The Iola register. [volume] (Iola, Allen County, Kansas) 1875-1902, 1890-09-26
GIRL BACHELORS.

Modern and Delightful Creature Whs
Happily Has Superseded the Despicabi,
Husband-Hunter.
MY mother says I've got to get mar
ried," said pretty girl in my hearing
the other day. She declares she won't
have an old maid in the family"
This remark was made in sober earn
est, and bore not even the outward sem
blance of a joke. And whereas the fail
speaker is neither engaged nor has any
immediate prospect of such state of af
fairs, and whereas, moreover, she did
not blush for herself, blushed for her,
blushed that in these days of "highel
education ''woman's sphere" and all
the other emancipations of women, a
young woman of fair intelligence should
openly declare herself husband-hunt.
err, with pretty face and witty tricks
of speech her sole stock-in-trade. Twas,
and am daily more so, ashamed of her.
Her father is physician with prac.
tice chiefly among poor or non-paying
patients. There are four children
younger than she, but she will not, and
neither will her parents let her, go to
work at any honest and self-supportlng
business, for fear that she will, as they
express it, spoil her market The
same spirit, more or less openly avowed,
prevails among other parents of to-day,
a class, happily, growing beautifully
less, however.
No parent can fail to hope her daugh-
ter will marry the man of her choice and
live happy ever after;" that is the nat.
ural, foreordained lot of woman. But,
in the course of human events, many
girls are disappointed in this prospect,
if, indeed, they ever choose it. For
many girls, in these modern days of
busy employment for every body, build
up plan of life which includes no fu-
ture lover whatever. 1t is better So.
BE assured, If God intends you to love
and be loved, no matter how closely you
may shut your heart, or how carefully
you guard it with the sentinel of pre-
occupation, the liking of your heart"
| will seek you out and force an entrances;
and If there is to be no king, you had
better be fortified against usurpers
How much more admirable is the char
acter, by contrast, of the girl bachelor
maids"-not in the city, at least. Wom-
en- as they grow more independent are
not so much claiming" their rights, as
talking" them; and among these is the
right to earn their own living. No self
respecting woman of twenty-five or thir-
ty, full of hope and ambition and desire
to do something for her day and genera
ton, is content to sit calmly down now
adays and eat the bread of dependence.
with nothing to fill, her heart and mind
but the petty round of social life that
falls to her share, or not, as the case
may be.
Plenty of girls whose fathers have
good, even large incomes, are to-day
working for their livings. They have
tasted the sweets Of independence, and,
better still, know the blessedness of hav-
ing an object in life. Such girls do not
spread their nets to catch the unwary
husband: on the contrary. they care very
little whether he comes or not, and they
are quite as apt to find or be found by
the right man at last as their sisters
who are ever ready to smile upon "C9-
lebs in search of wife, and they will
be rewarded, if they marry at all, by a
marriage with ten times more real love
and sweetness and earnestness in it
The 'girl bachelors" of the cities are
numerous enough, and power strong
enough, to form distinct class by them
selves. Many of them live with parents
or friends, paying their board or con-
tributing to the general expenses Of the
household. Some have learned. how
ever, to combine and form households
by themselves.
l have four sisters in mind, whose
father was able to give them a good
home in the country, whore he lived,
but who were ambitious and indie
pendent young women, preferring to pad
die their respective canoes themselves,
and in such waters assaulted and paid them
best. They went to Boston and obtain
ed positions-one as journalist, one as
o school teacher, and two as stepograph-
| ers. For time they boarded and put
MP with such fare and conveniences as
they were obliged to; but after a few
years it occurred to the most practical
one that with the money they all paid
for board and rooms they might go to
housekeeping.
The oldest one went house-hunting,
and soon found coy house with good
sized grounds, in desirable locality,
for thirty dollars month. To the coun-
try-bred girls, that sounded large at
first; but on reckoning the amount that
their eight dollars a week for two rooms
came to in the course Of month. they
Immediately engaged the house.
They had some furniture, and bought
more, and when their ready money did
not hold out, even got some on the in
stallment plan; and in less than year
| they owned the entire furnishings of
their ''own hired house." Besides, in
stead of crowded, iumbled life in two
or three lodging-rooms, they had a
| whole house to themselves, with free
dom to do as they pleased in it; they had
| separate sleeping-rooms-a luxury ordi-
narily denied the working-girl, they had
Just what they pleased for their six
o'clock dinner when they came home.
tired and hungry, to the little home in
the suburbs; they came and went at any
hour they choose, with no cross landlady
TO put out the hall gas before they got
in; they had company-lots of it; they
bad piano. a guitar, amusic box, paint
ings, engravings and statuary; in short,
they had delightful and coy and indie
| pendent home, which they priced all the
more for maintaining it themselves
Then there are three other girl bach
elors, not sisters, who have ''pooled
issues" and gone to housekeeping in an
apartment One Is An artist, one a