The Raptures of Cupid
In the April issue we published a model love letter, and since then we have been deluged with dimes from anxious swains asking us to hurry along another letter, as their sweethearts had answered the first and were expecting another. As we are always ready to sympathize with crooning youths, and wish to be obliging, we are offering another captivating love note in the following:
My dear Miss Gumptious: Every time I think of you, my heart flops up and down like a churn dasher. Sensations of unutterable joy caper over it like young goats on a stable roof, and thrill through it like Spanish needles through a pair of two linen trousers. As a gosling swimmeth with delight in a mud puddle, so swim I in a sea of glory. Visions of ecstatic rapture, thicker than the hairs of a blacking brush, and brighter than the hues of a humming bird’s pinions, visit me in my slumbers; and, borne on their invisible wings, your image stands before me, and I reach out to grasp it, like a pointer snapping at a blue-bottle fly. When I first beheld your angelic perfections I was bewildered, and my brain whirled ’round like a bumble bee under a glass tumbler. My eyes stood open like cellar doors in a country town, and I lifted up my ears to catch the silvery accents of your voice. My tongue refused to wag and in silent adoration I drank in the sweet infection of love as a thirsty man swalloweth a tumbler of hot whiskey punch.
Since the light of your face fell upon my life, I sometimes feel as if I could lift myself up by my boot straps to the top of the church steeple, and pull the bell rope for singing school. Day and night you are in my thoughts. When Aurora, rising from her saffron-colored couch, blushing like a bride; when the jay bird pipes his tuneful lay in the apple tree by the spring house; when the chanticleer’s shrill clarion heralds the coming morn; when the awakening pig ariseth from his bed and grunteth, and goeth forth for his morning refreshments; when the drowsy beetle wheels to droning flight at sultry noontide; and when the lowing herds come home at milking time, I think of thee; and, like a piece of gum elastic, my heart seems stretched clear across my bosom. Your hair is like the mane of a sorrel horse, powdered with gold, and the brass pins skewered through your water-fall fill me with unbounded awe. Your forehead is smoother than the elbow of an old coat; your eyes are glorious to behold. In their liquid depths I see legions of little Cupids bathing, like a cohort of ants in an old Army cracker. When their fire hit me upon my manly breast, it penetrated my whole anatomy, as a load of bird shot through a rotten apple. Your nose is a chunk of Parian marble, and your mouth is puckered with sweetness. Nectar lingers on your lips, like honey on a bear’s paw; and myriads of unfledged kisses are there, ready to fly out and light somewhere, like bluebirds out of their parents’ nest. Your laugh rings in my ears like the windharp’s strain, or the bleat of a stray lamb on a bleak hillside. The dimples in your cheeks are like bowers in beds of roses—hollows in cakes of home-made sugar.
I am dying to fly to thy presence, and pour out the burning eloquence of my love, as thrifty housewives pour out hot coffee. Away from you I am as melancholy as a rat.
Sometimes, I can hear the June bugs of despondency buzzing in my ears, and feel the cold lizards of despair crawling down my back. Uncouth fears, like a thousand minnows, nibble at my spirits; and my soul is pierced with doubts, as an old cheese is bored with skippers.
My love for you is stronger than the smell of patent butter, or the kick of a young cow, and more unselfish than a kitten’s first catterwaul. As a song bird hankers for the light of day, the cautious mouse for the fresh bacon in the trap, as a mean pup hankers after new milk, so I long for thee.
You are fairer than a speckled pullet, sweeter than a Yankee doughnut fried in sorghum molasses, brighter than the top knot plumage of muscovy ducks. You are candy, kisses, raisins, pound-cake and sweetened toddy altogether.
If these few remarks will enable you to see the inside of my soul, and me to win your affection, I shall be as happy as a woodpecker on a cherry tree, or a stage horse in a green pasture. If you cannot reciprocate my thrilling passion, I will pine away like a poisoned bed bug, and fall away from a flourishing vine of life an untimely branch; and, in the coming years, when the shadows grow from the hills, and the philosophical frog sings his cheerful evening hymn, you, happy in another’s love can come and cast a tear and catch a cold upon the last resting place of