Barbour County index. [volume] (Medicine Lodge, Kan.) 1880-current, 1885-10-23

me out of lots of fun.
Married! To be married. Well, hardly.
What is married but mismated, too
often married? Nature plays many
high old quips and quirks, and kicks up
her venerable heels in countless can-can
pirouettes and whirligigs. She stuffs
a president with a peanut peddler's S
soul and makes herO's heart thrOb be-
meath the ragged waistcoat of scaven-
ger. She drapes galvanized oyster
wenches, or worse, in the rich laces and
brocades of senator's, governors and
cabinet ministers wives, and enclOses
the spirit of a saint or martyr in the
! dingy tatters of charwOman or a beg
gar. She wraps courage, gratitude, and
affection in the hide of dog. and swad-
dies baseness and brutality in broad
cloth and fine linen. She permits two
legged donkeys to bray in all our legis-
lative halls and dine at our Delmonico's
Willie their saPeriOrs every worthy
quality and qualification MUNICH coarse
straw in thousand unchinked country
stables. She builds quadrupedal men
and bipedal swine. But all her oldest.
maddeSt freaks are tame and rational
compared with the wild WITNESSES of
love and marriage.
LooS where You will, what world of
/ tangles and misfits. Eagles mate with
moles, and swans with hedgehOgs. Tom
Thumbs pine for she Goliaths. Sons of
Anak wed human humming birds.
Mighty-brained heroes and statesmen
rave over nane little butterflies, puny
wax dolls, taffy-faced pigmies; and
women who would grace a court ally
themselves with counter hoppers, num-
skulls, and boobies. Kings bow down
to ballet dancers, and Queens take ref
/ uge in the arms of cooks and coachmen.
/ Who ever heard of half dozen Pres
idents' wives? While Andrew Jackson
ran the White Bouse like an Emperor.
the old wife, for whom he murdered
Dickinson, smoked her cob pipe in the
backwOodS of Tennessee. Where are.
and where have been. all the Mr.. He
manses, Mr.. Ristoris, Mr. Harriet Bee
cher Stoves, and Mr.. Jennie Junes?
Every fellow gets the wrong woman
and no woman gets the right fellow.
To love is to be ecStatically miserable.
To court is to vibrate between the Or
thodox and japanese hells-from a hell
of fire to hell of ice. To marry is to
plunge into both at once, and to take
the chances of looking forever like one
half of Carolina chariot team, which
usually consists of blind jack and
moody COW, or scrub calf and knock
kneed jennet. Marriage has been llk-
ened to the flies on dining-room win
dow-all on the outside are butting
their heads against the glass to get in,
and all OH the inside are butting their
heads against it TO get out; and, go
which way they Will, there is always
pane ahead OF them. In view of all the
chances, the only wonder is that any
flies are foolish enough to want TO get in.
Married! To be married! Marriage
is that wOndrOus, mystic ceremonial
which makes two immOrtals one-but
in many instances life is spent in trying
to decide which one. l know there is a
sentimental side 10 it. l know all the
hifalutin stereotyped stuff about it. /
know where two congenial hearts and
souls aglOw with pure and fervent love
unite. the golden chains of matrimony
are inlaid with down, and her lamp is
radiant with heavens own effulgent
splendor. Their pleasures are doubled
and their griefs divided by sharing them:
Let come the wild weather-come sleet or come
snow,
They will stand by each other, however T. blow:
Oppression and sickness, and sorrow and pain,
Are but to their true love as links to a chain.
Yes, yes, know all about it. could
pour out that sort of gush and flapdoo-
die by the column or the sorghum bar
relful. But where are you going to find
that style of pure and fervent and con-
genial hearts and souls and young
affections, unshaken tabernacles and
quenchless fires of faith and love, and
all those other delicious bantlings of
the skies, in this sOrdid and mercenary.
practical agep The dodo and the tune
full swan are extinct birds, but would
as soon think of stocking an ayiaIy with
their three-thousand-year-old bones as
of attempting to start my conjugal side
show on the sweet, ethereal figments of
romaucers and dreamers in that blest
period when the world was young. and
people loved and wOoed and welded as
their hearts, and not their pocket-books
and their neighbOrs' opinions, led them.
Married. To be married. And to a
Mexican girl! What sort of a traitor
do you take me for? Desert my own
country and country-women, and marry
foreigner, while the census shows a
half million or million possible and
probable old maids coming on beneath
the starry banner of the free? Never.
But she is rich. Well, L have no hank
ering for situation to carry some
woman's baggage checks through life.
And she sings like nightingale. That
is sweet, but prefer our own mocking
birds, orioles, or meadow larks. And
she speaks three languages. Heaven
preserve me. Any well-organized wo-
man can talk enough for me in one.
Married. To be married. Nay, nay,
l was but recently an editor-man. Di-
vide nothing by two, and perhaps by
several, and how much remains? Ask
to starve some other gentleman's sister
to death9 Harness an angel fresh from
realms of celestial bloom and sunshine
to ragman's dog cart? Clip the rain
bow-tinted pinions of a seraph, or SER
aphim, and give her in exchange one
ink-smeared gray goose quill? All. no,