The Classic Humor MEGAPACK ®. Эдгар Аллан По

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СКАЧАТЬ a man in his station in life is happy upon a thousand.”

      “A thousand! Why, my dear, there is not a man of his class in town that makes six hundred.”

      “George?”

      “Well?”

      “We must keep horses, and there is no room to build a stable on this place.”

      “No.”

      “Could we live here and keep the horses in the General’s stables across the way, even if the place were turned into a park?”

      “That is worth thinking of.”

      “And George?”

      “Well, dear?”

      “It’s a horrid thing to confess, but do you know, George, I’ve felt myself getting meaner and meaner, and stingier and stingier ever since you brought the good news.”

      George tried to smile, but the effort was unsuccessful; he looked half-vexed and half-ashamed.

      “Oh, I wouldn’t put it just that way,” he said. “The news is so exciting that we hardly know at once how to adjust ourselves to it. We are simply prudent. It would be folly to plunge ahead without any caution at all. How much did you say the debt of the Presbyterian Church is?”

      “Six thousand, I think.”

      “A good deal for a little church like that to owe.”

      “Yes, but—”

      “You didn’t promise anything, Mary Jane, did you, to Mrs. Borrow?”

      “No, for I had nothing to promise, but I did tell her on Sunday that I would help them liberally if I could.”

      “They will base large expectations on that, sure. I wish you hadn’t said it just that way. Of course, we are bound to help them, but I should like to have a perfectly free hand in doing it.”

      There was silence for a moment, while both looked through the window at the General’s place over the way.

      “Beautiful, isn’t it?” asked Mrs. Grimes.

      “Lovely. That little annex on the side would make a snug den for me; and imagine the prospect from that south bedroom window! You would enjoy every look at it.”

      “George?”

      “What?”

      “George, dear, tell me frankly, do you really feel in your heart as generous as you did yesterday?”

      “Now, my dear, why press that matter? Call it meaner or narrower or what you will; maybe I am a little more so than I was; but there is nothing to be ashamed of. It is the conservative instinct asserting itself; the very same faculty in man that holds society together. I will be liberal enough when the time comes, never fear. I am not going to disregard what one may call the pledges of a lifetime. We will treat everybody right, the Presbyterian Church and Mr. Borrow included. His salary is a thousand, I think you said?”

      “Yes.”

      “Well, I am willing to make it fifteen hundred right now, if you are.”

      “We said, you remember, it ought to be two thousand.”

      “Who said so?”

      “You did, on the porch here the other evening.”

      “I never said so. There isn’t a preacher around here gets that much. The Episcopalians with their rich people only give eighteen hundred.”

      “And a house.”

      “Very well, the Presbyterians can build a house if they want to.”

      “You consent then to pledge five hundred more to the minister’s salary?”

      “I said I would if you would, but my advice is just to let the matter go over until to-morrow or next day, when the whole thing can be considered.”

      “Very well, but, George, sixty thousand dollars is a great deal of money, and we certainly can afford to be liberal with it, for the General’s sake as well as for our own!”

      “Everything depends upon how you look at it. In one way the sum is large. In another way it isn’t. General Jenkins had just twenty times sixty thousand. Tremendous, isn’t it? He might just as well have left us another million. He is in Heaven and wouldn’t miss it. Then we could have some of our plans more fully carried out.”

      “I hate to be thought covetous,” answered Mrs. Grimes, “but I do wish he had put on that other million.”

      The next day Mr. Grimes, while sitting with his wife after supper, took a memorandum from his pocket and said:

      “I’ve been jotting down some figures, Mary Jane, just to see how we will come out with our income of sixty thousand dollars.”

      “Well?”

      “If we give the place across the street for a park and a library and a hundred thousand dollars with which to run it, we shall have just nine hundred thousand left.”

      “Yes.”

      “We shall want horses, say a carriage pair, and a horse for the station wagon. Then I must have a saddle horse and there must be a pony for the children. I thought also you might as well have a gentle pair for your own driving. That makes six. Then there will have to be, say, three stable men. Now, my notion is that we shall put up a larger house farther up town with all the necessary stabling. Count the cost of the house and suitable appointments, and add in the four months’ trip to Europe which we decided yesterday to take next summer, and how much of that fifty-four thousand do you think we shall have left at the end of the year?”

      “But why build the house from our income?”

      “Mary Jane, I want to start out with the fixed idea that we will not cut into our principal.”

      “Well, how much will we have over?”

      “Not a dollar! The outlay for the year will approximate fifty-six thousand dollars.”

      “Large, isn’t it?”

      “And yet I don’t see how we can reduce it if we are to live as people in our circumstances might reasonably be expected to live.”

      “We must cut off something.”

      “That is what I think. If we give the park and the library building to the town why not let the town pay the cost of caring for them?”

      “Then we could save the interest on that other hundred thousand.”

      “Exactly, and nobody will suffer. The gift of the property alone is magnificent. Who is going to complain of us? We will decide now to give the real estate and then stop.”

      Two days later Mr. Grimes came home early from the bank with СКАЧАТЬ