The Arkansaw traveler., 1888-06-09

ana OlscomDODerat10ns you have saved me by railroading me through to mar riage, without love or courtship. But I guess, if the yellow back scriptures are true, you have cut me out of lots of fun.
 Married To be marriedi Well, hardly. What is married but mis- mated, too often marred? Ma ture plays many high old quips and quirks; kicks up her vener- able heels in countless can-can pirouettes and whirligigs; shakes her oneniuma- -gdtherum apron pockets and scatters, here and there and every where, innumerable monstrosities, ludicrosities and ridiculosities; per- petrates incompatible madcap both erations, and mental, moral and phy- ical cranks and curlicues; and inflicts upon her unfortunate step-children intending higgledy- -piggledy lusus-es. She stuffs president with a peanut peddler's soul, and makes a hero's heart throb beneath the ragged waist coat of scavenger. She drapes gal vanized oyster-wenches, or worse, in the rich laces and brocades of senators, governors and cabinet ministers wives, and encloses the spirit of a saint or martyr in the dingy tatters Of char-woman or beggar. She wraps courage, gratitude and affection in the hide of dog, and swaddles baseness and brutality in broadcloth and fine linen. She permits two- legged donkeys to bray in all our legislative halls, and dine at our Del monicos', while their superiors in every worthy quality and qualifica- tion munch 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 whimsies of love and marriage. Look where you will, what world of tangles and misfits. All jumbled, lopsided, ill-assorted and muddlety- -tlummixed. No incongru- ity is too crazy, no vagary too mon- strous. Eagles mate with moles. and swans with hedgehogs. Tom Thumbs pine for she- c Goliaths. Sons of Anak wed human humming- birds. Mighty brained heroes and statesmen rave over inane little butterflies, ,puny wax dolls, taffy faced pigmies; and women who would grace court ally them selves with ounter-hoppers, num- skulls and boobies. Kings bow down to ballet-dancers, and queens take refuge in the arms of cooks and coach- men. Who ever heard of a half dozen presidents wives? While An drew Jackson ran the White House like an emperor, the old wife, for whom he murdered Dickinson, smoked her cob-pipe and knitted yarn socks in the backwoods of Tennessee. Where are, and where have been, all the MT. Hemanses, MT. Ristoris, MT. Harriet Beecher Stoves and MT. Jen- nie Junes? Every fellow gets the wrong woman, and no woman gets the right fellow. And in all lands and climes, in every condition and estate, the Cupid wounded, Hymen- bound gosling and goslingess have a hard road to travel to paradise of squash-an imaginary elysium, whose roses are too often rue. To love is to be ecstatically miserable. To court IS to vibrate between the orthodox and the Japanese hells-from he'll of fire to a he'll of ice. To marry is to plunge headlong 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 mooly COW, or a scrub bull-calf and a knock kneed jennet. Marriage has been aptly likened to the flies on 8 dining room window-all on the outside are butt ing their heads against the glass to get in, and all on the inside arc butt ing 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 won- der Is that any flies are foolish enough to want to get in.
 Il Ma1s.;odl Aa