my helpmate, the partner of my joys and griefs, the confidante of my dearest hopes, the in-spir-a-tion of my noblest endeavours, the companion of my declining years, and the spirit that shall accompany me along each step of life’s vexed and troubled way, sharing with me whatever God in His inscrutable Providence shall will, whether of wealth or poverty, grief or happiness—I have decided, Miss Louise, that that lady must be—yourself!—and, therefore, I request,” he said slowly and impressively, “the honour of your hand in mar-ri-age.”
She loved him, she had hoped, prayed, and agonized for just such a moment, but now that it had come she rose immediately with ladylike dignity, and said: “Mistah Pentland: I am honuhed by this mahk of yoah esteem and affection, and I pwomise to give it my most unnest considahwation without delay. I wealize fully, Mistah Pentland, the gwavity of the wuhds you have just uttuhed. Foh my paht, I must tell you, Mistah Pentland, that if I accept yoah pwoposal, I shall come to you without the fawchun which was wightfully mine, but of which I have been depwived and defwauded by the wascality—yes! the wascality of my gahdian. I shall come to you, theahfoh, without the dow’y I had hoped to be able to contwibute to my husband’s fawchuns.”
“Oh, my dear Miss Louise! My dear young lady!” Uncle Bascom cried, waving his great hand through the air with a dismissing gesture. “Do not suppose—do not for one instant suppose, I beg of you!—that consideration of a monetary nature could influence my decision. Oh, not in the slightest!” he cried. “Not at all, not at all!”
“Fawchnatly,” Louise continued, “my inhewitance was not wholly dissipated by this scoundwel. A pohtion, a vewy small pohtion, remains.”
“My dear girl! My dear young lady!” Uncle Bascom cried. “It is not of the slightest consequence…. How much did he leave?” he added.
Thus they were married.
Bascom immediately got a church in the Middle West: good pay and a house. But during the course of the next twenty years he was shifted from church to church, from sect to sect—to Brooklyn, then back to the Middle West, to the Dakotas, to Jersey City, to Western Massachusetts, and finally back to the small towns surrounding Boston.
When Bascom talked, you may be sure God listened: he preached magnificently, his gaunt face glowing from the pulpit, his rather high, enormously vibrant voice husky with emotion. His prayers were fierce solicitations of God, so mad with fervour that his audiences uncomfortably
