Democratic Sentinel, Volume 11, Number 41, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 November 1887 — An Error for the Humorist. [ARTICLE]

An Error for the Humorist.

There is a sort of humorist whose manuscript turns up in this office with the utmost regularity, and goes out of it with the utmost regularity. This is the man with the joke about the young lover and the father with a large boot and a larger bull-dog. This merry-maker is spending a large portion of his substance in post-age-stamps, and common human ty demands some interference on our part. M e cannot let him go down to the poor-house without some attempt to steer him toward the right course. Bull-dogs ? Boots ? Gentle Idiot, there are no bull-dogs, there are no boots for the young man who comes a-court-mg now-a-days. He must be a worthless character, indeed, if he be not welcome in the house of many daughters. Dear Idiot, the path of the marrying young man is strewn with roses. He is not a man to be snubbed and slighted; he is a man to be welcomed with great joy, and with timbrels, and with the sound of the sackbut. The mother bows down when she meets him, and the father goes unto the front gate to bid him enter. A feast is provided for him—a great entertainment—and free lunch is spread on both sides of the path that leads unto the housedoor. Know you not, Sweet Idiot, that it costs a dollar or two to keep a daughter in decorative idleness? If ahorse may be said tojßat his head off, what shall we say of a young woman whose heaviest burden is her winter bonnet? Nay, Fair Idiot, there is no one in that young woman’s family who has aught to say against the young man who deigns to visit her with matrimonial intent. Well does that young man know that his father-in-law-to-be will ever support him. The main question with him is slightly different. He has to make sure that he will not have to support his father-in-law. For, be it known to you, O, Idiot, it is the young men who are making money; it is the old men who are haying interest on mortgages. The time has gone by when a man had to marry at twenty for fear of be ng called an “old bach” at thirty. The man of forty is a charming young fellow, if he is unmarried. Everybody courts him. Everybody asks him to dinner. He has to learn to spar, so to speak, to keep off eligible daughters. Bulldogs? Boots? Why, the man’s ears are deaf with listening to the praises of Jane Matilda and Maud Louise. If you must write of such matters, Wild Idiot, write of the shining truth. Write down the fact that Charles Augustus, be he ever so homely, ever so mean and small, ever so vicious and ill-bred, is made at home in the family circle, because it may come to pass that he will look with favorable eyes upon Charlotte Augusta, and wed her, in the end, if he is given sufficient encouragement. Write of this, and your tales will be printed. Down oblivion, with the dullest and most sickening thud known to our nineteenth century civilization, have gone your merry jests about booted and bull-dogged parents, for the truth was not in them. Arouse yourself! Trumpet forth to the world the fact that a young man who can support a wife is at present selling at about two hundred per cent, premium —and strike a popular chord. Bulldogs? Boots? Write of young men who would give good money if they could get out of a house full of daughters—or, even, full of one daughter—as easily as they could get in.— Puck.