The Project Gutenberg EBook of Victorian Short Stories,
by Elizabeth Gaskell, et al.

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Title: Victorian Short Stories,
Stories Of Successful Marriages

Author: Elizabeth Gaskell, et al.

Release Date: March 4, 2005 [EBook #15252]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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STORIES OF SUCCESSFUL MARRIAGES

THE MANCHESTER MARRIAGE Elizabeth Gaskell

A MERE INTERLUDE Thomas Hardy

A FAITHFUL HEART George Moore

THE SOLID GOLD REEF COMPANY, LIMITED Walter Besant

THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE Henry James

_Elizabeth Gaskell_

THE MANCHESTER MARRIAGE

(_Household Words_, Christmas 1858)

Mr and Mrs Openshaw came from Manchester to settle in London. He
had been, what is called in Lancashire, a salesman for a large
manufacturing firm, who were extending their business, and opening a
warehouse in the city; where Mr Openshaw was now to superintend their
affairs. He rather enjoyed the change; having a kind of curiosity
about London, which he had never yet been able to gratify in his brief
visits to the metropolis. At the same time, he had an odd, shrewd
contempt for the inhabitants, whom he always pictured to himself as
fine, lazy people, caring nothing but for fashion and aristocracy, and
lounging away their days in Bond Street, and such places; ruining good
English, and ready in their turn to despise him as a provincial. The
hours that the men of business kept in the city scandalized him too,
accustomed as he was to the early dinners of Manchester folk and
the consequently far longer evenings. Still, he was pleased to go to
London, though he would not for the world have confessed it, even to
himself, and always spoke of the step to his friends as one demanded
of him by the interests of his employers, and sweetened to him by a
considerable increase of salary. This, indeed, was so liberal that he
might have been justified in taking a much larger house than the
one he did, had he not thought himself bound to set an example to
Londoners of how little a Manchester man o