The Grange advance. [volume] (Red Wing, Minn.) 1873-1877, 1877-06-06
The Old Bachelor.

How the old bachelor comes to be 4
bachelor is often puzzle. 1t is rarely
poverty that has kept him a celibate, for
poor men almost invariably marry. 1t
can scarcely be insensibility to beauty,
for the old lady is far too much OF 9 lady's
man for his years. 1t must be pure self
ishness that has kept him single. He
has been unwilling to give up any of the
little habits and luxuries which make up
his ideal of comfort. He has felt his dis
inclination to sacrifice his tastes or accom-
modate his ways to those of other persons.
He has been all his life his,own center
and his own circumference, and although
his own circumference may be large, if
YOU look at it in the light Of waist, It is
not wide as an orbit of thought. Yet his
thoughts never stray beyond it. This is
at once the reason which has kept him
single, and the reason why he ought to
have married. .s1
By the compression which society en-
forces, his seltishness, intense at the out
set, has become too condensed for his own
or anybody else's comfort. He has no
family to relieve his pcnt up self-impor-
lance. A family is a great safety-valvc
to man; it is q sort of seton by which
i'll and sulky humors are drawn off. The
man who has children to tell his old sto-
ries to is not always telling them to his
acquaintance. The man who has a wife
to scold whenever he likes can afford tc
be civil to club waiter; but the poor old
bachelor has neither of these resources
His life is all spent in public, and all his
foiblcs are exposed to general gaze. Sc
with his crustiness- it may be govt, il
may be the toothache, it may be 3
bill, it may be because the day hap
pens to be his birthday. 1t would all
work off in a little domestic explosion, il
he had any domesticity in whic to ex
plode; but rs he, has not he has to live
abroad to cure his spleen. - -
That is why he is so cranky over hi:
meals or his cards: this is why he make:
so much fuss about draughts which no
body else can feel; that is why he say:
the nation is going to the dogs and taking
the rest Of the old world with it, and tina
he is glad that such is the case; this i:
why he hates both the Turks and thu
Russians, whereas most other Christian:
are content to hate only one of thes'
people; this is why he takes the hack
mans number; this is why he refuses +,
penny to the crossing sweeper. 1t is al
for the want of wife and family t,
snub. If he had them he would be tn,
mildest and gentlest Of men in his inter
course with his fellows.
But though excuses may be made fo
the old bachelor, he is not to escape con
demnatiOn. Excuses may be made 70
any offender-for thieves or murderers
who are often at least, so those who hav
studied the questions say, more slime,
against than sinping. We confess we d
not like old bachelors as rule. Their
are of course, brilliant exceptions; but, a
class. old bachelors are not nice-the,
are usually at once too old and too youn,
for their time of life. They profess al
the vices of young men, yet they coddl
themselves like old women. We are b
no means advocates of early marriages.
But when the man gets to what is Gale
the prime of life-that is to say. when h
has scarcely tooth of his own in his hea
and begins to wear spectacles ougE
to take wife, if not in his own interes
in that of his friends. After, say fifty -fv,
very few men can afford to remain bach
elors. There is time for all things.
bachelor ought to know when to reti1
gracefully; but, unfortunately, he yer
seldom does. He holds on, persuadin
himself that he is still young, and he ma
permit himself another years inclepe1
dence, until gradually he slides into a
old bachelor, and with no idea beyond h
dinner and the rubber or cigar which 70
lows it-North american.