A WARNING TO LOVERS.

“Metildy, you are the most good-for-nothin’, triflin’, owdacious, contrary piece that ever lived.”

“Oh, ma!” sobbed Matilda, “I couldn’ help myself—­’deed I couldn’.”

“Couldn’ help yourself?  That’s a pretty way to talk!  Ain’t he a nice young man?”

“Yes’m.”

“Got money?”

“Yes’m.”

“And good kinfolks?”

“Yes’m.”

“And loves you to destrackshun?”

“Yes’m.”

“Well, in the name o’ common sense, what did you send him home for?”

“Well, ma, if I must tell the truth, I must, I s’pose, though I’d ruther die.  You see, ma, when he fetcht his cheer clost to mine, and ketcht holt of my hand, and squez it, and dropt on his knees, then it was that his eyes rolled and he began breathin’ hard, and his gallowses kept a creakin and a creakin’, I till I thought in my soul somethin’ terrible was the matter with his in’ards, his vitals; and that flustered and skeered me so that I bust out a-cryin’.  Seein’ me do that, he creaked worse’n ever, and that made me cry harder; and the harder I cried the harder he creaked, till all of a sudden it came to me that it wasn’t nothin’ but his gallowses; and then I bust out a laughin’ fit to kill myself, right in his face.  And then he jumpt up and run out of the house mad as fire; and he ain’t comin’ back no more.  Boo-hoo, ahoo, boo-hoo!”

“Metildy,” said the old woman sternly, “stop sniv’lin’.  You’ve made an everlastin’ fool of yourself, but your cake ain’t all dough yet.  It all comes of them no ‘count, fashionable sto’ gallowses—­’ ‘spenders’ I believe they calls ’em.  Never mind, honey!  I’ll send for Johnny, tell him how it happened, ’pologize to him, and knit him a real nice pair of yarn gallowses, jest like your pa’s; and they never do creak.”

“Yes, ma,” said Matilda, brightening up; “but let me knit ’em.”

“So you shall, honey:  he’ll vally them a heap more than if I knit ’em.  Cheer up, Tildy:  it’ll all be right—­you mind if it won’t.”

Sure enough, it proved to be all right.  Tildy and Johnny were married, and Johnny’s gallowses never creaked any more.

NOTES.

Milton, in his famous description of the woman Delilah, sailing like a stately ship of Tarsus “with all her bravery on, and tackle trim,” is particular to note “an amber scent of odorous perfume, her harbinger.”  Perfume as an adjunct of feminine dress has been celebrated from the days of the earliest poet, and probably will be to the latest; but it was reserved for the modern toilet to project a regular theory of harmony between odors and colors—­a theory which might never have been dreamed of in the studio of the painter, but is not unworthy of the boudoir of the belle.  It is the young Englishwomen at Vienna who, if we may believe Eugene Chapus, have