An Ambitious Man by Wilcox, Ella Wheeler

When Miss Lawrence’s mother, a nervous invalid, was informed of her daughter’s engagement, she burst into tears, as over a lamb offered on the altar of sacrifice; and Judge Lawrence pressed a kiss on the lobe of Mabel’s left ear which she offered him, and told her she had won a prize in the market. But as he sat alone over his cigar that night, he sighed heavily, and said to himself, “Poor fellow, I wish Mabel were not so much like her mother.”—from book