"ON THE ROAD TO THE COURT HOUSE,}
"TENNESSEE, January 2.}

"DEAR SIR--I am in search of a wife and would be willing to settle
down if I could get a good wife. I was but twenty-six years of age
when my mother died and I miss her sadly for she was oh so good and
kind to me her caring son.

"I have been wanting for the past year to settle down, but I have
not saw a girl that I thought would make me a good, true wife. I
know I have saw a good deal of the world, and am inclined to be
cynical for I see how hollow everything is, and how much need there
is for a great reform. Sometimes I think that if I could express
the wild thoughts that surges up and down in my system, I could win
a deathless name. When I get two or three drinks aboard I can think
of things faster than I can speak them, or draw them off for the
paper. What I want is a woman that can economize, and also take the
place of my lost mother, who loved me and put a better polish on my
boots than any other living man.

"I know I am gay and giddy in my nature, but if I could meet a
joyous young girl just emerging upon life's glad morn, and she had
means, I would be willing to settle down and make a good, quiet,
every-day husband.

"A. J."

"ASHMEAD, LEDUC CO., I.T.,}
"December 20.}

"DEAR SIR--I have very little time in which to pencil off a few
lines regarding a wife. I am a man of business, and I can't fool
around much, but I would be willing to marry the right kind of a
young woman. I am just bursting forth on the glorious dawn of my
sixty-third year. I have been married before, and as I might almost
say, I have been in that line man and boy for over forty years. My
pathway has been literally decorated with wives ever since I was
twenty years old.

"I ain't had any luck with my wives heretofore, for they have died
off like sheep. I've treated all of them as well as I knew how,
never asking of them to do any more than I did, and giving of 'em
just the same kind of vittles that I had myself, but they are all
gone now. There was a year or two that seemed just as if there wa