Corvallis gazette. [volume] (Corvallis, Benton County, Or.) 1900-1909, 1905-02-10
HOW SHE REJECTED A MAN
Sad Fate of Young Woman Who Had
It All Fixed Up.


There was once young lady Of ten
der feelings but firm resolves who
was infexibly determined to live un-
married, even at the risk Of living an
old maid, but who wished so much to
spare the susceptibilities Of her po-
tential admirers that she long made it
her study how to refuse them with
out 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 theater, 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 and manners of the he
roines who declined offers from high
motives
She was, upon the whole, a good
deal disappointed, especially with the
novels. These manuals of the i'm
passioned 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 refuse lover it was that she
might leave him to some other girl
who secretly loved him and who would
proba bly, pine away, or partly away,
if she did not have him. This the
young lady thought simply disgusting
and idiotic; 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
instructive than the novelists.
They gave examples enough of girls
who did not marry, but it 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 regretted
it ever afterward. The personal his
tories were largely those Of women
distinguished in the arts, letters and
sciences, whose courtships and mar
riages were dismissed in a few cold
and Indifferent phrases, as incidental
Of small consequence in their several
careers. 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 OBJ
servation of life rather than her &C.
quaintance with literature, a formula
of sympathetic rejection which entire
ly suited her. We will not reveal il
because it was SO charming that if put
in the possession Of young girls gener.
ally it would tempt them to it's use in
the case of every offer Of marriage
But we may conffde that the young
lady, having lived to witness the com
parative 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 sensibiliues would suffer
most, and 50 contrived a form Of re
fusal that would justly flatter theil
vanity and console their affections
and at last leave them grateful foa
; having been rejected.
| The only difficulty she experienced
was In the application Of her formula
1t happened that the very first mar
who offered himself was one whom
. she had long secretly loved, and sht
instantly accepted him, without, as Il
were, thinking. She did not even ap
pear chagrined at the waste of th'
time she had spent in acquiring thu
: useless information stored up for 1
, contrary eventuality. Unless sh'
} should become a widow hers mus
: ever remain the most signal instance
of misspent research that we coult
: offer.-Harper's Magazine.
I A Desert Lighthouse.
n There is at least one lighthouse IL