List of Eligibles of the Senate and Cabinet.
Washington, December 24, 1879.
“They don’t propose! They won’t propose!
For fear perhaps I’d say yes!
Just let ’em try it, for heaven knows
I’m tired of single blessedness!”
At the moment of writing the waters of social life are becalmed in Washington. Very little is doing in matrimonial business and mothers with marriageable daughters are advised to hold on to the stock in hand (unless there is danger of spoiling), as an advance is expected as soon as a batch of single Congressmen arrive, and this interesting event will probably happen soon after the holidays. General Ben Butler is already here, and though he has shed his late Congressional skin and is no longer interesting on this account, he still has the chance to be governor of Massachusetts; but aside from this honor, any respectable matrimonial agency would give him a clean bill of sale the moment the right kind of a purchaser can be found. It is said the gallant General has a “blind eye,” but even with this fact in a woman’s favor it will be necessary to approach him as carefully as though he were gunpowder or an “infernal machine,” and be well prepared for the explosion which would be sure to follow. But it must be remembered that all the valuable things of the earth are obtained at great personal sacrifice and often with loss of life. Just as the biggest pearls are fished from the deepest waters, the greatest men are brought to the right point with a corresponding loss of female vitality.
Senator Sharon! “Lo! the conquering hero comes” on the breath of the wind, at the same time hitched behind a fiery locomotive. He is already done up in broad-cloth and fine linen, and is probably at this hour sleeping in his own “special car” as he rushes over the steel roadway with which dear old Oakes Ames spanned the continent. What a picture of Oriental magnificence, with his almond-eyed, dark-haired daughter at his side! What a flutter among the dames of the grand West End! In his presence a small bore of the Army and Navy, a “swell” of an upper clerk, or even an obscure Congressman pales as the stars are wiped out by the effulgence of a full-blown sun! “But he ain’t handsome!” Shut up, you ill-bred child! Handsome is that handsome does! Didn’t Senator Sharon spend $40,000 on the Grant reception, and owns a house so large that people get lost in it? It takes as long to explore it as it does the Mammoth Cave! “What does he come here for, mamma?” “Why, to show his heathen Chinee, and see if his glass shoe will fit any Cinderella at the capital.” “They pared their heels and they pared their toes,” but the special car goes back to the Pacific slope empty and tenantless, in one sense, as it came. The ripple subsides, to rise at each approach of the “special car,” and so the play goes on.
Senator Booth, of California, is another matrimonial venture worth looking after, but he has already been toughened by several winter campaigns in Washington, until it is declared by those that ought to know that a sigh drawn fresh and pure from the deepest and most capacious female bosom and applied to the right place will have no more effect than a Holman liver pad administered for lockjaw, whilst a glance from the most brilliant eye falls like a sunbeam on an alligator’s back. Managing mammas have given up whist parties on his account, because he is far more “whist” than the count. But the Senator is in a tolerable state of preservation, considering the number of sieges he has endured, and bids fair to return to the sand lots of California no worse for the tender wear and tear to which he has been so cruelly subjected.
If there are any tears to shed, prepare to shed them now! Step softly! blind your eyes! This is Senator Ferry, of Michigan, he who has convulsed the heart of woman, lo! these many years. Mothers have plotted, widows intrigued, girls have cried for him, all to no purpose. It has taken subtle cunning to elude the snares spread for his gentle, trusting being, but Senator Ferry has been equal to the trial and has come out of the fiery flames handsome and jubilant as ever. Whilst the years come and go and at the same time snatch the hairs from his brother Senators’ heads, leaving crowsfeet all along the track, Senator Ferry defies the “Old Man of the Sickle,” and is just as capable of cracking a young girl’s heart to-day as when in the morning of his manly strength, before the stars sang together. As soon as Congress assembles a committee will be appointed to investigate the source of his mighty power, as it is not intended that one red-bearded Senator shall get more than his share. As Senator Ferry usually buys up all newspapers which print advertisements of him, this is intended as a cheap way to get rid of a solid edition of The Times, but the article will only call for the usual liberal rate which it pays to its most valued correspondents.