At a reception in Washington this spring an admirable answer was given by a level-headed woman—we are all proud of Miss Cleveland—to a fine-looking army officer, who has been doing guard duty in that magnificent city for the past seventeen years. "Pray," said he, "what do ladies find to think about besides dress and parties?"
"They can think of the heroic deeds of our modern army officers," was her smiling reply.
Do you remember Lydia Maria Child's reply to her husband when he wished he was as rich as Crœsus: "At any rate, you are King of Lydia;" and Lucretia Mott's humorous comment when she entered a room where her husband and his brother Richard were sitting, both of them remarkable for their taciturnity and reticence: "I thought you must both be here—it was so still!"
In my own home I recall a sensible old maid of Scotch descent with her cosey cottage and the dear old-fashioned garden where she loved to work. Our physician, a man of infinite humor, who honestly admired her sterling worth, and was attracted by her individuality, leaned over her fence one bright spring morning, with the direct question: "Miss Sharp, why did you never get married?"
She looked up from her weeding, rested on her hoe-handle, and looking steadily at his hair, which was of a sandy hue, answered: "I'll tell you all about it, Doctor. I made up my mind, when I was a girl, that, come what would, I would never marry a red-headed man, and none but men with red hair have ever offered themselves."
We all know women whose capacity for monologue exhausts all around them. So that the remark will be appreciated of a lady to whom I said, alluding to such a talker: "Have you seen Mrs. —— lately?"
"No, I really had to give up her acquaintance in despair, for I had been trying two years to tell her something in particular."