When Draxy Miller's father was a boy, he read a novel in which the heroinewas a Polish girl, named Darachsa. The name stamped itself indelibly uponhis imagination; and when, at the age of thirty-five, he took hisfirst-born daughter in his arms, his first words were--"I want her calledDarachsa."
"What!" exclaimed the doctor, turning sharply round, and looking out abovehis spectacles; "what heathen kind of a name is that?"
"Oh, Reuben!" groaned a feeble voice from the baby's mother; and the nursemuttered audibly, as she left the room, "There ain't never no luck comesof them outlandish names."
The whole village was in a state of excitement before night. Poor ReubenMiller had never before been the object of half so much interest. Hisslowly dwindling fortunes, the mysterious succession of his ill-lucks, hadnot much stirred the hearts of the people. He was a retice'nt man; heloved books, and had hungered for them all his life; his townsmenunconsciously resented what they pretended to despise; and so it hadslowly come about that in the village where his father had lived and died,and where he himself had grown up, and seemed likely to live and die,Reuben Miller was a lonely man, and came and went almost as a strangermight come and go. His wife was simply a shadow and echo of himself; oneof those clinging, tender, unselfish, will-less women, who make pleasant,and affectionate, and sunny wives enough for rich, prosperous,unsentimental husbands, but who are millstones about the necks ofsensitive, impressionable, unsuccessful men. If Jane Miller had been astrong, determined woman, Reuben would not have been a failure. The onlything he had needed in life had been persistent purpose and courage. Theright sort of wife would have given him both. But when he was discouraged,baffled, Jane clasped her hands, sat down, and looked into his face withstreaming eyes. If he smiled, she smiled; but that was just when it was ofleast consequence that she should smile. So the twelve years of theirmarried life had gone on slowly, very slowly, but still surely, from badto worse; nothing prospered in Reuben's hands. The farm which he hadinherited from his father was large, but not profitable. He tried too longto work the whole of it, and then he sold the parts which he ought to havekept. He sunk a great portion of his little capital in a flour-mill, whichpromised to be a great success, paid well for a couple of years, and thenburnt down, uninsured. He took a contract for building one section of acanal, which was to pass through part of his land; sub-contractors cheatedhim, and he, in his honesty, almost ruined himself to right their wrong.Then he opened a little store; here, also, he failed. He was too honest,too sympathizing, too inert. His day-book was a curiosity; he had a veinof humor which no amount of misfortune could quench; and he used to enterunder the head of "given" all the purchases which he knew were not likelyto be paid for. It was at sight of this book, one day, that Jane Miller,for the first and only ti