We are sorry to see so many of the humorous papers find any fun in the
incident of the girl at Keokuk who was hugged to death by her lover. He
had proposed to her, in her father's parlor, and she had accepted him,
and in a moment of ecstacy he hugged her to his breast, and she died at
once. The young man was horror stricken, and called her parents. It is
supposed that she died of heart disease. The case was very sad, indeed,
and papers should not make fun of an occurrence that brings so much
sadness.
However, while this case is fresh in the minds of old and young, we will
embrace the opportunity, and embrace it gently, for fear we will kill
it, to again impress upon young people what we have so often advised,
and that is to be unusually careful about how they hug girls. Many a
young man hugs a girl almost to death, and he never knows how near he
comes to being a murderer.
Girls now-a-days are not what they used to be when you and I were young,
Maggie. They cannot stand as much grief now as girls did twenty years
ago. Somehow, they don't seem to be put up for hugging. If a man puts
his arm around a seven-teen-year-old girl of the present day, and sort
of closes in on the belt, he expects to hear something break. Many a
humane man lets go before he has got a girl half hugged because the girl
looks so frail that he is afraid he will break her in two.
Of course there are exceptions to the frail girls, but the majority are
too much like a bundle of asparagus. Some of the girls of the present
day are robust, and seem to be offended if a person lets up on the
hugging on their account, and it is said they hug back with a vigor
which reminds a man of the days of long ago, but they are few and far
between.
Too much care cannot be exercised in putting arms around the young girls
of to-day, and we would wish to impress this fact upon the minds of the
young men who are just coming upon the stage of action. Of course, men
along in years do not need advice. The boys are apt to put more force
into the right arm than they are aware of, a hundred per cent, more than
they would be apt to do in sawing wood, or in carrying up a scuttle of
coal.
They should bear in mind that girls are too valuable to be used in
developing the muscles, as you would a gymnasium. You don't have to
squeeze a girl till her liver is forced from its normal position, and
she chokes and catches her breath, to show her that you love her. A
gentle squeeze of the hand, the stealing of the arm around her waist
when she is not looking, and the least pressure upon her belt is all
that the law requires.
She can tell by your face whether you love her, as you sit there in
the twilight looking into the guiding star eyes, as well as though you
grabbed her as you would a sack of wheat, and hung on like a dog to a
root.
*****
Anna Dickinson is going upon the stage again and is to play male
characters, such as “Hamlet,” “Macbeth,” and “Claude Melnotte.” We have
insisted for years that Anna Dickinson was a man, and we dare anybody to
prove to the contrary.
There is one way to settle this matter, and that is when she plays
Hamlet. Let the stage manager put a large spider in the skull of Yorick,
and when Hamlet takes up the skull and says, “Alas, poor Yorick, I was
pretty solid with him,” let the spider crawl out of one of the eye holes
onto Hamlet's hand, and proceed to walk up Miss Dickinson's sleeve.
If Hamlet simply shakes the spider off, and goes on with the funeral,
unconcerned, then Miss Dickinson is a man. But if Hamlet screams bloody
murder, throws the skull at the grave digger, falls over into the grave,
tears his shirt, jumps out of the grave and shakes his imaginary skirts,
gathers them all up in his hands and begins to climb up the scenes like
a Samantha cat chased by a dog, and gets on top of the first fly and
raises Hamlet's back and spits, then Miss Dickinson is a woman. The
country will watch eagerly for the result of the test, which we trust
will be made at the Boston Theatre next week.