Humorous stories, American; United States -- Social life and customs -- 19th century -- Fiction
MESDAMES, MAMSELLES AND FELLOW-CITIZENS--I write these few lines to say
that I am well and hope this will find you all enjoying the same great
blessing. How pleasant it is for sisters to dwell together in unity and
beloved by mankind. You must indeed have a good time standing in the
window day after day, pulling your long hair through your fingers with
pride. When I first saw you all thus engaged, for the benefit of the
public, I thought it was a candy pull.
I now write to say that the hair promoter which you sold me at the time
is not up to its work. It was a year ago that I bought it, and I think
that in a year something ought to show. It is a great nuisance for a
public man who is liable to come home late at night to have to top-dress
his head before he can retire. Your directions involve great care and
trouble to a man in my position, and still I have tried faithfully to
follow them. What is the result? Nothing but disappointment, and not so
very much of that.
You said, if you remember, that your father was a bald-headed clergyman,
but one day, with a wild shriek of "Eureka!" he discovered this hair
encourager, and for the rest of his life filled his high hat with hair
every time he put it on. You said that at first a fine growth of down,
like the inside of a mouse's ear, would be seen, after that the blade,
then the stalk, and the full corn in the ear. In a pig's ear, I am now
led to believe.
Fair, but false seven-haired sisters, I now bid you adieu. You have lost
in me a good, warm, true-hearted, and powerful friend. Ask me not for my
indorsement, or for my before and after taking pictures to use in your
circulars; I give my kind words and photographs hereafter to the soap
men. They are what they seem. You are not.
When a woman betrays me she must beware. And when seven of them do so,
it is that much worse. You fooled me with smiles and false promises, and
now it will be just as well for you to look out. I would rather die than
be betrayed. It is disagreeable. It sours one, and also embitters one.
Here at this point our ways will diverge. The roads fork at this place.
I shall go on upward and onward hairless and cappy, also careless and
happy, to my goal in life. I do not know whether each or either of you
have provided yourselves with goals or not, but if not you will do well
now to select some. The world may smile upon you, and gold pour into
your coffers, but the day will come when you will have to wrap the
drapery of your hair about you and lie down to pleasant dreams. Then
will arise the thought, alas!--Then You'll Remember Me.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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