Democratic Sentinel, Volume 6, Number 17, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 May 1882 — Caught a Hasband. [ARTICLE]

Caught a Hasband.

In some parts of France marriageable girls are aceustomed to pluck, as they return from midnight mass on Christmas eve, a sprig of apple-tree, which they put in a vial full of waver. The vial is hung in their bed-chamber, in front of the window; if one bud blooms before Easter, the mistress is sure to be married before the year ends. Among the servants of a chateau near Alencon was a chambermaid from Brittany. She was gentle, good-natured, quiet, pious—an excellent creature every way, but—she was hunch-backed. Her name was Ursule. Taking advantage of the dark night, she, too, plucked a sprig of apple tree, sure that nobody saw her. She was mistaken. A fellow servant saw her, and made the servants’ hall ring with peals of laughter at poor Ursule’s expense. Still they kept the secret among themselves. They all agreed to play a trick on poor Ursule. Easter eve one of the journeymen gardeners removed the old sprig of apple-tree in Ursule’s bed-chamber and put in its place a sprig covered with blossoms. When Ursule went into her bed-chamber she could not believe her eyes. She returned to the servants’ hall, her face being radiant with delight as she showed her trophy. The laughter, jeers, and hootings of her comrades revealed the trick put upon her. She stood dumb, confounded, trembling, scarcely able to restrain her tears. Just at this moment the mistress entered the servants’ hall. An elderly servant explained the scene to her. The mistress said: “Ursule, the apple-tree sprig may be trusted; believe it, you will be married before Christmas next; you are a virtuous girl; I am sure you will make a virtuous wife; all you want to get a husband is money; the money wanted I will give you.” As she spoke, the mistress twined a 1,000 frano banknote around the sprig and returned it to Ursule. A fortnight afterward the journeyman gardener who had put the trick on her asked her in marriage, but she refused him (at which he was greatly jeered) and married another.