SINGLE LIFE.

SINGLE LIFE.

THE OLD MAID'S PRAYER TO DIANA.

SINCE

INCE thou and the stars, my dear Goddess, decree, That old maid as I am, and old maid I must be, Oh! hear the petition I render to thee,

For to bear it, must be my endeavor,

From the grief of my friendships all dropping around,
Till not one that I loved in my youth can be found,
From the legacy hunters which near us abound,
Diana, thy servant deliver!

From the scorn of the young, and the flouts of the gay,
From all the trite ridicule rattled away,

By the pert ones who know nothing wiser to say,
Or a spirit to laugh at them, give her,

From repining at fancied neglected desert,
Or, vain of a civil speech, bridling alert
From finical niceness, or slatternly dirt,
Diana, thy servant deliver!

From over-solicitous guarding of pelf,
From humor unchecked, that most obstinate elf,
From every unsocial attention to self,

Or ridiculous whim whatsoever,

19 *

221

From the vaporish freaks, or methodical airs,

Apt to sprout in a brain that's exempted from cares,
From impertinent meddling in other's affairs,

Diana, thy servant deliver!

From spleen at beholding the young more caressed,
From pettish asperity tartly expressed,

From scandal, detraction, and every such pest,
From all thy true servant deliver!

Nor let satisfaction depart from her lot,
Let her sing, if at ease, and be patient if not,
Be pleased when remembered, content, if forgot,

Till the Fates her slight thread shall dissever.
Mrs. Tighe.

"SO that I would not say but it takes the like of me, a single gentlewoman, unacquaint with the real fash and trouble of the estate of marriage, to carry pure to the end of mortal days, the first grand thoughts of youth."

Oliphant.

I KNOW, therefore, of no reason why a woman should marry, except because she cannot help it; because, "the spirit of life which dwelleth in the secret chambers of the soul, all trembling, speaks these words: Behold a God more powerful than I."

Gail Hamilton.

BROTHER AND SISTER.

BRIDGET ELIA has been my house-keeper for many a long

year. I have obligations to Bridget extending beyond the period of memory. We house together, old bachelor and maid, in a sort of double singleness; with such tolerable comfort, upon the whole, that I, for one, find in myself no sort of disposition to go out upon the mountains, with the rash king's offspring, to bewail my celibacy. We agree pretty well in our tastes and habits-yet so, as "with a difference." We are generally in harmony, with occasional bickerings—as it should be among near relations. We are both of us inclined to be a little too positive; and I have observed the result of our disputes to be almost uniformly this: that in matters of fact, dates, and circumstances, it turns out, that I was in the right, and Bridget in the wrong. But where we have differed upon moral points, upon something proper to be done, or let alone; whatever heat of opposition, or steadiness of conviction, I set out with, I am sure always, in the long-run, to be brought over to her way of thinking! Her education in youth was not much attended to; and she happily missed all that train of female garniture, which passeth by the name of accomplishments. She was tumbled early, by accident or design, into a spacious closet of good old English reading, without much selection or prohibition, and browsed at will upon that fair and wholesome pasturage. Had I twenty girls, they should be brought up exactly in this fashion. I know not whether their chance in wedlock might not be diminished by it; but I can answer for it, that it makes (if the worst comes to the WORST) incomparable old maids!

Charles Lamb.