There was once a good and worthy man, a minister of the gospel and an
altruist of intense activity, who was grievously distressed by the
unhappy marriages in his neighbourhood. He saw young men who ought (as
he thought) to marry Jane and Eliza leading to the altar Violet and
Ermyntrude; and young women fitted to be wise helpmates to John and
Richard setting their caps at Reginald and Hughie; the result being
the usual bickerings and dissatisfactions of the ill-matched.
The matter troubled him so seriously that he joined a toxophilite club
and took lessons in archery until he could hit the gold at five hundred
yards twenty times in succession; and having reached this state of
proficiency he called on Dan Cupid and expressed to that mischievous
and uncovered boy his disapproval of the happy-go-lucky way in which he
pulled his bow-string and directed his arrows, almost without looking.
He then offered himself to shoot in Cupid’s stead.
“There may be something in what you say,” Cupid replied; “at any rate
you seem to be older and graver and possibly wiser than I, and you
certainly wear more clothes. Take the bow and try.”
The good man did so, and the next day or so he was very busy
conscientiously transfixing the hearts of his parishioners. Such was
the accuracy of his aim that he made only one slip, and that was
when, in his endeavours to unite by puncture the cardiac penumbras of
pretty little Lizzie Porter and Mr. Godfrey Bloom, his eye faltered,
and instead Mr. Godfrey Bloom was paired with the exceedingly
unprepossessing Dorothea Atkins, who happened to be standing close by.
The good man did all that was possible to repair the mischief which he
felt his lapse has caused; but it was in vain, and Miss Lizzie Porter
never regained her chance.
“Well,” said Cupid, as he strolled into the good man’s garden a few
years after, “how has your shooting turned out? Perfectly, I suppose.”
“No,” the good man replied with a sigh, “I am afraid not. As a matter
of fact the only happy brace in the whole bag are Godfrey and Dorothea.”
“Quite so,” said the little fellow. “I expected it. I always felt those
archery lessons were a mistake.”
“Then what is to be done?” asked the good man. “What is to be done if
neither taking aim nor shooting at random avails?”
“Nothing,” said Cupid as he fitted an arrow to the string. “Nothing.
One just goes on shooting and hopes for the best.”
The following pages contain advertisements of Macmillan books by the
same author