"'Do women ever die for love?'
"'Heaven forbid! I did see a man the other day, though, oh Tom!!—never mind; he's gone—with your 'little feet;' vanished into that grave of our mutual hopes—an omnibus! my heart went with him—such a figure as he had! Saints and angels! wouldn't I like to see him again? I've had an overpowering sensation of goneness ever since! and speaking of goneness, won't you walk out, before you light that horrid cigar.'"
XXXII.
A LETTER TO THE TRUE FLAG.
Next get into the habit of writing letters to your female acquaintances, which will draw from them replies; from both of which sources you will in time learn enough of female vanity and sentimentality to form the ground-work of a love-story.—True Flag, No. 39.
Dear Mr. True Flag:—I'm appointed 'a committee of one,' to inquire who perpetrated that sentiment in your last week's paper? Trot him out! please, and let me put my two eyes on him; and if looking will annihilate him, there shan't be anything left for the undertaker to shovel up. I'm indignant, very! and what's more; I don't like it!
"'Female vanity and sentimentality!' Oh, Delilah, Dolly, Julia, Jane, Agnes, Amelia, Kathleen, Kitty, your letters fell into the hands of the Philistines, and that's their epitaph!
"'Female vanity and sentimentality!' O-o-h! May you never have a string to your dickey, or a dickey to your string! button to your coat, or a pair of whole gloves or stockings. May you sit in a state of utter inconsolability over your unswept, untidy hearth, and bachelor fire. May you never have a soft place to lay your head when it aches; no nice little hand to magnetize away the blue devils; nobody to jump up on a cricket and tie your neck-cloth in a pretty little bow! No bright eyes to look proudly out the window after you when you go down to the store! no pretty little feet to trip to the door to meet you when you come back! May your coffee be smoky, your toast burnt, your tea be water-bewitched; your razor grow dull, your moustache turn the wrong way! your boots be 'corned!' your lips be innocent of a kiss from this day, henceforward and forever; and may you die a cantankerous, crusty, captious, companionless, musty, fusty old Benedict! Amen!
"Fanny Fern.
"P. S.—If he's handsome, dear Mr. Flag, we'll remove the anathema, and let him off with a slight reprimand, under promise of better behavior.