AN OLD MAID’S DECISION.
“I can bear misfortune and poverty, and all the other ills of life, but to be an old maid—to droop and wither, and wilt and die, like a single pink—I can’t endure it; and what’s more, I won’t!”
Now there’s an appeal that ought to touch some bachelor’s heart. There she is, a poor, lone spinster, in a nicely furnished room—sofa big enough for two; two arm chairs, two bureaus, two looking-glasses—everything hunting in couples except herself! I don’t wonder she’s frantic! She read in her childhood that “matches were made in Heaven,” and although she’s well aware there are some Lucifer matches, yet she has never had a chance to try either sort. She has heard that there “never was a soul created, but its twin was made somewhere,” and she’s a melancholy proof that ’tis a mocking lie. She gets tired sewing—she can’t knit forever on that eternal stocking—(besides, that has a fellow to it, and is only an aggravation to her feelings.) She has read till her eyes are half blind,—there’s nobody to agree with her if she likes the book, or argue the point with her if she don’t. If she goes out to walk, every woman she meets has her husband’s arm. To be sure, they are half of them ready to scratch each other’s eyes out; but that’s a little business matter between themselves. Suppose she feels devotional, and goes to evening lectures, some ruffianly coward is sure to scare her to death on the way. If she takes a journey, she gets hustled and boxed round among cab-drivers, and porters, and baggage-masters; her bandbox gets knocked in, her trunk gets knocked off, and she’s landed at the wrong stopping place. If she wants a load of wood, she has to pay twice as much as a man would, and then she gets cheated by the man that saws and splits it. She has to put her own money into the bank and get it out, hire her own pew, and wait upon herself into it. People tell her “husbands are often great plagues,” but she knows there are times when they are indispensable. She is very good looking, black hair and eyes, fine figure, sings and plays beautifully, but she “can’t be an old maid, and what’s more—she won’t.”
A PUNCH AT “PUNCH.”
“What is the height of a woman’s ambition? Diamonds.”—Punch.
Sagacious Punch! Do you know the reason? It is because the more “diamonds” a woman owns, the more precious she becomes in the eyes of your discriminating sex. What pair of male eyes ever saw a “crow’s foot,” grey hair, or wrinkle, in company with a genuine diamond? Don’t you go down on your marrow-bones, and vow that the owner is a Venus, a Hebe, a Juno, a sylph, a fairy, an angel? Would you stop to look (connubially) at the most bewitching woman on earth, whose only diamonds were “in her eye?” Well, it is no great marvel, Mr. Punch. The race of men is about extinct. Now and then you will meet with a specimen; but I’m sorry to inform you that the most of them are nothing but coat tails, walking behind a moustache, destitute of sufficient energy to earn their own cigars and “Macassar,” preferring to dangle at the heels of a diamond wife, and meekly receive their allowance, as her mamma’s prudence and her own inclinations may suggest.