The New Hampshire Gazette

BACHELORS BLUNDERS

In our town of Harrowich, we had a fashion when I was a girl, of courting by moonlight to the sound of jingling sleigh bells, and behind a pair of spirited bays. I loved a sprightly jockey of a little fellow once, but he spoiled all by driving me to the cross-roads one evening with the horses all the way on a gallop, something whispered in my ear a couplet of the old ballad.

A man that drives his horses hard.
May chance to drive his wife--

I was "not at home" the next time he called, and as he saw me at the window he took the hint.

I chose never to keep a man in suspense an hour after I had determined not to have him for a husband, if he offered himself. I made my calculations according to my own ideas of propriety in their general behavior. One came to see me seven months constantly, and said nothing about love. I concluded not to wait any longer; though I had no real objection to him, I dismissed him. Another offered himself, hand and heart, after an acquaintance of three weeks, I told him to go about his business, he had neither common prudence, nor common judgment. And a third was forever telling me how many conquests he had made. I told him at last that I had a sufficiency of his company, and desired him to be particular to mention in his future narrations to others, that my heart was not among the number of those which had fallen victims to his seductive powers.

To pass over at least as many affairs as your correspondent does, in which I was engaged, with all the variety of beaux from the starched and mincing dandy of the holiday ball room, to the solemn and tongueless, and half shaved dudgeon of the farm-house, I came to an adventure of no common occurrence. I was engaged to be married to a young merchant; my wedding clothes were ready; he was a gentleman who set a high value on his taste; he wanted me to wear a blue sash, I preferred a white one; he got in a pet about it, and I concluded I had at last got sight of a cloven foot. I proposed that instead of pumps he should wear boots, he did not like the interference. Surely I thought it's a bad rule, that dont work both ways. I put off the time-took a second thought about the matter, and broke off the match. A man that sets himself up as lord of the threshold, will be a tyrant in the house. I never blamed myself for the step.

Once I listened to a fop of a fellow, who wore ruffles and blue broad cloth; he spent dollars where he should have only paid cents. I left him off. Another used to come to my father's house with his dog and gun, they wanted me to listen to him, but I told them that one who bestowed so large a portion of his affection on dogs had not enough left for a wife—I rejected him. A third suitor was in the habit of swearing, politely to be sure; I could not but think such an one had no business to be a father. He got his walking papers.

In fine, with a tolerable fortune, and some beauty, through inability to find one tolerable unobjectionable man for a husband, I remain in single life. Happy in the recollection that if to be single is to err, my error grew out of misfortune.

Hoping that all who are worthy, may, in the exercise of all due prudence, fare better, I remain your constant reader.

BELINDA FINCH