“Flower Of Hundreds, May 22, 1774.
“Well, Tom, I've got my quietus. You've the pleasure
of hearing from a young gentleman who's just been discarded!
“Do you start, my dear friend? Does the event seem
so very tremendous and unexpected? I'm sorry to shock
your feelings, and would not do it for the world, could I
avoid it, but the fact is as I've stated.
“I do not take the event with your equanimity; I am
sufficiently miserable even to satisfy the vanity of the young
lady who has thought it decorous to give me many reasons
to believe that she returned my affection, and then to inform
me that she can't be my wife. You see I'm angry, as well
as unhappy. I do n't deny it, and I think I've some reason.
“I went to Vanely on Saturday, and we rode hither,
where we spent an hour, and then returned; on Sunday,
you remember, we met at church, and on Monday—but
I'm prosing with a detail of my movements. I meant to
say that on the visit here, in all of our rides, and interviews,
and conversations, I was fond enough to imagine than I saw
some indications of real love on Bonnybel's part. She declared
that I would find no difficulty in marrying, that faint
heart never won fair lady, upbraided me for not
speaking,
as if maidens could propose themselves, and in a thousand
different ways, led me to believe that she loved me, and
was willing to marry me.
“On these hints I spoke; it was one evening at the trysting
tree, the old oak at the end of the lawn, you know, and
I made myself clearly understood. You know that, much
as I may love a woman, I'm not the man to kneel at her
feet, and wipe my eyes, and whine out, `please love me!'
On the contrary, I told Miss Bonnybel simply that I loved
her truly, and asked her to marry me.
“You should have seen her look when I spoke thus. She
became crimson, and was silent for a time. Then—but hang
it, Tom! I can't fill the chair of the historian. She discarded
me—that's all. She had the greatest affection for
me, 't was true, she said, but she was over young to marry
yet; she'd not made up her mind—it was unfair in me to
thus make her feel pain—she would always love me as her
dear cousin and playmate—then she raised her white handkerchief
to her eyes, and begged me to reconduct her to
the house.
“I did so in silence, and then discovered that I had important
business here. That's all.
“Well! I'll neither cut my throat, nor sit down and
weep, nor, worst of all, go crouching back to her, like a
dog! Henceforth I forswear the sex. A bachelor's life
for me, my boy. Come, take a main at tric-trac with me,
and help me to find the bottom of a cask of Bordeaux or
Jamaica. I'm moping, you see, and want company.
“Your friend,
“Harry St. John.”
