Personal advertisements having reference to the matrimonial exigencies
of divers widows, old maids, and bachelors, are not without their
influence upon the sympathies of the age. Particular attention has been
recently directed toward an announcement made in a Cleveland paper to
the effect that "Two widow ladies, strangers in Cleveland, wish to form
the acquaintance of a limited number of gentlemen with a view to happy
results. Please address in confidence,--."
One involuntarily regrets that a prospect thus bounded by an horizon of
"happy results" should have been confined to a "limited number of
gentlemen".
There is nothing so calculated to impair the usefulness of what purports
to be a purely benevolent enterprise, as its selfishness. If a widow, or
any number of widows, really possess the means of realizing "happy
results" with a "limited number of gentlemen," they should either remove
the limitation themselves, or make known the secret to those who would
be less sparing of the joys which it is capable of communicating. A
quack who peddles a valuable remedy upon which he may have stumbled, and
yet refuses to disclose its ingredients for the benefit of the whole
medical fraternity, violates the _esprit du corps_ of the profession,
and is by general consent deemed a fit person to be kicked out of it.
Therefore, if any widows or single ladies in Cleveland have knowledge of
any "happy results" which they advertise to share with a limited number
of gentlemen, we shall deem them unworthy of their sex, unless they
explain the process by which these results are attained, for the benefit
of those who are fast verging toward the autumnal stage of maidenhood.
* * * * *
It may well be doubted whether the thought ever occurred to ADAM that
one day or other a hen would be charged with the care and custody of a
brood of goslings. The pastimes of Eden were perhaps not favorable to
vaticinations in the line of Natural History, but in the progress of the
world since those most primitive times, men have come to contemplate the
spectacle of that familiar barn-yard fowl made wretched by the aquatic
propensities of her supposed offspring, without a particle of
astonishment. The wicked and unfeeling even go so far as to seek
amusement in her misery. Her "ducklings" and other symptoms of maternal
agony at beholding the feathered darlings tempting the dangers of a
neighboring duck-pond, do not move their stony breasts. On the contrary,
they decidedly relish that sort of thing, and greet with positive
hilarity the efforts of some sympathizing rooster to cheer her. Fie,
upon such natures! If they must have an outlet for their ribaldry, let
them take PUNCHINELLO'S advice and select such instances as that
recently furnished in Sacramento, where a hen took charge of a nest of
kittens, and resolutely maintained it against the parent cat. Here the
case was different. The hen had become a trespasser. She had no business
with kittens. There was no hypothesis by which she could claim them as
her own. Kittens are not hereditary in the family of fowls, and she knew
it. It was an usurpation without any pretext of justification. What
would become of us if such a precedent could be extended to the genus
_Mammalia?_ Hundreds of rapacious old maids would be seizing all sorts
and all sizes of babies from agonized mothers, and asserting for
themselves the hallowed duties of maternity. Our infant days would have
been days of ceaseless motion. We should have been shuttle-cocked from
maiden to mother and from mother to maiden after a fashion calculated to
defeat the wise purposes of ipecac and paregoric, and to frighten our
natural curls into a state of painful perpendicularity. The mere
presentment of such a possibility, carries its refutation, and puts the
aggressions of this Sacramento hen in the category of outrages which all
society is banded to suppress. If you must laugh, O generation of
scoffers, make your jokes and gibes the instrument of protecting the
altars of all such feline households as may be thus assailed.
* * * * *
Flag and Rag.
What is the difference between a railroad danger signal and a lost
pocket-handkerchief?
The one is a red flag, the other is a fled rag.
* * * * *
[Illustration: SOCIAL SCIENCE.
_Lecturer._ "THERE IS A CUMULATIVE APPROXIMATIVENESS, SO TO SPEAK, A
PERIOD WHEN THE RECALCITRANT CORPUSCLES BEGIN TO "-------
_Stenographer._ "CON-FOUND THE FELLOW! I KNEW HE'D BREAK MY PENCIL WITH
HIS INFERNAL JAW-SMASHERS!"]
* * * * *