Perrysburg journal. (Perrysburg, Wood Co., O. [Ohio]) 186?-1965, 1876-01-14
Old Maids.

SOONER or later everybody has a fling
at old maids, either TO say word for
them or a good many against them; and
as yet we believe we have not said any.
thing about them.
But reading, yesterday, an article in q
newspaper, with the well known heading,
" Old Maids" we have been led TO think
that Il was about time we, too, should
put in our oar"
This paragraph occurred in the article
In question:
"Nine out of every ten old maids arc
sour-tempered, gossipy, scolding, meddle-
some old women, with big feet, and
serawny necks, and they are the pests of
the neighborhood."
Now, we don't believe any such thing
Well stake our reputation as a genuine
A! Yankee, good at guessing, that the writer
of that article is crusty old bachelor,
who, in his youth, was sbubbed and jilt.
ed by all the girls he sought TO make love
10, and ii Is more than likely that some of
those very same girls are old maids now,
and he has lately met one of them and
tried his fate over again with the same un-
flattering result.
Story writers always describe their old
maids as tall, thin and angular, with
sharp noses, corkscrew curls and the
neuralgia.
Now, we know lots of old maids, and
nearly every one of them is plump in
stead of lean, and not one of them
wears corkscrew curls. Some of them
are, without exception, the best women
we ever knew. ....
The majority of old maids are not un-
married because nobody has asked
| them" for we do not believe that there Is
a woman living who has reached the age
of thirty without having had an offer.
Old maids are, generally speaking,
| girls who in their youth were bellies and
beauties and who set high value on
themselves-too high to accept the pro-
posals of common men-and so they have,
TO use an old expression, "gone through
the woods without picking up a stick, -
for the sole reason that they were afraid
of picking up crooked one.
A girl who holds herself too high to
stOop 70 wed where she can neither love
nor respect is very likely to be an old
maid. Age does not make her any the
less particular, and as she goes along her
life journey she sees, perhaps, those who
were girls with her unhappily welded to
husbands who are unkind or dissipated or
careless or unfaithiul, and she is strength
ened by the sight to go on her way alone.
And though we believe that marriage is
divine institution, ordained of God and
blessed by Him, and though we believe
that it is far better to marry than to be
single, yet woman had better thousand
times be an old maid than to marry man
whom she cannot love and for whom she
feels no sentiment of respect.
Frequently, circumstances from which
there is no escape prevent girls from mar
rying. Aged relatives whose waning and
broken lives need the fostering and gentle
care cf daughter may stand between
her and happiness, and with a self-sacri-
flee that costs her only Heaven knows
how much she may yield up the love for
which her heart cries dumbly on the altar
of filial duty and stamp herself with the
dreaded stigma of old maid.
Again, death may have taken from her
the chosen of her heart, and her nature
may be too loyal and true to admit of her
enshrining another in the place of the
first love.
Or she may never have met one who
has called forth the strongest and deepest
feelings of her nature, and she may be
wise enough to know that marriage is
never what God designed it should be un-
less it be entered into by
Two souls with but a single thought
Two hearts that beat as one.
Old maids upon the whole are blessing
to the world They take care of sick
sisters and brothers, they make the clothes
for little nieces and nephews, they cause
Sabbath-schools to flourish, they help to
bind churches together, they beg for the
minister and get up album-quilts for his
wife, they are death on rum-drinking,
they are on the side of good morals every
where, and society would find it difficult
thing to get along properly without them
Long may they flourish!-Rate Thorn,
IN NeD York WeeklY.