st of herself," there
had never, in her case, been any question of the _ars celare artem_. She
belonged to a number of women's clubs of which the avowed object was
"self-improvement," and attended such classes on "current events" as
would keep her posted on the problems of the day without the bore of
reading the papers. As a self-made woman she also looked the part,
dressing for breakfast as she would like to be found in the afternoon,
with but slight variation for dinner. In her full panoply of plum or
dove color she suggested one of those knights eternally in armor who
decorate baronial halls. Chip considered it probable that Emery Bland
would never have chosen her as the life-long complement to himself had
he not taken that step while he was still an obscure "up-state" country
lawyer, and she the dignified young school-teacher who stood for
"cultivation" in their little town. Cultivation had always been to Mrs.
Bland what hunting is to the rider to hounds--the zest was in the chase.
The zest was in the chase, and the quarry but an excuse for the run.
Over hedges of lectures, and ditches of "talks," and through
turnip-fields of serious, ponderous women like herself, green even in
winter, and after being touched by frost, Mrs. Bland kept on in full
career, with "cultivation" scudding ahead like a fox she never caught a
glimpse of, and which her hounds tracked only by the scent. It was
splendid exercise, and helped her to feel in the movement. If she failed
to notice that her husband had long ago run the fleet animal to earth,
and affixed the mask as an adornment to his home, it was only because
their views of life were different.

No one would now suppose that there had been a time in Emery Bland's
life when it had been his aim also to "cultivate himself," and when he
had actually used the phrase. Between the debonair, experienced New York
lawyer, so much in demand for cases requiring discretion and so capable
of dealing with them--between him and the farmer's boy he had been there
was no more resemblance than between a living word and the dead root out
of which it has been coined. In Emery Bland's case the word was not only
living, but pliant, eloquent, and arresting to ear and eye. He was one
of those men who overlook nothing that can be counted as
self-expression, from their dress to the sound of their syllables.
Superficially genial, but essentially astute, he had made everything
grist that came to his mill, flouri