Iowa County democrat. [volume] (Mineral Point, Wis.) 1877-1938, 1888-03-02

marry, and the chances are that he doesn't
come back again.
He is drummer out on the road some
where, or he finds his way ineo bushes in
Boston, New York or the West. If he
makes vacation trip home he is i'm
pressed By the lack of money in New
England outside cities by the length of
| time since the houses have been painted,
and the amount of calculation required
before a dollar can be expended. he
! doesn't stop long enough to learn to ad-
mire the hardy thrift that can wiring a
| comfortable support out of q rocky soil
where New Yorker would starve or com
NIT suicide, and the girls he left behind
him can not compars, SO he thinks on his
return, for beauty, or dress, or coquetry
of manner, or small talk of society, with
the city girl who has become insensibly
his standard of girlhood.
Not that he expects to marry the city
girl, not at all-no. The newspapers
have slaudered her, to the trans planted
country young map, until between ice
cream in Summer and seals skins in
Winter, civilization would be justified, if
! 1t put much faith in news papers, i'll fling
its girl babies into the Charles river or
the Hudson to rid the world of such use
less membranes. The fairly meaning
| and domestic young man thinks he
| doesn't approve of the city young girl, but
her chic has none the less surely spoiled
the country girl for him, the usual result
! being that he goes into bachelors lo6g
ings until he has untitled himself IN
tastes and habits to marry at all.
NOT AN UNHAPPY LOT.
These things considered, it is fortunate
for the spinster that she is beginning to
think it natural and not altogether un-
pleasant state of affairs to be q spinster.
They do not look to me an unhappy lot
these New England old maids. For one
thing, New England is learning to be ten
der of them. She does not call them old
maids. Being SO strong al element i'll
society, they perhaps dictate its atti-
tUde toward themselves. At all events by
pleasant euphamism enough, the fiction
of their perpetual youth is kept until
they die. You may hear New England
woman speak of the Fisher girls" or the
Simpson girls" for weeks before the
truth is borne in upon you that the girls"
are well along toward their 10Th year.
They never married. and nobody was
ever cruel enough to ulark out any line
beyond which they ceased to be young.
They are self-respecting and respected,
these spirsters, too. l wonder if it sounds
strange in more sophisticated latitudes
to be told that there are to this day New
England towns in abundance where the
best educated and the best Yankee girl of
the best old colonial family can go into
the shoe shop rs Lacy LarcOm and her
cOmpeers did into the Lowell mills when
mills and shoe factories were new, and
work three years after she had ceased to
be girl save by courtesy, and still read
the Atlantic and move in, perhaps lead.
the most aristocratic society of the place.
It is not such bad thing to be an old
maid, where you can work at whatever
comes handiest without loss of dignity,
and where your neighbors On both sides
are more likely than not to be old maids
too.ss
You are following what is there the
natural destiny Of woman. If you
marry, then indeed comes the wonder,
the surprise. Where did ne come from,
who is he, and how did it happen that
you took fancyt to him? Sometimes
New England village puts an exaggerated
value on man, especially new conner,
as rare and unexpected being who
opens new Possibilities to half the girls
in the place; but oftener the women grow
SO oself-dependent, so used to managing
for themselves, that the unnecessary
creature, man, must be very good indeed
to be good enough for one of them.
There is more or less common sense
floating round in New England, and it is
about as coed q place to be an old maid
in as one could find.