Rensselaer Union, Volume 8, Number 3, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 7 October 1875 — FIVE AND A HALF—PATCHED. [ARTICLE]

FIVE AND A HALF—PATCHED.

I am a bachelor, an old bachelor; at least that’s what my nieces—pretty, saucy, clever, lovable girls—call pie; and no doubt they’re right, though I can’t go so far as to agree with them when they declare a man owning to five-and-forty years and a dozen white hairs “ decidedly venerable” and “ fearfully gray.” However, an old bachelor I am dubbed, and I must confess, if to acquire that distinction one is obliged to enjoy life to the utmost, as I do, and be made much of by lovely women and charming maidens, as I am, I have no serious objection to the title. In the first place, my home is a home in every sense of the word, although without a mother, or even a mother-in-law. I occupy, and have occupied for the past year, a suite of remarkably pleasant rooms, the front windows looking on a -city park and the back on a garden made delightful by two fine .old peach-trees, a heavy grape-vine, and a sweet-smelling wistaria. The latter has climbed to my windows, and, twining in and out of the slats of the shutters, effectually prevents my closing them, blit gives me” in recompense great fragrant bunches of purple fiowers. These cheerful rooms are part and parcel of Mrs. Midget’s boarding-house. Ho, I am wrong. Mrs. Midget—Mr. Midget was lost at sea live years ago — does not keep a boarding-house, but takes a few select hoarders, of whom she is pleasecLto intimate she considers me the seleetest. Wonderfully comfortable the “few select” find it in Mrs. Midget’s shady, oldfashioned, neatly-kept, three-story brick house. “ Everything like wax,” my eldest sister says when she comes to visit me, which is about once in four weeks—a day or two after my magazines have arrived. “And the landlady,” I invariably reply, “isn’t she awful cunning?—so demure in her ways and speech for such a wee thing, and so pretty, with her bright blue eyes and yellow hair!” But Maria, I can’t divine why, pretends not to hear me, or else repeats, with scornful emphasis: “Awful cunning!” The fact is, I’m so much among my kinswomen that I often find myself, when I wish to be particularly emphatic, borrowing their queer adjectives and peculiar forms of expression. “ Indeed, uncle,” said Charley to me the other day —named for me, Charlotte (Charles, as near as they? could get at it) — “ you’re beginning to talk like a girl—and at your time of life, too!” And I didn’t feel at all insulted; for if all girls talk as well as my nieces I consider Charley’s remark rather a compliment than otherwise. Mrs. Midget knows how to furnish a table, too; all sorts of little delicacies and unexpected tidbits, stews and hashes above reproach, bread and pies, marvels of culinary skill, and tea and coffee—well, really coffee and tea. As for Mrs. Midget herself, she’s such a tot of a woman that I feel like laughing outright every time I look at her, perched on a pile of music-books placed on a chair—the chair itself taller than any of the “few selects”—at the head of the dining table. Indeed, only the other day, when she asked, in a solemn manner, fixing her blue eyes on my face, and lifting*a large soup-ladle in her mite of a hand, if I would have some soup, 1 did burst out laughing, she looked so wry like a little girl playing dinner with her mother’s dinner-set. The miniature woman laid down the ladle and gazed at me in surprise. “ Mrs. Midget, I beg your pardon,” said I ; “ I suddenly thought of a man I saw at the circus.” “Oh!” said Mrs. Midget, and returned to the soup. I’m a romantic old fellow—there, you see how naturally I fall in my nieces’ way —love poetry, music, flowers (Mrs. Midget always has a posy ready for me in sum-mer-time, which she pins into iny buttonhole with her own fair hands; and I assure you it’s not at all unpleasant to have her standing on the tips of her toes to reach it, with her small round head just touching my chin), and the fair sex. & Yes, old bachelor as I am, I love, and always have loved, the fair sex; and I really think it is because I love them so well I still lemain unmarried. I never could make up my mind that one of all those I admired was prettier, brighter and sweeter than the others, and as I wanted the sweetest, prettiest and brightest I have been in a dilemma all my life. But I’ve always meant to, and my intention is stronger than ever since the day I picked up the little patched glove in Broadway in front of Stewart’s. I feel convinced that the owner of that -glove is the w ife for me. I w ear it next my heart. Silly? Not a bit of it. No single man could help wearing, a glove like that near his heart. Five and a half, a pretty mouse-color; every finger well filled out, scarcely a crease in them—she must be plump; a faint smell of rose (as a general thing, with the exception of honest Cologns, I detest perfumes, but if I can endure any

it is rose, calling to mind, as it docs, bees, butterflies, flowers, and all that sort" of thing), and (he cunningest patch in the palm of the hand. Now I’d never seen a patch in a glove before, so it struck me as something odd, and I examined it critically. The manner in which that patch was sewed in told me the wearer of the glove was neat and methodical; the fine silken stitches used in sewing that patch in, that she was dainty; the faet that the color of the patch Exactly matched that of the glove, that she was constant, true to one shade. Then I imagined her personal appearance: Soft brown eyes, chestnut hair, slight but plump figure, feet to correspond with her hands —decidedly graceful and, altogether, very attractive. “I’ll wager she sings, plays and dances well,” I said to myselft in conclusion; “is not rich, or she would not patch her glove; or poor, or she would not wear ‘ kids.’ ’•’ I must find her! All very well to say, but how to find her? A “ personal,” if it met her soft brown eyes, would frighten so modest a little creature, and she would be likely to hide herself instead of allowing herself to be found. 1 Shall I show my treasure to my nieces •and ask if they can give me any clew to the original possessor ? Pshaw! the teasing things would make no end of fun of me. By Jove .' where have my wi ts been ? Pll see what Mrs. Midget says about it. She’s by far the most sensible woman of my acquaintance, and very sympathetic, and is at this moment sitting alone in the diningroom in a low rocking-chair, with a giant work-basket by- her side and a heap of stockings in her lap. “There, my dear Mrs. Midget, is the glove. You will see at once that it is all my fancy painted it;” and I placed it in the landlady’s little hand. Over went the big work-basket on the floor as Mrs. Midget, throwing herself back in a paroxysm of laughter, came near going over too, her absurdly-small feet kicking wildly in the air for a moment, until I had restored the rockingchair to its equilibrium. “Shall I pick up the things, Mrs. Midget?” said I, as soon as she ceased laughing, rather put out, to tell the truth, by her strange conduct, so unlike the sympathy I had expected. “ Yes —no—if you please—l don’t care,” stammered Mrs. Midget, in a voice very different from her every-day one, and with the loycliest rose-color in her cheeks. As I thought so I detected the fragrance of rose apparently emanating from a spool of thread 1 held in my hand, and remembered the glove. “ Did you drop the glove, Mrs. Midget?’ l asked I, seriously. “ No,” replied she, opening a wee hand and showing it, crumpled into a little heap. “Take it, and oh! please, say no more about it. It’s too—too—too ridiculous!” and off she went again. “ Mrs. Midget,” said I, “ what are you laughing at?” “I suddenly thought of a man I saw at the circus,” said she, with a saucy look I had never seen before in her blue eyes. “ I’m convinced you know the owner of the glove,” said I. “ It’s an old *inaid whom nature has sought to compensate for lack of other charms by giving her a perfect hand, or a grandmother who still wears five and a half, though her complexion has fled'and hair departed. You know—l’m sure of it; and, though you completely shatter my beautiful dream, you must tell me.” And in my excitement I —quite unintentionally—put my arm around her slender waist. “ Well, if I must, I must," said Mrs. Midget. “Prepare for a fearful blow. The glove is mine!" Mrs. Midget has ceased to he a widow, and I am no longer a bachelor.—• Harper’s Bazar.