Humorous stories, American; United States -- Social life and customs -- Fiction
And they use up more hair-oil than any six men. If charged with
purloining the same, they lie about it. What do they care about a
hereafter? Absolutely nothing.
If you leave the key in the door for convenience' sake, they will carry
it down to the office and give it to the clerk. They do this under the
vile pretense of trying to protect your property from thieves; but
actually they do it because they want to make you tramp back down-stairs
after it when you come home tired, or put you to the trouble of sending a
waiter for it, which waiter will expect you to pay him something. In
which case I suppose the degraded creatures divide.
They keep always trying to make your bed before you get up, thus
destroying your rest and inflicting agony upon you; but after you get up,
they don't come any more till next day.
They do all the mean things they can think of, and they do them just out
of pure cussedness, and nothing else.
Chambermaids are dead to every human instinct.
If I can get a bill through the legislature abolishing chambermaids, I
mean to do it.
AURELIA'S UNFORTUNATE YOUNG MAN--[Written about 1865.]
The facts in the following case came to me by letter from a young lady
who lives in the beautiful city of San Jose; she is perfectly unknown to
me, and simply signs herself "Aurelia Maria," which may possibly be a
fictitious name. But no matter, the poor girl is almost heartbroken by
the misfortunes she has undergone, and so confused by the conflicting
counsels of misguided friends and insidious enemies that she does not
know what course to pursue in order to extricate herself from the web of
difficulties in which she seems almost hopelessly involved. In this
dilemma she turns to me for help, and supplicates for my guidance and
instruction with a moving eloquence that would touch the heart of a
statue. Hear her sad story:
She says that when she was sixteen years old she met and loved, with all
the devotion of a passionate nature, a young man from New Jersey, named
Williamson Breckinridge Caruthers, who was some six years her senior.
They were engaged, with the free consent of their friends and relatives,
and for a time it seemed as if their career was destined to, be
characterized by an immunity from sorrow beyond the usual lot of
humanity. But at last the tide of fortune turned; young Caruthers became
infect with smallpox of the most virulent type, and when he recovered
from his illness his face was pitted like a waffle-mold, and his
comeliness gone forever. Aurelia thought to break off the engagement at
first, but pity for her unfortunate lover caused her to postpone the
marriage-day for a season, and give him another trial.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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