 | Eli Perkins (at large) |  |
RICH BROWN'S BOYS.
Fifth Avenue Hotel, }
August 1.
The rich Brown's Boys!
Not the poor Brown's
Boys who live on side streets,
and buy $1 tickets, and
swell in amber kids in rich
young ladies' $20 boxes at
the opera—smart fellows,
who really can't do any
better, but the good-for-nothing
rich Brown's Boys.
Who are they?
Why, the city is full of them.
They have rich fathers; they drive
their father's horses; their fathers are
stockholders in the Academy, and the
boys occupy the seats. Their mission
is to spend their father's money and
live like barnacles on his reputation.
They don't know how to do anything
useful, and they don't have anything useful to do.
They come into the world to be supported. They are
social and financial parasites. A poor Brown's Boy
does the best he can, but these fellows do the worst
they can.
Rich girls “go for” them on account of their rich
fathers. They marry them, have a swell wedding, and
then spend a lifetime mourning that they did not marry
a brave, strong, working fellow, who would have felt
rich in their affections, and who, with a little help from
father-in-law, would have hewn his way to wealth and
position.
RULES FOR MAKING RICH BROWN'S BOYS.
Below I give the ten cardinal rules which, if followed,
will make a rich Brown's Boy out of any brainless son
of a rich father. Any young New Jersey Stockton,
Kentucky Ward, or Massachusetts Lawrence—yes, any
Darnphool Republican Prince of Wales can carry out
these simple rules, and thus attain to the glorious position
of a rich Brown's Boy. If carried out they will
produce the same result nine times out of ten. I have
seen them tried a thousand times:
RULES.
First.—If your father is rich or holds a high position
socially—and you are a good-for-nothing, dissipated,
darnphool of a swell, without sense or character enough
to make a living, pay your addresses to some rich girl
—and marry her if you can.
Second.—Go home and live with her father, and magnanimously
spend her money. Keep up your flirtations
around town just the same. Gamble a little, and always
dine at the Clubs.
Third.—After your wife has nursed you through a
spell of sickness, and she looks languid and worn with
has grown plain-looking—then scold her a little and
make love to her maid!
Fourth.—If your weary wife objects, I'd insult her—
tell her you won't be tyrannized over. Then come
home drunk once or twice a week, and empty the coal-scuttle
into the piano and pour the kerosene lamps
over her Saratoga trunks and into the baby's cradle.
When she cries, I'd twit her about the high (hic) social
position of my own (hic) family.
Fifth.—If, weary and sick and heartbroken, she
finally asks for a separation, I'd blacken her character
—deny the paternity of my own children—get a divorce
myself. Then by wise American law you can keep all
her money, and, while she goes back in sorrow to her
father, you can magnanimously peddle out to her a
small dowry from her own estate.
Sixth.—If she asks you—audaciously asks you—for
any of her own money, tell her to go to the Dev—
Devil (the very one she has come to).
Seventh.—Now I 'd keep a mistress and a poodle dog,
and ride up to the Park with them in a gilded landaulet
every afternoon. While this miserable, misguided
woman will be trodden in the dust by society you can
attain to the heights of modern chivalry by leading at
charity balls in public, and breeding bull-pups and
coach-dogs at home.
Eighth.—After you have used up your wife's last
money in dissipation, and brought your father's gray
hairs down in sorrow to the grave, I'd get the delirium
tremens and shoot myself. This will create a sensation
Boy to call you high-toned and chivalrous.
Ninth.—Then that poor angel wife, crushed in spirit,
tried in the crucible of adversity, and purified by the
beautiful “Do-unto-others” of the Christ-child, will
go into mourning, and build with her last money a
monument to the memory of the man who crushed
her bleeding heart.
Sacred to the Memory
OF
J. LAWRENCE BROWN.
Died May 12, 1876.
He was a kind father and
an indulgent husband. He
always indulged himself.
“The pure in spirit shall
see God.”
He owned a 2.40 Hoss.
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