at each other.
But nowadays it is different, and Dan Cupid spends most of his time
on the hot foot between the coroner's office and the divorce court.
I've got a hunch that young people these days are more emotional
and like to see their pictures in the newspapers.
Nowadays when a clever young man goes to visit his sweetheart he
hikes over the streets in a benzine buggy, and when he pulls the
bell-rope at the front door he has a rapid fire revolver in one
pocket and a bottle of carbolic acid in the other.
His intentions are honorable and he wishes to prove them so by
shooting his lady love if she renigs when he makes a play for her
hand.
I think the old style was the best, because when young people
quarreled they didn't need an ambulance and a hospital surgeon to
help them make up.
In the old days Oscar Dobson would draw the stove brush cheerfully
across his dog-skin shoes and rush with eager feet to see Lena
Jones, the girl he wished to make the wife of his bosom.
"Darling!" Oscar would say, "I am sure to the bad for love of you.
Pipe the downcast droop in this eye of mine and notice the way my
heart is bubbling over like a bottle of sarsaparilla on a hot day!
Be mine, Lena! be mine!"
Then Lena would giggle. Not once, but seven giggles, something
like those used in a spasm.
Then she would reply, "No, Oscar; it cannot be. Fate wills it
otherwise."
Then Oscar would bite his finger nails, pick his hat up out of the
coal-scuttle and say to Lena, "False one! You love Conrad, the
floorwalker in the butcher shop. Curses on Conrad, and see what
you have missed, Lena. I have tickets for a swell chowder party
next Tuesday. Ah! farewell forever!"
Then Oscar would walk out and hunt up one of those places that
Carrie Nation missed in the shuffle and there, with one arm glued
tight around the bar rail, he would fasten his system to a jag
which would last for a week.
Despair would grab him and he'd be Oscar with the souse thing for
sure.
When he would recover strength enough to walk down town without
attracting the attention of the other side of the street, he would
call on Lena and say, "Lena, forgive me for what I done, but love
is blind--and, besides, I mixed my drinks. Lena, I was on the
downward path and I nearly went to hell."
Then Lena would say, "Why, Oscar, I saw you and your bundle when
you fell in the well, but I didn't know it was as deep as you
mention."
Then they would kiss a
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