Some
man who is not up in the game has been writing to the newspapers that no one
makes successful love in midwinter. Not for aught the writer knows that may be
true of the present generation of young men, but time was when lovemaking did
not depend upon the season. It takes winter’s wooing to bring about June
marriages. It may be true that when warm weather begins, a young man’s fancy
lightly turns to love; but in order to get him to that train of thought, it requires
the discipline of a boarding house in winter, from which he is glad to escape
to sit by the fire in the pleasant home of some sweet, loving girl. If the
change of scene will not melt his heart and set him to thinking about “home,
sweet home,” then he is not worthy of the love of any girl. Of course, this is
not talking of present day conditions, for the winters and summers may have
changed things from what they were when Hamilton had not more than one-fifth of
its current population, and when the boys and girls were more equal in numbers.
There was a chance for a young fellow to make a living and be able to look
ahead to the time when he could go into business for himself. He could find a
place in a store or workshop, and while the pay was not as much as now, one’s
expenses were lighter and the extravagant habits of the present generation had
not been cultivated. There was more of the clinging ivy in the nature of the
girls, for they had not asserted their right to take a man’s place in the
business world at less wages than would feed and decently clothe a man.
But then the text is that successful
love-making in winter is impossibility. It might not be hard to argue from that
standpoint in the “winter of our discontent” when hard coal is quoted at $71 a
ton and the dealers stare one in the face with a notice, in large letters, that
they are not taking orders even at that fabulous price. Yet there is hope, even
now, that the summer time will come by and by, when we can snap our fingers at
the hard coal man and tell him to go to ---, and that we are independent of him
and can laugh at his famine prices. Fifty years ago, young people lived in a
fool’s paradise, and it made little difference to them what season of the year,
winter or summer, that Dan Cupid started out on his archery expeditions. They
made love in winter while sleigh-riding out to the tea meetings in the country
churches, when a couple of dozen boys and girls would pile into a sleigh filled
with straw and plenty of buffalo robes and go away over the mountain or out to
Waterdown or down to Grimsby, when the mercury was trying to force its way out
of the bottom of a thermometer, and the colder the weather, the closer they sat
to each other. And what a warm welcome they got as they entered the church
where the tea meeting was held, for the sale of tickets was increased beyond
what the good sisters who had charge of the feast expected. Then when the
spring came, what delightful times they had promenading up and down Lover’s
Lane (Wellington street.) The young mn were not afraid of matrimony in those
days, for they were reasonably sure of getting wives who were willing to begin
life in a practical way. Nowadays young men are shy of the marriage knot, for
the majority of girls were untrained in home life, and instead of being taught
by their mothers how to cook a dinner, they attend lectures on domestic science
and learn to make up dishes that take a dose of dyspepsia medicine to digest
them.
Winter is the ideal time for love
making, for then the evenings are long and it is more cozy to be sitting by a
warm fire, with a dear girl nesting close to one, than to be up in the attic of
a boarding house hearing the wind whistling through the shingles, though it
must be admitted that “the good old summertime” when the moon is shining
brightly, with warm summer breezes, the fragrance from the blossoming flowers,
and the soft, blinking stars to round out the picture, to one in a poetic mood
– and all lovers sigh in poetry. People marry nowadays just the same as they
did half a century ago, but they are slower about getting the license and
calling in the services of a parson. Instead of marrying while the freshness of
youth is in their hearts, they put off the happy day till the man has sown a
harvest of wild oats and the girl becomes old-maidish and set in her ways. Life
is too short to be always getting ready to do something and never reaching the
point. Make love in the winter or “in the good old summertime,” but the moral
of the story is that the earlier in life a young man marries the better it will
be for his habits and futures, Instead of spending his evenings in club rooms
playing poker or visiting the various thirst stations that are scattered here
and there, every young man should get a home of his own and make himself and
some sweet girl happy.
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It is an old saying that one half of
the world knows not how the other half is struggling to keep body and soul
together, and then making a miserable failure of it. In the end, wealth and
poverty occupy some space in the old Mother Earth when the journey terminates
at God’s acres. When the roll call of the Old Boys is made next summer, one who
came into this world at St. Catharines more
than eight years ago, and who spent part of his young manhood and all of
his old age in Hamilton, will be marked on the roll as mustered. He could boast
of being well-connected and all that, but it profited him nothing in the end.
His side of the family tree did not bud and bloom in an atmosphere of luxury,
so instead of becoming a professional man or a merchant, he learned in his
youth the sartorial art and jogged along as a journeyman tailor till the war
drums were beating across Niagara river, when, seized with a desire to shoulder
a musket and wear a blue uniform, one of the incentives being the hard times
prevailing about that time, he left wife and children and enlisted at Lockport,
N. Y., where he then lived, receiving a bounty of over $600, which he gave to
his wife. He served a year, and was then mustered out. His wife died and he
tried matrimony again, but in the latter case, marriage was a failure. His
children had gone out to make homes for themselves, and when old age came upon
him he asked the government that he had served during the war to come to his
help and the response wa a pension of $12 a month. With his frugal and
temperate habits, the old man got along comfortably till sickness came within
the past year. He was eccentric in his way, and talked but little of his
earlier life. He lived alone in the western part of the city, and one day this
week his neighbors sent word to Relief Officer McMenemy that he was sick and
helpless, and Dr. Langrill and the relief officer went to see him and get his
consent to be sent to the city hospital. He refused, and making him as
comfortable as possible, they left him for the night. Mr. McMenemy was uneasy
about the condition of the old man, and returned Wednesday to make one more
effort to get his consent to go to the hospital, when he found his dead body
lying on the floor. He had not been dead long for a bright fire was burning in
the stove. Having no relatives or friends in the city to claim possession of
the body, and without means for burial expenses, under the law the body might
be sent to the medical college in Toronto for the dissecting room. As soon as
Mr. McMenemy notified the United States consul of the death of the old soldier,
and stated the law regarding the disposal of the body, the consul claimed it
and guaranteed the cost of burial and the funeral will be from Blachford and
Son’s undertaking rooms this afternoon. It was a fortunate thing for George O’Reilly,
a native Canadian, that he enlisted in the United States army during the war of
1861-65. In his old age, the government he served provided for his wants with a
pension of $12 a month, and when he died homeless and without a relative to
bury him, the United States government, through its consul in this city, saw
that the body had Christian burial and was kept from the dissecting table in a
medical college.
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The Old Boys and the Old Girls too,
will remember when it was fashionable to carry a snuff box, and when friends
met, the first act of courtesy was to bring out the box, tap the cover with
their knuckles to loosen the snuff, and then take a pinch all around. Once that
formality was out of the way, then a friendly gossip began. There was something
sociable in the habit, even though it was rather uncleanly. Every bar had a
dish of fragrant snuff for the use of customers, and before calling for his
favorite tonsil irrigator, the customer first took a pinch. It is a rare thing
nowadays to find anyone carrying a snuff box, yet it must not be understood
that snuffing is one of the lost arts, even though tobacconists have done away
with the Highlander that stood for a sign at the door, invitingly holding out a
box of snuff. At Wilmington, Delaware, is located one of the largest snuffing
mills in the world, and its managers say that 15,000,000 pounds of snuff were
consumed in the united States and Canada during the year 1902. Fancy that
quantity of ground tobacco being snuffed up the nostrils or used, as it is used
by the poorer classes in the southern states, by dipping a stick into the fragrant
stuff and chewing it. One must admit that snuff-taking, either by inhalation or
by “dipping” as it is termed in the South, where the custom still prevails, is
not a habit to be commended, but everyone to his taste, as the old woman said
when she kissed her cow. The Swedes and Norwegians employed in the iron and steel
mills in Worcester, Massachusetts, use about a ton of snuff every week, and the
Scandinavians and other foreigners in Minnesota tickle their nostrils with
about 200,000 pounds annually. New York consumers use half a million pounds
yearly. The best quality of snuff is made of Perique tobacco, which is grown in
two counties in the state of Louisiana. King Edward has revived the fashion of
snuff-taking in England, and, as a consequence, to be in the swim, everyone
will have to carry a box, which will help trade in the way of manufacturing
snuff boxes. There are philosophers and scholars who clear their brains and
tranquilize their minds by taking frequent pinches, for they claim it has
medicinal properties. In the olden times, the Scotch and the Irish were a
snuff-using people, but the later generations do not seem to follow the habits
of their ancestors, although the custom still prevails at wakes to provide a
dish of snuff with the clay pipes and tobacco.
There
is one snuff manufactory in Montreal which supplies the trade in Canada, the
imports from the United States not exceeding 10,000 pounds a year with only 16
pounds from Great Britain and 511 pounds from other countries. There is a duty
of 50 cents a pound on snuff imported into Canada. In Hamilton, the retail
trade sells not more than 250 pounds of snuff annually, and that is largely used
by old country people and foreigners, who learned the snuffing habit in their youth.
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