The Hickman courier., 1873-07-12
"I HAVE GOT a SECRET.
How a Young Lady Feels When She
Engaged.

How 4 Young Lady Feels when she -
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 "Bla petite just
ike a cooing dove, and he always smells
so sweet of pond lillles 1 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 as If he had been engaged
twenty times, although I'm his first
love; but we don't let on before ma,
I l.
to have me call her Thuse, and that's
the reason I do it. heard her ask ma
the other day if the Frenchman's man
ners were not too familiar towards that
child. Child She's awfuIly afraid OF
my. beng. n 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 a
beet. Such fun I caught her kiss
ing him once such little nipping kiss,
Just as if she were tasting pepper sauce.
Now. if I pretended to kiss a man, I'd
do it in right good earnest; just plant
my feet square on the ground and give
to bim 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 I didn't know my own name,
and what does it matter any way, when
I expect TO change 1t so soon? l do not
expect to hang on to it till am hor-
rid old maid, like poor Miss Tracy op-
posite. She might be warning to the
strongest minded. She's nervous, and
how / do love to scare her. I promised
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 paper of peanuts. So l
got him out, and knelt down under the
window ledge, where l couldn't be seen,
and held tight hold of his wrists. Thuse
thinks my sSength 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 nv erochet-work, and Tommy was
turning summersaults on the bed, over
the lovely futed pillow cases. And ma
still thinks its poor Miss Tracy that IS ''a
little Wild at times"
1 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 awfulIy pret-
ty, I suppose; but she just turns him
! round her thumb. If he refuses to get
/, what she wants, she Just looks like g
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
5 even an artist does not want to sit al
the table three times a day opposite {
live one. with her eyes rolled up an(
her hair down her back. So poor Fred
r always gives IN, and she smiles forgiv
e ing smile, puts up her hair, and gee
off to buy the fine silk or the set o
iewelry that has taken her fancy. AnS
e when she gets it she keeps tight holC
of it. too. She has never given me evel
a cuff buttSa. Thuse always was stingy
And she is so stuck-up because she ha
got a son. Just as if it was something
wonderful. Why, Mrs. Tubbs, on
laundress, has eight of them, beside
+ one that was drowned and one scalded
9 and she isn't bit set up. But Arthus
: says "my boy p and does the materna
= all to pieces. She thinks Alexis is mad
out of nicer materials than most babies
i and I know she doesn't believe the cat
; echism where it says he was made on
: of the vulgar dust of the earth. I sup
pose she thinks rose-leaves and corn
starch were used to make up his deli
cate organization. 1t would relieve N.
feelings to see a speck of dirt on tina
child's face it makes me ache to sc
! him so painfully clean And she think
he is going to be little Solomon, 0
some humbug or other.
: Now, Allie, I have got a secret tha
you mustn't tell living soul. If yo
Z do I will never forgive you hav
promised Monsieur Fontaine to be mai
4 ried in three weeks, on my fourteent
$ birthday, and if mother seems likely
object, we are going to elope, Just lk