People's Pilot, Volume 3, Number 47, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 May 1894 — A BACHELOR’S SOLILOQUY. [ARTICLE]

A BACHELOR’S SOLILOQUY.

He la Supremely Contented la His Single Blessedness. I do not marry for many reasons. One reason is that I am of a very as fectionate temperament. I feel quite sure that it is better for mo to love all women, as I do now, than to have to profess to love but one woman—my wife. Let me think of some more reasons. As a bachelor I get a great many invitation cards and pleasant attentions wherever I go. My married friends don’t have anything like as much luck, and their wives make them angry by wondering why it is so. It is exceedingly nice when I dine out to be paired off with an unmarried girl. My married friends look across the table at me enviously. Any sort of married “frump” is good enough for them. As I am, I can do exactly as I like; go to bed at nine or three at my own sweet will, and breakfast in bed or up at any hour. Most husbands can by no means do as they please, even in so small a matter as this. They are expected to be at home by ten or eleven o’clock, or face cold coffee, cold eggs, cold toast and cold looks next morning. Every married man marries for himself—for his pleasure and comfort. Am Ito blame if I choose to remain single for the same purpose? There is no absurder cant than the talk about it being a man’s duty to the race to take a wife.

Of course, too, there is the dreadful possibility of the marriage turning out iIL It is next to impossible for a man to say definitely: “I can be happy with such a woman for my wife.” I know sweet young girls who five years from their wedding day were untidy, coarse, negligent women, even openly loving their children to the neglect of their husbands, or openly indifferent to both husband and children. This sort of thing is frightful to think of. Married men in some cases seem to get used to it, but it wearies and kills the brighter part of them. I do not write altogether as a novice in matters of the heart. I have been in love over and over again. Somehow, though, I have always put off popping the question until some other fellow has done it on his own account. Of all these girls whom I might have married, only obc now, as a married woman, seems to answer the expectations I bad formed of her. The realization of this makes me more and more fond of my bachelor freedom and irresponsibility. Besides, I have a gray hair or two, and my habits are getting fixed. An astonishing number of men like myself remain single for reasons much like those I have mentioned. Unmarried, we have one bird in the bandcontentment How can vs tell that we may 'get Hold of that gay, longtailed paroquet in the bush—married felicity, if we suddenly change our state? There is an ideal woman I should like to marry. Some day I may meet with some one who is tolerably like her. Then, if lam not too old, I will woo her.—Cassell’s Magazine.