Tuesday.—Boy at the door with a bouquet. Can’t ring the bell; I’ll just step out and offer to do it for him, and learn who sent it! “Has orders not to tell;” umph! I’ve no orders “not to tell;” so here goes a note to Ledger about it; that little gipsy is stepping rather too high.
Wednesday.—Here I am tied up for a month at least; scarcely a whole bone in my body, to say nothing of the way my feelings are hurt. How did I know that young man was “her brother?” Why couldn’t Ledger correct my mistake in a gentlemanly way, without daguerreotyping it on my back with a horsewhip? It’s true I am not always correct in my suspicions, but he ought to have looked at my motives! Suppose it hadn’t been her brother, now! It’s astonishing, the ingratitude of people. It’s enough to discourage all my attempts at moral reform!
Well, it’s no use attacking that hornet’s nest again; but I’ve no doubt some of the commandments are broken somewhere; and with the help of some “opodeldoc” I’ll get out and find where it is!
SUNSHINE AND YOUNG MOTHERS.
Folly. For girls to expect to be happy without marriage. Every woman was made for a mother, consequently, babies are as necessary to their “peace of mind,” as health. If you wish to look at melancholy and indigestion, look at an old maid. If you would take a peep at sunshine, look in the face of a young mother.
“Young mothers and sunshine”! They are worn to fiddle strings before they are twenty-five! When an old lover turns up, he thinks he sees his grandmother, instead of the dear little Mary who used to make him feel as if he should crawl out of the toes of his boots! Yes! my mind is quite made up about matrimony; it’s a one-sided partnership.
“Husband” gets up in the morning, and pays his devoirs to the looking-glass; curls his fine head of hair; puts on an immaculate shirt bosom; ties an excruciating cravat; sprinkles his handkerchief with cologne; stows away a French roll, an egg, and a cup of coffee; gets into the omnibus, looks at the pretty girls, and makes love between the pauses of business during the forenoon generally. Wife must “hermetically seal” the windows and exclude all the fresh air, (because the baby had “the snuffles” in the night;) and sits gasping down to the table more dead than alive, to finish her breakfast. Tommy turns a cup of hot coffee down his bosom; Juliana has torn off the strings of her school bonnet; James “wants his geography covered;” Eliza can’t find her satchel; the butcher wants to know if she’d like a joint of mutton; the milkman would like his money; the iceman wants to speak to her “just a minute;” the baby swallows a bean; husband sends the boy home from the store to say his partner will dine with him; the cook leaves “all flying,” to go to her “sister’s dead baby’s wake,” and husband’s thin coat must be ironed before noon.