The Montgomery advertiser., 1904-11-26
HOW sHr RRgEcTEp A MAN.
Sad Fate of a Young Woman Who Had It All Fixed Up.


 Sad Fate of a Young Woman Who Had
 1t All Fixed Up.
 Harper's Magazine.
 There was once young lady of tender feelings but firm resolves who was infiexibly determined to live un- married, even at the risk of living an old maid but who wished 90 much to spare the susceptibilities of her poten- tlal admirers that she long made 1t her. study how to refuse them without wounding them To this end she read all the novels she could lay her hands on and as much poetry as she could bear. She went constantly to the the- atre, and in the intervals of her social duties she took serious books, like biographies and memoirs, out of the libraries. and informed herself of the methods of manners of the herofnes who declined offers from high motives.
 She was upon the whole, a good deal disappointed, especially with the Pov- els. These manuals of the impassioned emotions seemed to render In almost every case blind allegiance to the law of ending well, which in the low conception of the author was getting the hero and heroine married. and then dropping them in the very, very few cases where they suffered a girl to re- fuse A lover it was that she might leave him to some other girl who se- cretIv loved him and who would prob ably pine away, or partly away. if she did not have him. This the young la- dy thought simply disgusting and id- iotic; she was a young lady of strong expressions as well as tender feelings and fixed resolves. and she found the poets not much, if any, more instruc- tive than the novelists.
 They gave examples enough of girls who did not marry, but 1t was because their lovers died. or did not ask them; when their lovers both survived and proposed the girls refused them from pride or from shame or from want of presence of mind and bitterly regret ted it ever afterward. The personal histories were largely those of women. distinguished in the arts, letters and sciences, whose courtships and mar riares were dismissed in a few cold and indifferent phrases, as incidents of small conseauehce in their several oa- reers. Where they did not marry they seemed not to have been courted. and where they were loved it was in a vague tentative sort that never ar- rived at passion.
 In spite of all however the young lady did evolve, though from the ob- servatlon of life rather than her ac- uuaintance with uberhtuIeS Q AOAAHAAes of sympathetic rejection which entire- Iv suited her. We will not reveal 1t because it was so charming that if put in the possession of young girls generally 1t would tempt them to It's use in the case of every offer of mar riage. But we may eonfide that the young lady, having lived to witness inc comparative failure of marriage among her friends and always liking her friends husbands better than her friends themselves though she blamed them, for her friends unhappiness' made such a study of their varying temperaments that she knew just where mems sensibiiities would suffer r,ost and so contrived a form of re- Tusal that would jutly flatter their ,,anitv and console their affections. and at last leave them grateful for having been rejected.
 Tbe only difficulty she experienced vas in the application of her formula. " hanpened that the very first man
 ..a oefered himself was one whom she EaS mnV secretly loved. without. as 1t were .StnEing She did not even appear oIogrined at the waste of time sne had one5t in acquiring the useless infor- slstiou stored up for a contrary even- t,'aIitv. Unless she should become a tvidow hers must ever remain the
 .nst signal instance of misspent re- search that we could offer.