount on that bank. Then where's your certified check? bank of Providence pays in bills of faith, hope and charity. These are all shinplasters when you want hard dollars; their value on demand, situate lying and being in the moon.

The

you may put in and What kind of a You've had so

There's no paying teller in that bank; put in, and yet never get any thing out. legal tender would humility constitute? much laid up in that bank of Providence for years-you ought to be pretty rich now, Mrs. Trap.

"If I should ever fail, my assets would be in western lands. I'll fail for about half a million. I shall pay you over, madam, as the favorite creditor, about thirty thousand for good advice and services rendered, and then you can support me, you know.

The land for which I paid three dollars an acre last year, I can sell for eight hundred now. This Stuart operation is

a real streak of luck. Is Mrs. Stuart one of the silk stocking gentry? Is she the French china of humanity that she shouldn't be put through according to law?

"There's too much of this Presbyterian cant; this orthodoxy, tight as a drum, now in the world. You women jump at conclusions, you make a 'twill do of every thing "—'twill do, was Mr. Trap's favorite phrase when he wished to express the height of inefficiency. "I shall keep my mascu line prerogative, I shall get all the lands, tenements, and hereditaments: I can, if all the women in creation keep up an infernal charivari in my ears;" charivari was the only French word Mr. Trap knew, and it was a mystery to Mrs. Trap how he learned that. Mr. Trap looked over his spectacles, as if his wife's arguments were annihilated by this chef d'œvre of logic-this last sounding, flourishing, complimentary climax.

He sat in his chair and thus silently soliloquized:

"I am glad I dissolved the partnership with that squeamish Douglass, he never would jump into a case unless he could be up to his eyes in honesty. This double refined outrageous honesty is all perfect popcockery."

He sat about five minutes looking over some old accounts of the firm of Douglass & Trap.

It disturbed the dignity of his masculine prerogative, to speak so soon again after his recent powerful remarks. But he did speak, for he wanted to see something in that day's "law reports."

"Did the carrier come this morning? Where in thunder is that paper?"

"He didn't come this morning," said Mrs. Trap in a low mild voice.

I'll

"Didn't come ! Well I want to see him to-morrow morning. Do you understand? and tell him if he can't bring my paper earlier, I shall stop it. The lazy scamp goes moping along puffing his cigar-gets here about ten o'clock with the outrageous lie that the steamer hadn't got in yet.' stop the paper, and if you don't blow him up, I will." Mr. Trap believed firmly in the gunpowder suasion-if the cook was slow and careless, "blow her up," breathe the breath of life into her." If the biscuits are burned, or a goblet broken, "Why don't you blow her up?" So fond was he of blowing people up, he might well be appointed to construct and take the directing of a powerful magazine to blow up all the evils in the country. Commander-in-chief

of the gunpowder army, as if evil-solid, substantial, heavy as it is, if blown up, wouldn't come down larger, more solid, heavier than ever.

If we could get some kind of philosophic glass, and take a good look at Mr. Trap's conscience, 'twould be made of something like gutta percha, it would stretch the whole length and width of a Blackstone, and wouldn't be able to take in these minor decisions, such as the ten statutes once promulged on tables of another kind of stone by a Hebrew law-giver. The golden rule he used to say was nothing but jeweller's gold, and only plated at that he never found it of any weight in the scales of equal justice. His rule was never to do any thing for any body, unless he was well paid for it.

Mr. Trap was not always so cross, but he had been beaten that afternoon in a game of chequers. He never would own that he could be beaten in any game. He used to keep a few chequers stowed away under his coat sleeve, ready to drop down in the most desirable places, when his opponent's back was turned. But this afternoon his defeat was owing to some disturbing cause." Then he had rolled ten pins, and been beaten in that, too-he declared this was because the boy didn't set them up right, though the party of the second part demurred from that opinion.

Then the truth must come out. He had lost a case in the Superior Court, because, as he said, the witnesses didn't swear to enough.

Mrs. Trap had her burden to bear, so had the carrierup till half-past eleven at night, up at one the next morning, walking fifteen zigzag miles that day, up all night on Saturday. So he toils, while the grumbler sleeps on his soft pillow, and if his paper is not by his plate at breakfast to greet his sleepy eyes, there echoes in trumpet tones through the dining room, "Stop that paper. I will not encourage such laziness."

"Ah!" said the carrier, one morning, as he carried along his head ache and his bundle, through wind, rain, and sleet, poverty is not a crime, but it's terrible onconvenient."

I wonder if he of all men couldn't agree with Southey about the road of-life, "There is a good deal of amusement on the road, but, after all, one wants to be at rest."

Rest, rest, rest-there's no rest for mortal burden carriers on the rough road of life.

Chiming high up in the great tower of humanity, is the yearning, soothing, unquiet refrain-rest, rest, rest.

Rest, rest, rest, tolls the starlit clock on the stairs of time. Higher up in the eternal dome, strikes forever the immortal horologe, rest, rest, rest.

CHAPTER IV.

MRS. STUART'S AFFAIRS SUDDENLY CLOSE UP.

"Weep for the voiceless, who have known
The cross without the crown of glory!
Not where Leucadian breezes sweep
O'er Sappho's memory-haunted billow.
But where the glistening night dews weep
On nameless sorrow's churchyard pillow.

"O, hearts that break and give no sign
Save whitening lips and fading_tresses,
Till Death pours out his cordial wine
Slow-dropped from Misery's crushing presses,
If singing breath or echoing chord
To every hidden pang were given,
What endless melodies were poured,

As sad as earth, as sweet as heaven!"

JUST a month after the conversation in our last chapter, Mrs. Trap took up the morning paper; as men say women always do, she looked first at the marriages and deaths.