Rensselaer Union and Jasper Republican, Volume 8, Number 21, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 February 1876 — Old Maids. [ARTICLE]

Old Maids.

SoON.XB or later everybody has a fling at old maids, either to Say a word for them or a good many against them; and as yet we believe we have not said anything about them. But reading, yesterday, an article in a newspaper, with the well-known heading, “ Old Maids," we have been led to think that it waa about time we, too, should r'put in our oar.” This paragraph occurred in the article in question i .. “Nine outof every ten bid maids are sour-tempered, gossipy, scolding, meddlesome old women, with big feet, and scrawny necks, and they are the pests of the neighborhood-’* Now, we don’t believe any such thing! We’ll stake our reputation as a genuine Yankee, good at guessing, that thowriter of that article is a crusty old bachelor, who, In his youth, was snubbed and jilted by all the girls he sought to make love to, and it is more than likelv that some of those very same girls are old maids now, and he lias lately met one of them and tried Ji is fate over again with the same unflattering result. Story writers always describe their old maids as < tall, thin and angular, with sharp noses, corkscrew curls and the neuralgia. Now, we know lots of old maids, and nearly every one of them is plump instead df lean, and not one of them wears corkscrew curls. Some of them are, without exception, the best women ,we ever The majority of old maids are not unmarried because nobody has “asked them,” for we do not believe that there is a woman living who has reached the age-, of thirty without haying had an offer. Old maids are, generally speakings girls who in their youth were belles ana beauties and who set ft "high valuacm themselves—ton high to accept tWproposals of common men—and so they fapt, to use an old expression, “gone through the. woods without picking up a stick," for the sole reason that they WW afraid of picking up a crooked orte. s

A girt who hdtdt hereelf fctt stoop to wed where she ate nrithar krttf iior respect is very likely to benwbld" maid.. Age does not make less particular, and- a* the goea along her IHr journey she sees, perhaps, IllliiiflWMl | were girls with her unhappily weddrirfiM husbands who are Unkind or abeipatorijfir/ careless or unfal thrill, and she is tned by the right tozo on her wav ucmLAnd though we befleve that marriage h a divine institution,.ordained of GoOMK bfcssed by Him, and though we that it is far better to marry single, yet a woman hod better a toOUMriff * times be aa old maid tout to atotMHgM whom she cannot love and forwMtomtoi feels no sentiment of respect. •./ Frequently, circumstances from riMn there is no escape prevent girls from mar-; rying. Aged relatives whose waning and. broken lives heed the fostering and gentle v care of a daughter may stand between ' her and happiness, and with hte!f-toa». flee that fleets her only Heaven knows how much she may yield up firlwwr' which her heart ones dummy on the altar of filial duty and stamp herself with the dreaded stigma of old maid. , Again, death may have taken from hot ’ tlie chosen of her ffffirtii fiM Wr nvhw'',? may be too loyal and true to admit of her enshrining another in the place of the . first love. Or she may never bqve metone whfrl has called forth the strongest and deepest feelings of her nature, and she may be wise enough to know tost marriage to# never what God designed it should be tm- \ less it be entered into by wt Two tools with bat a Single thongMTwo hearts that best M one. , Old maids upon the whole, ore to the world. They take care of sfeMSt sisters and brothers, they make the elotnMS for little nieces ana nephews, they cause Sabbath-schoote to flourish, they help bind churches together, they beg for toe minister and get up album-quilts for hl» ' wife, they are death on rum-drinkings they are on the side of good morab.every- * where, and society would find its difficult thing to get along properly without them. Long may they nourish!—Ante in New York Weekly.