A Guest at the Ludlow, and Other Stories — John Shaqi
A Guest at the Ludlow, and Other StoriesNye, Bill
General
A Guest at the Ludlow, and Other Stories
Nye, Bill
Humorous stories, American; United States -- Social life and customs -- 19th century -- Fiction
The following matrimonial inquiries are now in my hands awaiting
replies, and I take this method of giving them more air. A few months
ago I injudiciously stated that I should take great pleasure in booming,
or otherwise whooping up, everything in the matrimonial line, if those
who needed aid would send me twenty-five cents, with personal
description, lock of hair, and general outline of the style of husband
or wife they were yearning for. As a result of thus yielding to a blind
impulse and giving it currency through the daily press, I now have a
huge mass of more or less soiled postage stamps that look as though they
had made a bicycle tour around the world, a haymow full of letters
breathing love till you can't rest, and a barrel of calico-colored hair.
It is a rare treat to look at this assortment of hair of every hue and
degree of curl and coarseness. When I pour it out on the floor it looks
like the interior of a western barber shop during a state fair. When I
want fun again I shall not undertake to obtain it by starting a
matrimonial agency.
I have one letter from a man of twenty-seven summers, who pants to
bestow himself on some one at as early a date as possible. He tells me
on a separate slip of paper, which he wishes destroyed, that he is a
little given to "bowling up," a term with which I am not familiar, but
he goes on to say that a good, noble woman, with love in her heart and
an earnest desire to save a soul, could rush in and gather him in in
good shape. He says that he is worthy, and that if he could be snatched
from a drunkard's grave in time he believes he would become eminent. He
says that several people have already been overheard to say: "What a
pity he drinks." From this he is led to believe that a good wife, with
some means, could redeem him. He says it is quite a common thing for
young women where he lives to marry young men for the purpose of saving
them.
I think myself that some young girl ought to come forward and snatch
this brand at an early date.
The great trouble with men who form the bowl habit is that, on the
morrow, after they have been so bowling, they awake with a distinct and
well-defined sensation of soreness and swollenness about the head,
accompanied by a strong desire to hit some living thing with a stove
leg. The married man can always turn to his wife in such an emergency,
smite her and then go to sleep again, but to one who is doomed to wander
alone through life there is nothing to do but to suffer on, or go out
and strike some one who does not belong to his family, and so lay
himself liable to arrest.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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