Library / Literature & Fiction
The Courtship of Susan Bell
- Pages
- about 44
- Category
- Literature & Fiction
- Language
- English
- Reading time
- 49 min at 250 wpm
From the opening
Transcribed from the 1864 Chapman & Hall, “Tales of All Countries,”
edition by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org
JOHN MUNROE BELL had been a lawyer in Albany, State of New York, and as
such had thriven well. He had thriven well as long as thrift and
thriving on this earth had been allowed to him. But the Almighty had
seen fit to shorten his span.
Early in life he had married a timid, anxious, pretty, good little wife,
whose whole heart and mind had been given up to do his bidding and
deserve his love. She had not only deserved it but had possessed it, and
as long as John Munroe Bell had lived, Henrietta Bell—Hetta as he called
her—had been a woman rich in blessings. After twelve years of such
blessings he had left her, and had left with her two daughters, a second
Hetta, and the heroine of our little story, Susan Bell.
A lawyer in Albany may thrive passing well for eight or ten years, and
yet not leave behind him any very large sum of money if he dies at the
end of that time. Some small modicum, some few thousand dollars, John
Bell had amassed, so that his widow and daughters were not absolutely
driven to look for work or bread.
In those happy days when cash had begun to flow in plenteously to the
young father of the family, he had taken it into his head to build for
himself, or rather for his young female brood, a small neat house in the
outskirts of Saratoga Springs. In doing so he was instigated as much by
the excellence of the investment for his pocket as by the salubrity of
the place for his girls. He furnished the house well, and then during
some summer weeks his wife lived there, and sometimes he let it.
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