Act 2 — WHOM NOT TO MARRY:
Reading edition
Or, Diogenes the Younger
The Lady with a Mission.—She will fill your house with parsons or professors, lecture you on her pet hobby when she can get no other audience (which will be pretty often), consider all your old friends frivolous, and treat you with supreme contempt if you venture to hint that you like your dinner punctually, and properly cooked.
The Lady of Fashion.—She will regard you as an appendage, a cheque-drawing animal, a useful purveyor of equipages and dresses and diamonds and lace, a person to be ignored as much as possible in Society.
The Millionaire's Daughter.—She will persistently make you aware that it is her house you live in, her carriage you drive, that the servants are hers, the dinners hers—that, in fact, she has bought you, and given for you much more than you are really worth.
The Pious-Parochial Lady.—She will devote all her time to the distribution of tracts, the inspection of cottages, the collection of gossip, and interviews with the curate. Each curate will be a more "blessed" man than his predecessor, especially if he have the shifty eyes, aggressive teeth, narrow forehead, and shambling knees which modern curatism has developed.
The Female Novelist. She will sit up all night writing improprieties, and pass all day in town, worrying publishers, who are at present sad victims of the irrepressible petticoat.
The Horsey Woman. She will laugh at you as a muff if you don't ride across country, buy "screws" from her particular friends that you will have to sell for as many tens as she gave hundreds, and cost you a fortune in doctors' bills by breaking her collar-bone at least once every season.
The Gushing Female. She will devour you with kisses, to the injury of your shirt-front, or weep on your bosom, with much the same result. To her either is equally delightful.
The Widow. Diogenes pauses. The theme is too great for him. Vide Mr. Weller, sen., in Pickwick, passim.
TRITE BUT TRUE
"Music's the food of love" they say, This is a passage every one now quotes; The truth is clear, for in the present day, Young love is fed entirely on notes.
"Our Failures."—Husband. "I say, Lizzie, what on earth did you make this mint-sauce of?"
Young Wife (who has been "helping" Cook). "Parsley, to be sure!"
APPEARANCES ARE DECEPTIVE
He. "Who's that?"
She. "Jack Anstruther and his bride. He married ever so much beneath him."
He. "Doesn't look like it!"
BREAKING THE NEWS
Newly Affianced One. "May I be your new mamma, Tommy?"
Tommy. "I should like it, but you must ask papa."
ONE GOOD TURN DESERVES ANOTHER
She. "But if you say you can't bear the girl, why ever did you propose?"
He. "Well, her people have always been awfully good to me, and it's the only way I could return their hospitality."
Ethel. "Well, Jimmy didn't blow his brains out after all because you refused him. He proposed to Miss Golightly yesterday."
Maud. "Did he? Then he must have got rid of them in some other way!"
Advice to Match-making Mammas.—The first and only thing requisite is simply, as Mrs. Glass very wisely says, "First catch your heir."
A Happy Holiday.—The Bachelor. "So you're looking after the house while your wife is taking a holiday? I hope she's enjoying the change?"
The Benedict. "I know I am."
"Creature Comforts."—Good wives.
How to Cure an Imprudent Attachment.—Materfamilias. "What is to be done, my dear? He positively dotes on her!" Paterfamilias. "Well, we must try to find him an antidote."
Divorce.—A matrimonial ticket-of-leave.
The Desire of Pleasing.—"May I be married, ma?" said a lovely girl of fifteen to her mother the other morning. "Married!" exclaimed the astonished matron, "what put such an idea into your head?" "Little Emily, here, has never seen a wedding; and I'd like to amuse the child," replied the obliging sister, with fascinating naïveté.
A Woman's Will.—Won't!!!
"I dunno what 'er misshus 'll shay—but any'ow 'm nor goin' to preten I'm shober"—(hic).
A Contradiction in Terms.—Man and wife.
Automatic Couplings.—Scotch marriages.
The Family Herald.—A monthly nurse.
The Worst Result of Vivisection.—Eve.
(By an incorrigible Old Bachelor, who is hiding himself for fear of consequences.)
BRADBURY. AGNEW & CO. LD. PRINTERS, LONDON AND TONBRIDGE