Just why he sought their company no one ever knew, and Milton was too
proud to tell. The brown thrush, rival of the lark and mockingbird, seldom
seeks the society of the blue jay. But it did this time. The Powells were
a roaring, riotous, roystering, fox-hunting, genteel, but reduced family,
on the eve of bankruptcy, with marriageable daughters.

The executive functions of love-making are best carried on by shallow
people; so mediocre women often show rare skill in courtship, and
sometimes succeed in bagging big game. But surely Mary Powell had no
conception of the greatness of Milton's intellect--she only knew that he
was handsome, and her parents said he was rich.

There was feasting and mirth when Milton arrived back in town accompanied
by his bride and various of her kinsmen. In all marriage festivals there
is something pathetically absurd, and I never see a sidewalk awning spread
without thinking of the one erected for John Milton and Mary Powell, who
were led through it by an Erebus that was not only blind, but stone-deaf.

John Milton was an ascetic, and lived in a realm of reverie and dreams;
his wife had a strong bias toward the voluptuous, reveling in a world of
sense, and demanding attention as her right. Milton began diving into his
theories and books, and forgot the poor child who had no abstract world
into which to withdraw. Suddenly bereft of the gay companionship that her
father's house supplied, she felt herself aggrieved, alone; and tears of
vexation and homesickness began to stream down her pretty cheeks.

When summoned into her husband's presence she had nothing to say, and
Milton, the theorist, discovered that what he had mistaken for the natural
reticence and bashfulness of maidenhood was mere inanity and lack of
ideas. But the loneliness of the poor country girl, shut up in a student's