146 CONFEDERATE PORTRAITS
jamin's view of her husband. So far as I know, only one recorded sentence of her writing twinkles in the memory of men. But that one is a jewel. It paints the woman ; it paints the Southern and Creole class, and much that is Northern and human also ; it suggests wide possibilities of domestic infelicity ; and it shows charmingly that Ben- jamin had found the superlative in an art in which he could furnish a good comparative himself. He writes to his wife urging economy, and she writes back : " Do not speak to me of economy; it is so fatiguing." ^e Miss Austen might have invented the phrase, she could not have bettered it.
But Benjamin afforded rather a singularity in matri- monial affairs by apparently caring much more about his wife's relatives than he did about her. And to those connected with him by blood, his daughter, sisters, nieces, and nephews, he was deeply and devotedly attached. His few extant letters to them form very attractive read^ ing and show a man as lovable as he was clever. They are full of a light and graceful playfulness, gossiping of trivial things in just the way that love appreciates.
Yet how infinite are the shades and diversities of char- acter ! For all this graceful playfulness in his private let- ters, for all his reported wit in conversation, I do not find that Benjamin had much of that complicated emotion which we call humor. Is it that he does not view life from a large enough angle? In this regard how striking is the difference between him and Lincoln I When the Lord
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