From Hagerstown Town & Country Almanack, 1880.
Somebody gives the following advice to girls. It is worth volumes of fiction and sentimentalism: —
Men who are worth having want women for wives. A bundle of gewgaws, bound with a string of flats and quavers, sprinkled with cologne, and set in a carmine saucer — this is no help for a man who expects to raise a family of boys on bread and meat. The piano and lace frames are good in their places, and so are the ribbons, frills and tassels; but you cannot make a dinner of the former, nor a bed-blanket of the latter — and, awful as the idea may seem to you, both dinner and bed-blankets are necessary to domestic happiness.
Life has its relations as well as fancies; but you make all its decorations, remembering the tassels and curtains, but forgetting the bedstead. Suppose a man of good sense, and of course good prospects to be looking for a wife, what chance have you to be chosen? You may trap him, but how much better to make it an object for him to catch you! If you should trap and marry an industrious young man, and deceive him, he would be unhappy as long as he lives. So render yourselves worth catching, and you need no shrewd mother or brother to recommend you, and help you to find a market.
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