Life — October 20, 1910 — page 19: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

Ei Fee LIFES INFALLIBLE FORTUNE TELLER If you were born on October “ed Your future wile will be a profes- sional elocutfonist. Ske will practice on you. — Eventually you will go into the wilds of Alaska to prospect for gold. “€B Your future wife will have an ener- getic temper and a large command of uage. No one has yet invented a ligntning-rod to make you safe from this combination. 21 Lan) “GA Your future wife will be vain of the smallness of her feet. The tights ness of her shoes will keep you con- stantly in debt for cab-hire. 20 ‘Your future husband #27 will be an invet- crate smoker, not of tobacco but of hams, ‘Your future husband #2 will have a broad- gauge thirst and a narrow-gauge in- e come. You will 4 5 become expert in making last year's . a4 gowns fit this year's styles. a Your future husband #3 will detest rag-times music, and as it is the only kind you care to play he will end his days in a padded cell. A voice freighted with care and despera- tion broke the stillness. “ Good-bye!" It was the voice of Bowlson. “What do you mean, dear? Surely—"* Mabel smiled up at him serenely. Why things are not half done,’ she said, “you don’t mean to say that you are tired ?** Tired! That's not the word for it. Iam dead. And what is more, I have come to my Mabel Peterby, I love you better than anything on earth. But never again for me! During the short space of seven hours I have ruined your gas and plumbing system, put four doors out of order and spoiled a kitchen range. I want to tell you that I know nothing of house affairs; neither do I in- tend to learn. If I couldn't make money enough to hire some one else to do man- ual labor for me I would go out and drown myself; but as for being a man of all work around any girl's house, not for me!~ Farewell! ’" He staggered as sternly as he could up to where she stood. “You can marry whispered, “or not at all. He started feebly for the door, but a pair of clinging arms wound around his neck. Jack, dear,’’ said a soft voice, “don’t you understand? Don’t you see that you are just the kind of a man I senses. me as I am,’’ he need. I wanted to make sure of you, that is all. Papa has been the trial of my life for ever since I can remember— a perfect nuisance around the house morning, noon and night—and I made up my mind that I wouldn't marry a man like him for all the money in the world." He lay on the sofa and gazed up her joyfully. “Tf you mean that, dear,’ he said, “send for a bottle of whiskey, have a square meal cooked and telephone for a minister.” Despondent Father Vaughan REACHING in Montreal the other day, Father Vaughan declared that We are living in a day when you may d what you like, provided you are not found out; ina day when the relations between the sexes take one back to Pagan times, when the garbage on which men and women feed is as foul and loathsome as the stuff over which they glont and chatter: in a day when may: riage has become so debased and defiled that not even the pledged troth can make it long and endurable without change of prospective partners in a life of legalized vice; in.a day when there is no empty place but in the cradle, no room in which to move but in the churches. nonsense ! We are living in no such day—nor are our neighbors in Montreal to whom you preached. What gave you the idea that we such hard characters and eat garbage? For confirmation of your re- marks you invite us to “read the story Nonsense! Father, are 659 of present-day life, as it is reflected in society, as it is mirrored forth on the stage, as it is shown up in the law courts, as it is writ large on our bookstalls, or, if you will, as it is published in society journals, in the monthly magazine, in the weekly pictorial and in the daily press.’’ ‘one of these sources of information seems so good to us as personal consid- eration of the people we know, and who advertise comparatively little either in society, on the stage, in the law courts, in the bookstalls or even in the press Really you would be surprised to know what a considerable proportion of half- way decent people there are left; decent, faulty, struggling people, some of them without automobiles, very many of them with children whom they are trying to Dring up to be useful characters. Sometimes when we get up from a course of reading in the fifteen-cent niagazines—do you read our fifteen-cent magazines and ten-cent Outlook, Father Vaughan ?—we think there could never have beenta day when so many competent h good tools grubbing up sin and casting it out, and working to make the Galilee stand- ard rule. You are too despondent, Reverend Si Truly you are. ‘There’s more doing hereabouts for the betterment of human- ity. than realize. When we read your discourse at Montreal we had to pinch ourself to be sure we were not reading an account of Mayor Gaynor's misdeeds in one of the Hearst papers, or the World’s description of the calamities that the Colonel is about to bring down on mankind. Sin, sir, is an old habit and hard to break up, but there are lots and lots of people that we know about that are not overpleased with it and make con- stant and strenuous efforts—not always with the best judgment—to abate it and keep it out of fashion. Stay with us awhile, read our fifteen-cent magazines, learn to ‘know us better. You will find us very imperfect people but you will not find that the great mass of us are rotten, or that our world is going to Ballyhoo, St. Paul talked about the Ro- mans somewhat as you talk about us, and in due the Romans went to pot. But there has been a lot better the world since then. We're not going to pot at all! Just you wait and sec! our hands were busy wi you and and good sir, time done to Newport ELL, old fellow, how's wife?" “Which one? "’ your