A Woman Ventures

Synopsis

ENTWORTH Bromfield was mourned by his widow and daughter with a depth that would have amazed him. For twenty-one years he had been an assistant secretary in the Department of State at Washington—a rather conspicuous position, with a salary of four thousand a year. Influential relatives representing Massachusetts in the House or in the Senate, and often in both, had enabled him to persist through changes of administration and of party control, and to prevail against the “pull” of many an unplaced patriot.

Perhaps he might have been a person of consequence had he exercised his talents in some less insidiously lazy occupation. He had begun well at the law; but in return for valuable local services to the party, he got the offer of this political office, and, in what he came to regard as a fatal moment, he accepted it. His wife—he had just married—said that he was “going in for a diplomatic career.” He faintly hoped so himself, but the warnings of his common sense were soon verified. “Diplomatic career” proved to be a sonorous name for a decent burial of energy and prospects.

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