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The two following letters, taken at random from my files, explain themselves:

“BURNT PRAIRIE, NEAR THE JUNCTION,}

“ON THE ROAD TO THE COURT HOUSE,}

“TENNESSEE, January 2.}

“DEAR SIR–I am in search of a wife and would be willing to settle down if I could get a good wife. I was but twenty-six years of age when my mother died and I miss her sadly for she was oh so good and kind to me her caring son.

“I have been wanting for the past year to settle down, but I have not saw a girl that I thought would make me a good, true wife. I know I have saw a good deal of the world, and am inclined to be cynical for I see how hollow everything is, and how much need there is for a great reform. Sometimes I think that if I could express the wild thoughts that surges up and down in my system, I could win a deathless name. When I get two or three drinks aboard I can think of things faster than I can speak them, or draw them off for the paper. What I want is a woman that can economize, and also take the place of my lost mother, who loved me and put a better polish on my boots than any other living man.

“I know I am gay and giddy in my nature, but if I could meet a joyous young girl just emerging upon life’s glad morn, and she had means, I would be willing to settle down and make a good, quiet, every-day husband.

“A. J.”
“ASHMEAD, LEDUC CO., I.T.,}
“December 20.}

“DEAR SIR–I have very little time in which to pencil off a few lines regarding a wife. I am a man of business, and I can’t fool around much, but I would be willing to marry the right kind of a young woman. I am just bursting forth on the glorious dawn of my sixty-third year. I have been married before, and as I might almost say, I have been in that line man and boy for over forty years. My pathway has been literally decorated with wives ever since I was twenty years old.

“I ain’t had any luck with my wives heretofore, for they have died off like sheep. I’ve treated all of them as well as I knew how, never asking of them to do any more than I did, and giving of ’em just the same kind of vittles that I had myself, but they are all gone now. There was a year or two that seemed just as if there was a funeral procession stringing out of my front gate half the time.

“What I want is a young woman that can darn a sock without working two or three tumors into it, cook in a plain economical way without pampering the appetites of hired help, do chores around the barn and assist me in accumulating property.

I. D. P.”

This last letter contains a small tress of dark hair that feels like a bunch of barbed wire when drawn through the fingers, and has a tendency to “crock.”