Readers, Perhaps you will like reading this light-hearted "novel" published in the news on this date, 132 years ago! There is no author given for it. Enjoy : ) "The High Pressure Novel." Once upon a time there was a maiden, whose name was Mary, although they called her Moll, for short. She wasn't a tall, dark-eyed maiden, with clear transparent skin, and lips like cherries, and cheeks suffused with blushes. She didn't have glossy black hair, sweeping back in wavy tresses from her queenly brow, and her form wasn't a bit like Hebe's. No, there was none of those things--on the contrary, she was short and thin, and had red hair and freckles, and she also sported snaggle teeth and wore pads; but still she was a nice girl, and there was a young man who fell in love with her, and his name was Bill, although his friends called him William when they wanted to hurt his feelings, for he didn't like it much. He wasn't fine looking, and had neither curly brown hair nor a moustache. Not much, Bill laid himself out on soap-locks, and wore a goatee that he had dyed twice a week. Now this Bill was in love with Mary, but did he go and make a deliberate ass of himself? Did he, I say, go into a grove with her, and in the soft moonlight, by the streamlet that murmured sweetly by, and with the tender zephyrs sighing through the foliage, fall down on his knees, seize her jeweled hand and breathe his deep affections in the tender accents of fond attachment, and swear "by yon bright orb above us, always to be thine?" Did he, I say? You can just bet he didn't. You can lay out your whole revenue safely on that. William knew too much about the price of pants to go flopping around on the wet grass with his good clothes on; besides he never cared anything about streamlets or any kind of cold water, except to mix with his gin. No, sir, it was exceedingly strange, but this infatuated William met her at the alley gate, and he stood right up on his old legs and says: "Say, Moll, old gal, s'posen we get hitched?" But how did Mary behave? Did she go dropping to sleep over on the bricks in a dead faint, or did she hide her gentle head on his shirt bosom to conceal her blushes? No, she didn't, and she didn't say, "I'm ever thine, my own dear William!" Oh, my, no. She looked right in his yellow eyes, and says: "I'm in, I'm the gal for those sort of things. Go in!" And instead of referring him to her father, she only said: "Won't the old man bust right out when you tell him? Ha, ha and she laughed. But she didn't ask William to try and molify her fond father. No, no. She very wickedly advised him "to poke the old man in the nose if he gave him any of his lip. She was a funny girl, this Mary. Now, the old man wasn't wealthy, for he sold soap-fat for a living, and so he didn't think Bill was nosing around after his stamps; so when Bill asked him, he neither ordered him fiercely away nor did the dewey moisture gather in his eagle eye as he passed his hem-stitched up there and said: "Bless you my children, bless you!" Oh, no, nothing of the sort. He just blew his old red nose in his bandana and told him to take her along, for he was glad to get rid of her, he was, and William would be the same mighty soon, for she was awful rough on grub, and always broke plates when she got mad. So, you see, there really was no necessity for William to come at midnight's solemn hour, in a cab, and throw a rope-ladder up to her window, and whistle three times on his fingers, and then go up, hand over hand, and bring her down in one hand and her trunk in the other, and a band-box and an umbrella under each arm, and a whole lot of bundles, and then get into the cab and fly to some distant shore. That's the way it would have been in a novel; but Bill said he wasn't on that lay, and so he just went out in the yard, and out of pure joy he skinned the cat three or four times on the grape-vine arbor, and then he went and got in his butcher-cart and drove Mary right down to the magistrate to get the job done for a quarter--for he said he was some on low prices, he was. But the queerest thing of all was, that Bill had no tall, dark ruffanly rival, with a scowling visage and black whiskers, who flew at him with a drawn dagger and a horse pistol in each hand, and a muttered curse upon his lips, and cried wildly for "Revenge." Ha! ha! and said "Death!" and "Villain, thou diest?" Not any. There was another fellow in love with Mollie, to be sure, but he was a weak-eyed man, who had sandy hair, and wore spectacles and a choker collar and always looked scared when you hollared him. So when he saw that Bill had the best of the girl's affections, he looked serene, and said: "Go in, Billy, if you hanker for her;" and as Bill was a trifle on the hanker, he sailed right in. So, William, you see, had no trouble at all--and you couldn't get up an agonizing novel about him if you tried. He didn't have any urgent business to call him to a foreign land, and so he had to bid'nt her a fond good bye, and swear always to be true, and then go away and forget her, and fall in love with a dark-eyed Italian girl, picking grapes in a vinyard, with a square towel folded on her head, while his forgotten and forsaken Mary gradually faded and pined away, and baffled the physician's skill, and grew paler, and at last when the June roses were in bloom, lying gently down to die, while thro' the open window, floated in the balmy odor of jessamine and honey-suckle. And William didn't come home at last and, filled with deathless remorse, go daily to the cemetary and strew flowers on her grave, and teach his children to lisp her name. Not at all. That is the way Mrs. E.D.E.N. Southworth would have done it, but she wasn't round. Billy was a butcher, who wore a ! white shirt and a shiny hat, and he stayed at home and killed beef and sold it at a big price, and stuck to Mary, and she kept healthy and wasn't much on the pine, or the fade, while if any fellows got to lurking round, William went right out and batted them in the eye, he did. And then, at last, when all was over Mary didn't sit in the room; while they dressed her in white, and mixed orange blossoms in her waterfall, and then go gently down stairs with six brides-maids at her heals, and stand up with her William, and weep gently while she was being married by the minister, and then get lots of presents, and then go and live in her new house through all the happy years with Billy, and never know sorrow or trouble any more. Why, of course, she didn't, for it wasn't her style, you see. She just rushed up stairs and put on her pink muslin and her sun bonnet, and had nary bridesmaid, and went to the magistrate's and never wept a particle, and got no presents but fifteen cents from the old man to pay her car fare home, and when she went to the magistrates she just rose off the bench and told Bill she didn't see much use in splicing, and that she didn't like him anyhow; and so she went home, and Bill, he went with her, and told her he wasn't sorry, and as he didn't want her and he guessed she was pretty hard on clothes, and so they never got married, and the whole thing turned out wrong; but I couldn't help it, for I ain't going to put the facts on record that ain't so. But it ain't a bit like any novel that I ever read, so there must have been something strange about this fellow and Mollie that I could never find out, so I'll have to let it slide as it is. ~ from, The Progressive Batavian, May 9-1872 submitted by Linda "The Poor House and the People," ~The Lives of Those Who Lived at the Genesee County Almshouse in Bethany During the Nineteenth Century~ ~For further information, contact: Linda ny_hummingbird@yahoo.com or ~leave a message at the Bethany website: Web-Page Editor: BETHANY ~ Its Past and Present ~ http://www.arkwebshost.com/family/bluebird/TownOfBethany.shtml Contributor for the BUFFALO and Western NYS Website: www.buffalonian.com ~ History Through Newspapers Contributor/transcriber for Build-a-Books-Online, Celebration of Women Writers: http://www.digital.library.upenn.edu/women/