F. That’s where the trouble is (fondly stroking his mustache). As you say, I could easily persuade some one to marry me, knowing as they do that I possess plenty of money. But don’t you think it would make a difference if I were a poor man?
E. I dare say it might with some persons; but all are not alike. I am sure there are many who esteem wealth of less importance than personal worth.
F. (assuming a sitting posture, and laying cigar down). I have often thought I should like to marry; but when I looked around among the ladies with whom I was brought in contact, I became disgusted to see what frivolous lives they led.
E. But all women are not alike, Frank.
F. That may be so, but where shall I go to look for a different class? I have strong domestic tastes, and would be glad to change my present state of single blessedness for a married life. If I could find my ideal of a wife, I would marry at once.
E. I’ll tell you what it is, Frank. You must go into the country. The girls are mostly sensible there, and think less about dress and fashion. You can assume another name, and then look around you, and become acquainted with some of the country girls. My wife was born and brought up in the country, so I can speak from experience.
F. But how could I manage? I couldn’t go to a hotel and stop with nothing to do. Country girls are ambitious as well as those who live in the city, and if I remained there with no occupation, I should be supposed to be a man of some property, and I shouldn’t be much better off than I am here.
E. That’s so, my friend. I never gave you credit for so much shrewdness. But isn’t there anything you could do,—any kind of business, I mean?
F. I have it. I’ll hire myself out on a farm. In that way, as one of the family, I shall become more intimately acquainted with the neighborhood—girls included.
E. Imagine fastidious Benjamin Franklin Webster dressed in coarse clothes and cowhide boots! (Looking upward.) Shades of the illustrious men whose names he bears, look down with benignity on the depth of degradation to which he proposes to descend!