There are some good people who deny the doctrine of total depravity, who don’t see how it is possible for a man deliberately to be a hypocrite. They say that a man can’t live unless he has some good in him. I shall not dispute with these worthy people, because, in a free country, every man has a right to his own opinion, provided he does not happen to think that he may buy tickets in lotteries out of Wall street, and appropriate his neighbor’s goods without the formalities made and provided in the righteous common law of our social code; but I must say that if goodness is necessary to keep people alive, some folks have the gift of living on “small means;” and it becomes my duty to introduce a young gentleman eminently gifted in this particular.

Sylvester Wilson was a young man who had a laudable wish for his own advancement, but, unfortunately for his piety, he was entirely indifferent to the means that contributed to his getting ahead, provided the world made no complaint of him. The opinion of those about him, with two-thirds the facts concealed from them, was a moral law for him, and he had no other. His father was a bad, ambitious and unscrupulous man, and the hereditary transmission of qualities would have charmed Fowler, though the qualities proved that he was “bad, born bad, and had no business here” but to make mischief. He was, however, an excellent dissembler, and passed for a pious and exemplary young man, punctual at church, and designed for the ministry. His family were friends of the Evans family.

“Well, mother, have you wormed any thing out of old Aunty Evans about that red-haired horror’s adoption?” said Sylvester Wilson, to his mother one day, when she had been taking an old-fashioned cup of tea with Mrs. Evans.

“How can you, Sylvester!” said his mother, a good deal disturbed. “The child is very well, I am sure.”

“Frights generally have good health.”

“I meant that she was very well-looking. She has changed much in the two years she has lived with her cousin. Her hair is deepening its color, her eyes do not squint any more, and she is very plump and fresh.”

“All the better for me—fourteen, is she? She will get better still, perhaps, in two or three years. But about the cash, mother—will that old hunks of a cousin portion her? If so, I am his man.”

“Mrs. Evans thinks he considers her as good as his own child now,” said Mrs. Wilson. “You are to be three years in the University, my child, and you can’t think of a wife till that time is past.”

“I don’t know what harm thinking is to do a fellow. I am not in the University yet, and I don’t exactly see how I am to be there, unless I find a gold mine. If I could get employed to give lessons to that fox-pate, I might earn some money, and borrow more, and get an education and independence at last. One can’t expect beauty and tin together.”

Success was all Mrs. Wilson asked for her son, and his life-plans did not seem to her at all profane. And he succeeded in obtaining the place he sought. He gave Fanny lessons in music and mathematics. It was a great triumph when Fanny got leave of Cousin Charles to learn music. She had thought of a piano, and dreamed of one, and thumped on one that belonged to a young friend for a long time—but she had no idea of ever being the happy possessor of a mine of music.

At Christmas, just about two years from the time when she came to live with her cousin, she made a little “Christmas box” for her best friend. It contained a pair of slippers, a watch-holder, and a lamp-mat, all worked by herself. They had grown very pretty under her skillful fingers, but the coarse canvas had not changed more under her hands than she had changed since she had lived in this happy home. And she was daily improving. When Charles Evans found this Christmas gift on his table, he resolved to give Fanny just what she should ask for, and so he said, “I have only got you a book for Christmas, Fanny, but if you think of any thing else that you want, you must tell me.”

“And will you really give it me?” said Fanny, and her deep-blue eyes seemed melting in their own lustre.

“To be sure I will, because I have said so.”

“Well, then, dear, good Cousin Charles, buy me a piano.”

“Buy you a winter full of thunder storms—why you will bang me deaf.”

“But not dumb, I’ll bet any thing—you will always be able to scold your poor Cousin Fanny. But I shall play when you are away.”

“I rather think you will when you get a piano. Why do you know what a deal of money one of those thunderers costs?”

Fanny began to be frightened. She did not know, but she was really like the child who cried for the moon. The tears came into her eyes as she thought of herself two years ago. She looked up at her cousin, with her grateful soul beaming from her beautiful eyes, and smiling through her tears, she said, “Cousin, I was very wrong to ask such an impossible thing—will you buy me a canary-bird?”

“Do you give up all claim to the piano if I do?”

“O, yes, to be sure. Please to forget it. Indeed, I did not mean to be a silly girl.”

Thus ended the talk of the piano; but the next afternoon an elegant piano and a beautiful canary-bird, were domesticated in Mr. Evans’s quiet parlor—and Fanny was perfectly wild with delight. That was a wonderful era in her life—a time to date from forever after—though Cousin Charles brushed her off as if she had been a whole swarm of black flies, when she ran to his room, on his return in the evening, to overwhelm him with thanks, and tears, and crazy rejoicings.

“Bless me, Fanny,” said he, “you had better make up your mind whether you are going to melt, or fly away, or go to a lunatic asylum; and when you have concluded, just come and let me know, will you? I can do without you till then.”

The next thing to the piano must be a music-teacher. Young Wilson had played his cards skillfully. He had interested Charles Evans in his fortunes, and he engaged him from motives of benevolence, to teach Fanny. To do him justice, he was a good teacher. But Evans was cheated. He did not think it possible that the fellow could have thought but to teach Fanny, that he might mend his small means—a most praiseworthy object in the young man, and one that Evans felt anxious to assist him in attaining. Though Fanny had grown very pretty, and was daily improving, yet her cousin was hardly conscious of it. He thought of her as a mere child as she was, and a very ugly child as she had been; and it never once entered his mind that any young man could have designs upon the heart of the little one. Young Wilson interested him, not because he knew him, but because he did not know him. He saw him struggling to get an education, and pay for it himself, and he was glad to have an excuse to offer him assistance.

Evans had small love for music, but mathematics was a pet of the first magnitude with him, and for the sake of this branch of study, he compromised and gave the girl her music. So he said; but the truth was, he wished Fanny to be happy. And he had his wish. The bird and the piano were all the time new, and she could never for a moment, asleep or awake, cease to rejoice in either. She kept her word not to play when Mr. Evans was at home. But then this was no great privation, for the bird sang like mad all the morning, and he went away early, and she managed to tire herself so thoroughly during the day, that she was very willing to go patiently and quietly into figures for the evening. Mr. Evans was quite satisfied, for as he said he saw Fanny always at her “sums,” and never was disturbed by drums or thunder.

Wilson found himself of just as much social importance to Fanny as a piano or an algebra. She would have been just as much interested in a calculating machine; and if her piano could have taught her to play on it, she would have been neither better or worse pleased than now. To be sure she was glad when her Aunt Evans told her of the struggles of young Wilson to educate himself that she had him for a teacher, but she never thought enough of him to mention him to Mr. Evans; first, because she seldom needed his help in her mathematical studies, and of music she never spoke to her cousin.

Wilson was prudent and careful. He had good hope of getting into the University—in time of a pulpit, and a rich wife. No word, or look, or overt act ever revealed to Fanny or her friends, that he had designs on the fortune of Mr. Evans, through a marriage with his ward. For months he labored assiduously, when an accident occurred that changed the face of his fortune, though, perhaps, it did not materially affect Fanny. A merchant uncle of Wilson, who lived at New Orleans, found himself in need of an assistant, in consequence of failing health. He was a man of wealth, and Wilson considered his fortune assured by this chance—and so the church lost the chance of adding to her ornaments another of those paste gems that bring the real jewels into disrepute.

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