Quaint Courtships | Page 2

"but I said, 'Not in my presence,
if you please!' So now he just says this foolish thing about a nightcap."
Mrs. Drayton said that this reform would be one of the jewels in Mrs.
Cyrus Price's crown; and added that she prayed that some day the
Captain would give up tobacco and rum. "I am a poor, feeble creature,"
said Mrs. Drayton; "I cannot do much for my fellow men in active
mission-work. But I give my prayers." However, neither Mrs. Drayton's
prayers nor Mrs. Cyrus's active mission-work had done more than
mitigate the blasphemy; the "rum" (which was good Monongahela
whiskey) was still on hand; and as for tobacco, except when sleeping,
eating, playing on his harmonicon, or dozing through one of Dr.
Lavendar's sermons, the Captain smoked every moment, the ashes of
his pipe or cigar falling unheeded on a vast and wrinkled expanse of
waistcoat.
No; he was not a romantic object. But we girls, watching him stump
past the schoolroom window to the post-office, used to whisper to each
other, "Just think! he eloped."
There was romance for you!
To be sure, the elopement had not quite come off, but, except for the
very end, it was all as perfect as a story. Indeed, the failure at the end
made it all the better: angry parents, broken hearts,--only, the worst of
it was, the hearts did not stay broken! He went and married somebody
else; and so did she. You would have supposed she would have died. I
am sure, in her place, any one of us would have died. And yet, as Lydia
Wright said, "How could a young lady die for a young gentleman with
ashes all over his waistcoat?"
However, when Alfred Price fell in love with Miss Letty Morris, he
was not indifferent to his waistcoat, nor did he weigh two hundred
pounds. He was slender and ruddy-cheeked, with tossing red-brown
curls. If he swore, it was not by his grandmother nor her nightcap; if he

drank, it was hard cider (which can often accomplish as much as
"rum"); if he smoked, it was in secret, behind the stable. He wore a
stock, and (on Sunday) a ruffled shirt; a high-waisted coat with two
brass buttons behind, and very tight pantaloons. At that time he
attended the Seminary for Youths in Upper Chester. Upper Chester was
then, as in our time, the seat of learning in the township, the Female
Academy being there, too. Both were boarding-schools, but the young
people came home to spend Sunday; and their weekly returns, all
together in the stage, were responsible for more than one Old Chester
match....
"The air," says Miss, sniffing genteelly as the coach jolts past the
blossoming May orchards, "is most agreeably perfumed. And how fair
is the prospect from this hilltop!"
"Fair indeed!" responded her companion, staring boldly.
Miss bridles and bites her lip.
"I was not observing the landscape," the other explains, carefully.
In those days (Miss Letty was born in 1804, and was eighteen when she
and the ruddy Alfred sat on the back seat of the coach)--in those days
the conversation of Old Chester youth was more elegant than in our
time. We, who went to Miss Bailey's school, were sad degenerates in
the way of manners and language; at least so our elders told us. When
Lydia Wright said, "Oh my, what an awful snow-storm!" dear Miss
Ellen was displeased. "Lydia," said she, "is there anything
'awe'-inspiring in this display of the elements?"
"No, 'm," faltered poor Lydia.
"Then," said Miss Bailey, gravely, "your statement that the storm is
'awful' is a falsehood. I do not suppose, my dear, that you intentionally
told an untruth; it was an exaggeration. But an exaggeration, though not
perhaps a falsehood, is unladylike, and should be avoided by persons of
refinement." Just here the question arises: what would Miss Ellen (now
in heaven) say if she could hear Lydia's Lydia, just home from college,
remark--But no: Miss Ellen's precepts shall protect these pages.
But in the days when Letty Morris looked out of the coach window,
and young Alfred murmured that the prospect was fair indeed,
conversation was perfectly correct. And it was still decorous even when
it got beyond the coach period and reached a point where Old Chester
began to take notice. At first it was young Old Chester which giggled.

Later old Old Chester made some comments; it was then that Alfred's
mother mentioned the matter to Alfred's father. "He is young, and, of
course, foolish," Mrs. Price explained. And Mr. Price said that though
folly was incidental to Alfred's years, it must be checked.
"Just check it," said Mr. Price.
Then Miss Letty's mother awoke to the situation, and said, "Fy, fy,
Letitia."
So it was that these