Rensselaer Union, Volume 8, Number 5, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 21 October 1875 — The Romance of a Poor Young Girl and Its Unhappy Ending. [ARTICLE]

The Romance of a Poor Young Girl and Its Unhappy Ending.

On Iloyne street, in a small, ivy-clad cottage, resides with her irascible widowed father a romantic.young girl named Florence. She loves dearly to build in the air, tenanted by herself and a fairy prince whose wealth is only cqhaled by his beauty and surpassed by Iris affection for and toward her. Iler father is fearful lest the girl’s head should be turned by reading the Ledger and the Waverly and similar publications, and is apt to remark in an unfinished mannerthatif he thought she was getting any of that into her head he'd do his duty by her as a father should. Florence is employed in a hat-factory. A few days ago she read in the Waverly the following romantic item: K How She Found a Husband.—Not many weeks ago a young girl employed in a hat-factory in Walsingham, Mass., who had wearied of the narrow and uncongenial sphere of her home, wrote on a pink-tinted paper, in a neat hand full of character, this note: ‘My name is Elea noraGertrude Smith. I live at Walsingham, Mass., where I work in the hat-factory. I am eighteen years of age, five feet three and three-quarters inches high, of slight build and willowy figure, with a wealth of golden hair, and blue eyes deep as a summer’s sea. I think that I could love, but, ah! Eleanora G. S.’ Having daintily folded this epistle, scented it with a faint suspicion of newmown hay, and sealed it with a signet bearing a Cupid mounted on a dove, bursting from the heart of a blush-rose, she tucked it inside the lining of the hat she was finishing and left her fate to fortune. The hat was purchased by a Mr. Algernon John Sisney, of Rochester, N. Y., a young man of striking appearance, eminent talent and immense wealth. He found the note and, his curiosity being awakened by its contents, did not "rest till he had traveled to Walsingham, Mass., and discovered its writer. The acquaintance thus remarkably formed rapidly ripened into love, and—to make a long story short —on Tuesday last, at Walsingham, Mass., the Rev. Hosea F. Sanderson united in the holy bonds of matrimony Eleanora Gertrude Smith and Algernon John Sisney. May their pathway bestrewn with flowers! The bride has contributed to these columns under tlie pseudonym of ‘ Gertie Gusn.’ ” -—Florence, having read this, was moved with a consuming desire to see for herself how the old thing worked, and accordingly constructed a letter of a somewhat similar order of epistolary architecture, which she ensconced neatly in the lining of the most stylish hat that was to be turned out of the factory, arguing with true feminine shrewdness that it would probably become the property of a young man to match. Alas! the best-laid schemes of mice and young women oft gang agley. Her irascible widowed father had been cultivating with perfectly honorable intentions and a view to matrimony the society of a young woman of twenty-six, and had arrived at that age when a man lingers long at the looking-glass, and reads with some interest the testimonials with reference to the merits of the various vintages of hair-dye. He already had purchased a pair of boots three sizes too small, and an overcoat with a velvet collar, and, desiring to make an indelible impression on his dulcinea’s heart, wished to secure a hat. Evil fortune induced him to accomplish his toilet with Florence’s hat. He purchased it, and was about to place his card inside the lining when a neatly-folded piece of paper met his eye. He opened it and read Florence’s note . . . Then he walked rapidly homeward. ... On his way he passed a newly-erected building. Stepping in he asked the .hoss plasterer if he could oblige him with a nice, limber lath. The boss plasterer said he could. Grasping the lath firmly in his red, right hand and remarking, between his clenched teeth: “I’ll do my duty by her as a father,” he hurried homeward. Alas! poor Florence '.—Chicago Tribune.