So, too, while the infant chariot with its slow motion of treble wheels advances obedient to the hand of the wimpled maid who from the rear directs its ambiguous progress, the dozing occupant may not always understand, but, hearing, cannot fail to be moved to tears by the simple tale of JOANNA crossed in all her depth and scope of free vigorous life by him that should have stood her friend.  For the man had wedded her.  Of that there can be no doubt, since the chronicles have handed down the date of it.  Wedded her with the fatal “yes” that binds a trusting soul in the world’s chains.  A man, too.  A reckless, mutton-munching, beer-swilling animal!  And yet a man.  A dear, brave, human heart, as it should have been; capable, it may be, of unselfishness and devotion; but, alas! how sadly twisted to the devil’s purposes on earth, an image of perpetual chatter, like the putty-faced street-pictures of morning soapsuds.  His names stand in full in the verse.  JOHN, shortened familiarly, but not without a hint of contempt, to JACK, stares at you in all the bravery of a Christian name.  And SPRATT follows with a breath of musty antiquity.  SPRATT that is indeed a SPRATT, sunk in the oil of a slothful imagination and bearing no impress of the sirname that should raise its owner to cloudy peaks of despotic magnificence.

But of the lady’s names no hint is given.  We may conjecture SPRATT to have been hers too, poor young soul that should have been dancing instead of fastened to a table in front of an eternal platter.  And of all names to precede it the fittest surely is JOANNA.  For what is that but the glorification with many feminine thrills of the unromantic chawbacon JOHN masticating at home in semi-privacy the husks of contentment, the lean scrapings of the divine dish which is offered once in every life to all.  So JOANNA she shall be and is, and as JOANNA shall her story be told.

CHAPTER II.

Many are the tales concerning JOANNA’s flashing wit.  There appeared many years back, in a modest shape that excited small interest amongst the reviewing herd, a booklet whereof the title furnished little if any indication to the contents. The Spinster’s Reticule, for so the name ran, came forth with no blare of journalistic trumpets challenging approval from the towers of critical sagacity.  It appeared and lived.  But between its cardboard covers the bruised heart of JOANNA beats before the world.  She shines most in these aphorisms.  Her private talk, too, has its own brilliancy, spun, as it was here and there, out of a museful mind at the cooking of the dinner or of the family accounts.  She said of love that “it is the sputter of grease in a frying-pan; where it falls the fire burns with a higher flame to consume it."[1] Of man, that “he may navigate Mormon Bay, but he cannot sail to Khiva Point.”  The meaning is too obvious it may be, but the thought is well imaged.