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Show A BACHELOR'S COMPLAINT. Editor Leader - We are a plain, quiet man of no pretensions to knowledge of ongoing society, but in the many years of bachelorhood we have had few opportunities polishing our rusticity, and are therefore not competent to speak upon matters of taste. Our early years were spent mostly in the "society" of a yoke of oxen; our fashionable ballroom was the old school house, and many a time has our shadow given life and prominence to its whitewashed walls, when no other "flowers" were upon them. We are growing now into the "sere and yellow leaf." We are not what we have been: slight and contumely have done their work, leaving us a gloomy, if not a cynical man. For us an easy chair has more attractions than ever Budder's gate had, even when Jemima's feet were upon it. But we grow garrulous. The youth of this day are too demonstrative. Such was not the case when we were young. At present you shall see an impudent jackanapes with his arm around a girl's waist, walking before your very eyes at noon! Had we attempted such a thing with Biggs's daughter, he would have kicked us off his lot, and we should have deserved it. But we would pass this by as one of the innovations of the age, would the impudent creatures only let us sleep at night. After ten o'clock p.m. our ears are persecuted with the most miserable music ever sung. Night is actually made "hideous" by it. Last evening we retired as usual at an early hour, having nothing to lament but our lonely condition. Several wagonloads of these night birds rode past our cabin, and every individual of this collection imagined himself to be singing! Each voice had either a different tune or another set of words. One young woman was wailing away at the top of her voice, "Will You Love Me When I'm Old;" a young fellow in the next wagon, for whose voice we felt nothing but contempt, was bellowing with stentorian lungs, "My Grandfather's Clock." These two were accompanied by a score of others, each having a different song, a different tune, a different key. One man in the last wagon aroused our especial ire. He was braying for all the world like the thistle-loving quadruped, and yet imagined himself singing bass to "The Day When You'll Forget Me." Men of this stamp we have no respect for; they have none for themselves. Can such things be? Semper ego auditor tuntant? Is there no balm in Gilead? If not, the lot of an emigrant must again be ours. Again we will pack our trunk, and in the suburbs of some less refined village, pass the remainder of a solitary existence. Beppo. Bewundernsbergenstrasse, Cache Co. (County), Sept. (September) 5, 1880. |