Juniata sentinel and Republican. [volume] (Mifflintown, Juniata County, Pa.) 1873-1955, 1874-08-12
Summer WidoWcrs.

y magazine writer thus ulScouIsc>:
At this season of the year a great
many married men, as everybody
knows, lead for several weeks the life
of bachelors or widowers. Their wives
and children 20 to the springs, or cOun-
Try boar ding houses, or the seashore.
They themselves stay in town. II the
place to which their families have gone
is near enough, they generally betaKe
themselves TO it ON Saturday evening
and return ON Monday morning. The
rest of the week Is, except in business
hours, spent either at a city boarding
house or in an Alexander Selkirk mode
of existence in their own dOmiciles.
When one of of these individuals Is
asked how he likes this kind of life, he
replies that IL Is a miserable way OF
getting along, but it cannot be helped
Ii Is matter of necessity, he says, and
there is no use in grumbling; he must
make the best of it.
There can be no doubt that the ne
cessity thus spoken of has, III many
cases, real existence. The health of
families, especially where there are
young children, often renders it exceed
ingly desirable that they should he out
of the city in hot weather. How much
matters are improved by taking the
children, as is often done, to a crowded
watering-place hotel, Is Il question
which unfashiOnably disposed persons
sometimes ask, but which we must con-
fess ourselves unable to answer. 1t is
not our purpose, at present, to say how
far watering-place life Is, or Is not,
beneficial either to children or grown
people. What we wish TO speak of
now is, the undoubted fact that. what
ever may be said about the need of
utility of such Il state of things in GER
tain cases, there are every summer, In
this and other cities, thousands of men
who are for two or three months almost
completely eXiled from their families.
Dismal shadows of their former selves,
they fit jOylessly from their stores to
their houses and from their homes To
their stores, glad even of that tempo
rary relief from their melancholy which
is afforded by their rcOuntinc-rOoms and
a prOfuse perspiTation. Even the
MONDAY feed at a restaurant-an ire
pressible tear intercepts the cOmmuni-
cation between each of our eyes and
the paper before us as we write-ls felt
to be an agreeable variety as compared
with the solitary morning and evening
meal at home. When the summer Is
about half gone, the miserable man
generally becomes desperate land starts
off. determined To remain with his
| family till their return to the city.
| After he has been away Il week or ten
/ DAYS. his partners, who do not fancy
having his work to do i'll addition 10
| their own when the mercury Is Ill the
nineties, contrive to find out that the
, business is threatened with total
| smash-up unless he returns on the first
| train. So, back the poor man comes,
/ finds the affairs of the firm as secure as
| the Fortress of Gibraltar, but concludes
/ that as the experiment of leaving was
so unsuccessful, he may as well stay
where he is the remainder of the
season.
1t il so delightful to think that all
| discomfort is not without its reward.
As the mans family usually come back
after their summer sojOurn with rather
poorer health than when they started
from home, he naturally pictures to
himself how much worse they would
have been if they had stayed in the hot
and unhealthy atmosphere of the city
all the time. 1t Is certainly better, he
reflects, To be a little lonely a few
weeks than to see half his children die
and go into Il decline. He therefore
goes to work at money making with re-
newed energy, one of his principal OBJ
jects being to send his family away
the next summer, in order that the
same beneficial effects may he again
experienced.
OF the class of men of whom we have
spoken, many are now, we fear, con-
siderably troubled because the dull
ness of business during the past year
will prevent their sending their faml-
lies away for so long a time as usual
this summer. This is very sad. But
there is one very curious circumstance
which we have ofteu observed. the
statement of which, we hope, will af-
ford some comfort for the privation we
have mentioned. Strange as 1t may
appear, families that are thus COM
PEELED to fOrego their accustomed sum-
mer absence from the city, generally
find, at the end of the season that their
health Is, from some unaccountable
cause, quite as good as in years when
they went out of town. The reason
for this singular physiological phen-
omenOn must he left to medical men,
All we can pretend to do is simply to
} state the fact and to present II as an
] agreeable subject of reflection to those
who, after having hitherto been accus-
toned to lead the life of childless wild
overs for a couple of months or more
every year. propose to enjoy through
out the summer the luxury of living
under the same roof with their wives
and children.