The home journal. (Winchester, Tenn.) 1858-188?, 1873-07-17
II HAVE GOT A SECRET.
How Young Lady Feels When She is
Engaged.

How A Young Lady Feels When She is
Engaged.
The following intercepted letter.
from the Home Journal, tells funnily
how young miss feels when surrep-
tiously engaged
DEAR ALLIE-I have got real, live,
grown-up beau and isn't it jolly; he's
perfectly splendid ; just like those love
ly wax figures in the windows, only they
can't use their lips. It's my French
teacher, and he says "D,0 petite" just
like cooling dove, and he always smells
so sweet of pond lilies ! | don't have
anything to do with the boys now those
little boys Of seventeen and eighteen do
very well when there are no men
around, if they can get money enough
from their pas to buy us Gunther's can
dies, but they can't amuse us girls Of
fourteen, they seem just like babies,
and when they try to make love, o, my,
arn't they mushy? Now, Monsieur
Fontaine acts rs if he had been engaged
twenty times, although Pm his first
love but we don't let on before ma,
and Thuse. Itmakes Arethusa awful mad
to have me call her Thuse, and that's
the reason do it. | heard her ask ma
the other day if the Frenchmans man
ners were not too familiar towards that
child. Child She's awfully afraid OF
my being young lady What need
she care, now she's married? Wasn't
she spoony, though, about Fred? When
he used to come and see her, would
drag Tommy into the room and put my
arm around his waist and squeeze his
hand until her face would be as red as
beet. Such fun | caught her kiss
ing him once such II little nipping kiss,
just as if she were tasting pepper sauce.
Now, if pretended to kiss man, I'd
do it in right good earnest just plant
my feet square on the ground and give
to him first pop right on the lips. o
Allie, poor Thuse would go off on a
dead faint at my low-bred expressions,
and inform me for the nine hundred and
ninth time, that my name is Ellsworth
Just as if l didn't know my own name,
and what does it matter any way, when
| expect to change it so soon? / do not
expect to hang on to it till | am hor-
rid old maid, like poor Miss Tracy OPP
posite. She might be a warning to the
strongest minded She's nervous, and
how / do love to scare her. | Ipromised
Tommy the other day five cents worth
of peanuts to let me hold him out Of
our third story window. He'd let me
skin him for Il paper of peanuts. 80 l
got him out, and knelt down under the
window ledge, where | couldn't be seen,
and held tight hold Of his wrists. Thuse
thinks my strength is disgusting. Pret-
ty soon there was an elderly shrek,
and then an elderly form rushed across
the street to mother but by the time
they got up stairs | was seated quietly
at my crochet-work, and Tommy was
turning summersaults on the bed, over
the lovely huted pillow cases. And ma
still thinks its poor Miss Tracy that is "a
little wild at times"
l love my brother Fred ever so much,
but | don't see how he ever came to
fancy such die-away specimen as our
Thuse. Because she is so awfully pref
ty, suppose; but she Just turns him
round her thumb. If he refuses to get
what she wants, she just looks like a
martyr in the flames, and lets down all
her back hair like the Magdalens in the
picture gallery. And although they
are real pretty hanging on the walls,
even an artist does not want to sit at
the table three times day opposite a
live one, with her eyes rolled up and
her hair down her back. SO poor Fred
always gives in, and she smiles forgiv-
ing smile, puts up her hair, and goes
off to buy the fine silk or the set of
iewelry that has taken her fancy. And
when she gets it she keeps tight hold
of it, too. She has never given Inc even
a cuf-button. Thuse always was stingy.
And she is so stuck-up because she has
got son. Just as if it was something
wonderful. Why, Mrs. Tubbs, our
laundress, has eight of them, besides
one that was drowned and one scalded,
and she isn't bit set up. But Arthusa
says "my boy!" and does the maternal
all to pieces. She thinks Alexis is made
out of nicer materials than most babies,
and | know she doesn't believe the cat
echism where it says he was made out
of the vulgar dust of the earth. / sup
pose she thinks rose-leaves and corn
starch were used to make up his deli
cate organization. It would relieve my
feelings to see speck of dirt on that
child's face it makes me ache to see
him so painfully clean. And she thinks