Helena weekly herald. [volume] (Helena, Mont.) 1867-1900, 1877-05-31
THE OLD BACHELOR.
His Manner of Life and How he Happens to
Get Into It.
From the Philadelphia North Americana

How the old bachelor comes to be bach
elor is often puzzle. 1t is rarely poverty
that has kept him a celibate, tor poor men
most invariably marry. 1t can scarcely be
insensibility to beauty, for the old bachelor is
far too much OF a ladies' man for his years.
1t must be pure selishness 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
disinclinati0n to sacrifice his tastes or accom-
modate his ways to those of another person.
He has been all his life his own center and
his own circumference, and althoug III 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 be-
yond at. This is at once the reason which
has kept him single, and the reason why he
ought to have married. By the compression
which society enforces, his seltishness, in
tense at the outset, has become much too
condensed for his own or anybody else's COM
fort. He has had no family in which to re-
lie7e his pent-up self-importance. A family
lea great safety valve to a man it is sort
of seton by which i'll and salky humors are
drawn off. The man who has children to
tell his old stories to is not always telling
them to his acquaintances. The man who
has wife to scold whenever he likes can
afford to be civil to club waiter; but the
poor old bachelor has neither of these re-
sources. His life is all spent in public, and
all his f0ibles are exposed to general gaze.
So with his crustiness-it may be gout, it
may be toothache, it may be bill, it may be
because the day happens to be his birthday.
1t would all work off in little domestic ex-
plosion, if he had any domesticity in which
to explode; but as he has not, he has to live
abroad to cure his spleen. This is why he is
so cranky over his meals or his cards; this is
why he makes such fuss about draughts which
nobody else can feel this is why he declares
that the nation is going to the dogs and tax
ing the rest of the world with it, and that he
is glad that such is the case; this is why be
hates both the Turks and the Russians,
whereas most other Christians are content to
hate only one OF these people; this is why he
refuses penny to the crossing sweeper. 1t
is all for the want of a wife and family to
snub. If he had them he would be the mild
est and gentlest of men in his intercourse
with his fellows.
But though excuses may be made for the
old bachelor, he is not to escape c0ndenna-
ton. Excuses may be made for any Offend
er-for thieves, Murce cercrs, who are often at
least, so those who have studied the question
say, more sinned against than SHINING. We
confess we 60 not like bachelors as a rule.
There are, of course, brilliant exceptions !;
but, as class, old bachelors are not nice
they are usually at once too old and too young
for their time of life. They profess all the
vices of young men, yet they coddle them
selves like old women. We are by no means
advocates for early marriages. But when
man gets to what is called the prime of life
that is to say, when he has scarcely tooth
of his own in his head and begins to want
spectacles-he ought to take wife, if not in
his own interest, in that of his friends. After
say, tifty-five, very few men can afford to re-
main bachelors There is time for all
things. A bachelor ought to know when to
retire gracefully; but unfortunately, he very
seldom does. He holds on, persuading him
self that he is still young, and he may permit
himself another years indulgence, until grad
ually he slides into an old bachelor, and with
no idea beyond his dinner and the rubber or
cigar which follows it.