Democratic Sentinel, Volume 15, Number 38, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 October 1891 — Fading. [ARTICLE]

Fading.

In a small town of Northern Vermont the inhabitants are noted for their early marriages. An unmarried young woman who has passed her twenty-fifth birthday is universally regarded as an “old maid,” and a young man who has reached the same age in an unwedded state is pronounced a confirmed bachelor, and the young people themselves appear to accept the current opinion. One handsome young fellow, twen-ty-six years old, was a great trial to his mother, a bustling, energetic farmer’s wife. As she lamented to a summer hoarder, “it did seem as if Hiram was possessed to stay single,” no matter what she could say. “An’ ’taint likely,” she would add, fretfully, “that any girl will be takin’ up with him after a year or two, when he’s settled down an’beginnin’ to look old!” Hiram himself was not given to sentiment, and furthermore was quite unconscious of his s own attractions. He showed the summer boarder some dreadful photographs of himself, which had been taken the previous winter to please his mother, and remarked gravely: “Mother was set on havin’ ’em, an’ I only waited to see if I wa’n’t likely to get any better lookin’. But come last winter I see I was beginnin’ to fade, so I had ’em took, right away!” The contrast between the speaker’s youthful appearance and his words was almost too much for his hearer.