“Well, I never—” said the simple Mrs. Stubbs. “Goodness knows, if I had known all this before, I would have married an editor myself. Stubbs, why don’t you set up a newspaper?”
“Mrs. Stubbs!” said her husband, in an oracular tone, “to conduct a newspaper requires a degree of tact, enterprise and ability to which Jotham Stubbs unfortunately is a stranger. The Family Gazette or its founder is by no means a fair sample of our honorable newspapers, and their upright, intelligent, and respected editors. Great Cæsar!—no!” said Stubbs, rising from his chair, and bringing his hand down emphatically on his corduroys, “no more than you are a fair sample of feminine beauty, Mrs. Stubbs!”
WHO WOULD BE THE LAST MAN?
“Fanny Fern says, ‘If there were but one woman in the world, the men would have a terrible time.’ Fanny is right; but we would ask her what kind of a time the women would have if there were but one man in existence?”
What kind of a time would they have? Why, of course no grass would grow under their slippers! The “Wars of the Roses,” the battles of Waterloo and Bunker Hill would be a farce to it. Black eyes would be the rage, and both caps and characters would be torn to tatters. I imagine it would not be much of a millennium, either, to the moving cause of the disturbance. He would be as crazy as a fly in a drum, or as dizzy as a bee in a ten-acre lot of honeysuckles, uncertain where to alight. He’d roll his bewildered eyes from one exquisite organization to another, and frantically and diplomatically exclaim—“How happy could I be with either, were t’other dear charmer away!”
“What kind of a time would the women have, were there only one man in the world?”
What kind of a time would they have? What is that to me? They might “take their own time,” every “Miss Lucy” of them, for all I should care; and so might the said man himself; for with me, the limited supply would not increase the value of the article.