People's Pilot, Volume 5, Number 27-25, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 January 1896 — A MARRIED SPINSTER. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

A MARRIED SPINSTER.

MARRIED spinster! Isn’t spinstery jl hood left behind =="l when a person marlv jlj ries? Left behind? fl'w Iflil No, marriage is no \ \v> 'I more a savin S ordi‘l l\ I nance than is bapU\ tism, and that it —' \ does not change * our natures many a married bachelor

ind spinster can testify. Now, having lived on this little flying ball some years, I know whereof I jpeak. By the way, did you ever meet Mehitable Long? She lived-many years In that old farmhouse behind the big Igreading oak on the way to Hoppertown. Mehitable had character, quantities of it, and very good of its kind, ~ s°°. Her father was no Carthaginian, and Aid not lay her helpless baby hands on the altar of home and country, cornyelling her to take an oath against ttfat enemy of womankind —matrimony. Not »t all. Yet she was as decided as though she had been oath-bound. Now, ton’t misunderstand me. Mehitable was no fool, and did not go about railing against the men. She treated all frankly and courteously, and had warm friends of both sexes. But the pyramid Egypt was not more firmly based on its native soil than she was on a determination to remain, through good “ and evil report, a fixed member of the highly-respected and respectable sisterhood of spinsters. She used to declare: v The legend on my tombstone shall be ’Mehitable Long, spinster; age ninetynine; never had an offer.’ ” Time sped on, and treated my friend, in its liberal way, with its bitter and its sweet, but not once had she swerved from her early determination, and I should have as soon thought of hearing that the great pyramid had been caught waltzing with the sphinx as to hear that Mehitable Long contemplated treachery to the sisterhood. Like a thunderbolt dropped from a clear December sky came the news that * Mehitable was engaged to be married to a man. You may pronounce the close of my assertion a superfluity, as women , generally marry men; but I emphatically declare that my astonishment was Intensified by that very fact. It seemed to me that Mehitable’s marriage should change the whole natural order of things. But why linger? She married, and went —with her husband, too —on a wedding tour. Somehow, it could have been borne with more equanimity had they taken separate journeys. In process of time, after the effects of the shock had somewhat subsided, I went to pay the married spinster a Visit. Several years had passed since -her catastrophe, and her family now three, the third one being little Hope, a child born in the memorable ; blizzard of 1888, and as remarkable as the child of a spinster and a blizzard should be. Now, do not for a moment think that I am casting any reflections upon the exceedingly worthy Jeremiah, who bears the trials of his life, and especially of his married life, with a fortitude approaching, if not reaching, sublimity. On the way to the home of my rec-

'veant friend, I amused myself by imagining the changes the experiences of /married life might have produced. She had always been fond of standing on intellectual heights, and her dearest and most intimate friends were the occupants of her treasured library; and •with her fine taste and keen appreciation of literature was a corresponding dislike of the hum-drum, never-ending round of household work. How will it be now, with both Jeremiah and little Hope to feed and care for? Has she become a vine, hanging over the wall—metaphorically Jeremiah; —a vine fruitful in household works? Can it be that my friend, Mehitable, who always stood so uncomjH»misingly on her own roots, has by home mysterious process become a clinging matrimony vine? And is Jeremiah the supporting trellis? p* *‘Centripolis!” screamed the conductor, and gathering together great, middle-sized and little bundles, I went forth to receive the answer to my queries. On the platform stood my friend, Mehitable, with a combination of Mehitable, Jeremiah and blizzard by her side, in the form of Miss Hope. In Justice to the little midget, let me Bay the blizzard side was rarely uppermost. The hearty greeting, “I am very glad 86 see you once more, Graysaida”—her set name for me in the happy spinster [ays—was reassuring. She had not quite lost her identity, then, in the thickets of matrimonial perplexities md felicities. We had only to walk across a little common to be at her loor; and we were soon •eminiscences of the past and news of :he present This conversation was not mtirely unshared by Miss Hope, who vas so often and so emphatically sup>ressed by her mother that she confided o her favorite doll the oDinion that L . ' i . .....

‘‘two womans was too many to have In the hpusfe.” Was this belief of Miss Hope’s, I wondered, an hereditary trait, intensified, as such traits sometimes are? Had Jeremiah ever felt in his secret soul that one woman was sometimes too many? ( Supper-time came, and with it Jeremiah. Tie received me very cordially, j did Jeremiah. He was always most | pleasant to the early friends of Mehita- ! ble; from a sense of honor, I think, for ; Jeremiah was an honorable man. He must have felt, and keenly at times, | that he had dared to set at naught one I of the great natural laws, and that a i life of atonement would scarcely condone the error. It suddenly dawned upon me, at the | table, when the host received an emphatic reproof for some absent-minded neglect of the rites of hospitality, that Mehitable was still some distance from the vine age, and still stood with considerable firmness upon her own roots. My visit at the home of my friend had a certain spiciness at times that made it decidedly exhilarating. Miss Hope was no small factor there, and of course the midget had a realizing sense oft her own importance. All the wells of Jere- ! miah’s being were filled to the brim with love for the child —and she was, most times, a nice, loving little thing, , Her mother’s keen insight into the follies and weaknesses of men were her’s, too. “Mamma,” she said one day, from her morning toilet, “see how my apron is tied! Papa did it. Just like a man. Mans can’t do anything. Such gumps! I do wonder if any mans ever had common sense?” ! Usually Mehitable w’ould take exception to Miss Hope’s wholesale criticism !of mankind, but just now, being absorbed in studying the only kind of literature she abominated, and the only kind she had time to read now—the cook-book —her daughter’s remarks were unheeded. Mrs. Jeremiah’s single life had been spent in the school-room, or among her books, and so she found herself less skillful in housekeeping than her better trained sisters. Not being one of those who die and make no sign, the strong language with which she interlarded her household duties was sometimes startling, and, from its very originality, decidedly strengtening—that is, to me —and I fancy to Jeremiah, for his lamentations were always —almost always—silent ones. I had forgotten to say that some time before my visit the host had mat with a narrow escape from a broken neck by breaking his thigh, and poor Mehitable had been for weeks, with all her other duties, the nurse of a helpless, nervous man/ Her patience seems to have been worn quite threadbare, and she shocked into speech less ness* one day, poor little Mrs. Breecheslover by adjuring Jeremiah to be sure, the next time he went into bone breaking, to make it his neck and have done with it once and forever. Still, for all that, she neglected no wifely duty, and her’s was a*' Jeremiah without his lamentations, i Next to Hope-raising, a process requiring at times, long, slender mementoes from the apple trees about., was, in the mind of Mehitable, cooking and baking, particularly c.ake-making and baking. On cake-making day we all walked softly, like Agag, thinking, unlike that poor pagan, "surely the bitterness of death has come,” and Mehitable was generally left to wrestle alone with her burden. Jeremiah then stalked silently to his fields, and I not so silently, for I must talk back, but speedily to my room. Of course, Hope, with the perversity of original sin, always made herself particularly obnoxious on such occasions, and received—an ordinary prelude to cake-making—-an apple-twig tattoo in consequence. If the cake turned out all right, you would hear ascending from the kitchen, in Mehitable’s rich, sweet voice, “Lead, kindly Light,” and presently a cheery: | “Graysaida, come down and see my cake; it’s a daisy!” Mehitable would be slangy at times, though she scrupulously taught Hope that slang was a very improper thing for her to use. Then I would venture fearlessly into the presence, and taste of the well-be-haved cake; and Hope, sunny and bright, after the apple-twig tonic, would share with me in the feast and the favor. And when Jeremiah appeared, at the dinner, he would have his share of cake and sunshine, while peace reigned triumphant. ] But—let it be otherwise. Let the cake, after promises of good behavior, fall into the sulks—as it sometimes did when taken from the oven—and be streaked all through with faint hints of what it might have been, and very solid assertions as to what, it was then, O, pay countrymen! O, Jeremiah, ’Graysaida and little Miss Midget, beware! No “Lead, kindly Light” ascended from the lower regions; but an : ominous silence, broken at intervals by ; more ominous mutterings of wrath. I Then a silent Jeremiah, an apple- ! twigged but not penitent Hope, and a resentful apd disgusted Graysaida, take their places at the dinner table, presided over by a weary, worn, melancholy, abusive and exceedingly sarcastic hostess. Jeremiah unfortunately mentions the fact that Mrs. Methodocia is making cake for the fair, and innocently adds that she is a very successful cake maker. So like a man! Mehitable, with a gleam in her dark eyes not exactly loving, snaps out that as his—meaning the hapless Jeremiah’s—highest aim in life is to eat cake, it is a great pity he had not married the accomplished Mr 3. Methodocia; and then goes on to say, in a general way, that Gail Hamilton never spoke a truer troth than when she declared the most direct road to a man’s heart was through his stomach, and esds by hinting gloomily that heaven will, of course, be peopled by women, and all the more heaven for that very reason, for most

men are too deeply absorbed in the cakes and pies of this life to take any interest in higher things. And when Miss Hope says, pertly, her papa “is not the only one to get left, anyhow,** she is sternly ordered from the table is a user of slang. “And remember, miss, if I ever hear you use again a word of slang, the apple tree jyill come into use. Where that child gets her wretched habit of slang t do not know. But, come to think, the English are strongly addicted to it, and Jeremiah, being Of English parentage, Hope gets the vulgar propensity from them.” Again let me ask you not to mistake my friend, Mehitable, a kindly-natured, bright-minded, lofty-principled woman when the cake is well-behaved and the meat will roast itself, whether the fire is forgotten or not. Well, I learned, or, rather, emphasized what I had already learned, this truth: A spinster, single, is a spinster, married. Is it wrong ror these independent, strongly individual women to narry? Ask Jeremiah! Few men are long happy so trained md throttled and weighted by a vine hat they cease to try to lift themselves :o a more inspiring atmosphere, and so remain nothing greater than poles to hold vines; and it is only the most brutal part of humanity, just one remove from the apish ancestor, who can mjoy a wife of the door-mat species, only filled for the daily mud and wear and tear of earth-lives. Now, Mehitable, standing on her own roots so sturdily, is gradually, as the years go by, leaning her wealth of foliage nearer to the partner of her life, who stands somewhat sturdily, too, and the little sapling of Hope between them makes them look, in the distance —perhaps from the “Other Side”—like one growth. Indeed, I fancy the figures of the clinging vine and sturdy oak as types of womanly and manly strength are scarcely suited to these times. Like Baucis and Philemon, they are more truly typefied by two trees of nearly equal growth and richness of verdure. Why is it when thinking of my kind friends, Jeremiah and Mehitable, the Words of a quaint old English ballad keep chiming through my brain? “And on one grave shall grow a red rose, And on the other a briar. They shall grow so high, they shall grow so tall, Til they reach the mountain top; And i here the rose ana the briar shall meet, And lie in a true love’s knot.” As to which is the rose, and which the briar, I will leave you to decide. — Grace Brown.

The road to a man’s heart was through his stomach.