; and that all that stood in the
way of creating a magnificent fortune out of cotton bales, was the
lack of productive facilities.
During this winter I saw more than usual of Mrs. Dewey. She came up
from New York with her nurse and child, a babe not quite a year old,
and spent over six weeks with her parents. She had lost, in the two
years which had passed since her marriage, nearly all those
beautiful traits of character which made her once so charming.
Fashionable city life seemed to have spoiled her altogether. Her
mind had not grown in the right direction. She had wholly abandoned
that tasteful reading through which intellectual refinement comes;
and to all appearance, no longer cared for anything beyond the mere
sensuous. Nothing in S----had any interest for her; and she scarcely
took the pains to conceal her contempt for certain sincere and
worthy people, who felt called upon, for the sake of her parents, to
show her some attention. She was not happy, of course. When in
repose; I noticed a discontented look on her face. Her eyes had lost
that clear, innocent, almost child-like beauty of expression, that
once made you gaze into them; and now had a cold, absent, or eagerly
longing expression, as if her thought were straining itself forward
towards some coveted good.
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