The Arkansaw traveler., 1888-06-09

NAnh 1AO AAS Ab OA ouOCGlOu WHICH DuTuS within. 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 it blow;
 Oppression and sickness, and sorrow and pain,
 Are but to their true love as links to the
 chain.
 Yes, yes, I know it, know all about it. could pour out that sort of gush and fapdoodle by the column or the sorghum barrelful. But where are you going to find that style of pure and fervent and coDgenial hearts and souls and young affections, unshakable tabernacles, and quenchless fires of faith and love, and all those other de- licious bantlings of the skies, in this sordid and mercenary, practical age, when True Love, bright fledgling of the upper spheres, the food of angels, the light and very atmosphere of heaven, twin seraph of delight, the synonym of God, has become but schoolboy dream, the empty name ot vanished phantasm, vague, dim memory of the long past glintings of cherubic pinions, the scoff of dudes and plaything of coquettes; when Cupid and cupidity are confounded, and matrimony has sunk to matter o'-money indeed? The dodo and the tuneful swan are extinct birds, but would as soon think of stocking an avi- ary with their three- thousand year. old bones, as of attempting to start my conjugal side-show on the sweet, ethereal figments of the romancers and dreamers in that blest period when the world was young, and people loved and wooed and welded as their hearts, and not their pockets and their neighbors' opinions, led them.
 Marriedl To be married! l? Make myself blushing target for every newspaperial nincompoop in the coun- try for months to come? Set myself up for every cross roads journalistic owner of a dilapidated lemon-squeezer press and hatful of pica "pi" to hurl buckets of tafly and slop, fiabbergasty wit and rhetoric, and cart loads of old slippers and called good wishes, at and on and all over me at his will? Do I not know what they would say? Have l not been there2 Have I not said and written the same absurdities and idiocities hundred or thou sand times, when other fellows have been the victims? Who is there that cannot rattle it off like prize poll parrot? The groom, gallant soldier or boss of sutler-wagon during the war, handsome, gifted, brilliant, ver- satile,e sd omne genus hum6ugt6us. The bride, one of the loveliest daughters of her noble state, beautiful in person and charming in mind and character, adorned with all the virtues and graces that render young womanhood glorious, and fitted for queenship in any realm. The impressive ceremony, the exquisite bowers of tropical flowers; the inspiring strains of the grand organ, or the music from foliage hidden harps and viols, delicious, lan- guid, vague, like poppy's breath in sound the crush of rich costumes, the sweep of silken trails, and the glitter of priceless jewels that are outshone by the eyes of their wearers; the costly presents, the sumptuous rcpast, ct cetera, ct cetero, ad intnitum and ad disgustitum,: winding up with the regulation volcanic outburst of sick lunatic-asylumy benisons. May heaven do for the newly welded pair all the idiotic and preposterous things that twaddling rhymesters usually request on such occasions. Shower blessings enough on their heads to wear five thousand cast-iron or gutta- percha pates as bald as bil- Hard balls. Scatter roses along their pathway until they have to get a locomotive -plow to shovel them away. Grant them skies so un- cloudedly bright that they will have to carry two-ply blue-cotton umbrel- las at midnight. And, when their earthly lives and loves are over, bear them away in the same celestial e0p-