News and citizen. [volume] (Morrisville, Vt. ;) 1881-current, 1891-08-13
The Broad Street Turn.

|
street, turned over a new leaf on a
New Year. | met him at DR.. Halls
church in the morning. He had re-
formed look in the corner of his eyes.
81 am through he said in a calm,
business-like manner.
Everything that Cline did was done
in business-like manner, whether it
was purchasing bouquets to send to
Belle Urquhart or having his bald
head shampooeG. I've known him to
get off a car and chase a news boy for
two blocks to get cent change, be-
cause it was business and he would
not be swindled, and l have known
him to write a note to Ned Harri-
gan to get free box and then spend
| 5000 on flowers and supper before
the night was over. With a Broad
street popularity he insisted that that
was business, too.
[ believe that everywhere Cline
would be called q good fellow. He
held strictly to the business principle
of skinning his fellow man alive on
Broad street and blowing in a pile
when the boys were not on that finan-
cial warpath.
One day, Cline, as | said, turned a
leaf He did it methoGically, calcu-
latingly and firmly. He was polish
ing his dome before the glass, and as
he laid the brush down he said: 81
must get married."
Everything in the bachelor room
was astOnished. The alabaster bath
er who had stood bent over in the
corner for a - q Lake de,1 a
gave little start, n, if her mission
were done. The bronze Venus actual
ly turned her bronze head little, as
if looking for a sea to get back to,
fell off the mantel with a perfumed
gasp.
All this was with what Cline him
self would have called "dead calcula-
ton" He proposed to sail the sea
of matrimony He had been living
for fifteen or twenty years what Mat
thew Arnold would have called a not
wife life. The other sort of thing
would be cheaper.
Besides, when a bachelor cam comb
his top hair over any more he begins
to think about getting tone. 1t was
business.
Very puDctilious and discreet was
Cline. He proposed to get married
just as he proposed to buy Nashville
and Tennessee. 1t was a good in
vestment.
Then he set about in the most eX-
traordinary Broad street manner.
II don't want" sail he, "any giddy
beauties around. They've been
around till I'm tired. | want a ma
ture, sensible, sober, economical, tidy,
level-headed, modest, healthy, good
tempered, prudent, affectionate, sa-
gacious, lovable, motherly, genteal,
sterling woman. Girls be blowed
Girls make me weary, and Pm going
to organize the business of getting
just what | want. | can give an
hour day for the next year 20 the
finding of what | want. and I'm too
old business hand to have what l
don't want"
When you get one of these financial
Broad street intellects squarely down
to business, he knows what he is
about and he doesn't make any mis-
take.
If he is going to get a wife or get a
cemetery plat, he is going to get the
worth of his money.
So Cline at forty-four organized
himself. He set up a matrimonial
bureau in that private office with
cathedral windows; put his No. II
gaiter on sentiment; chucked the for
get-me-nots out of his soul and came
down to hard-pan.
He would advertise. Yes, he would.
No nonsensical roundabout cultured
gent desiring to meet cultured lady,
but straight business proposition. 1t
would involve immense clerical sys-
tem-very well, would get typewriter,
dictate answers for an hour every
morning.
"First thing to do-get typewriter;
must be business girl-girl bad-but
have to put up with it-no women
typewriters in the market, all girls,
darn shame"