Quips on The News — "A Boston Spinster"

1911

A Boston spinster wants a five-dollar tax on bachelors. But surely she would not have any man value her so cheaply that he would marry her to save a paltry five.

Harvard astronomers have discovered a new star, but as said star is not one of the football variety, the discovery is not making much of a hit with the students.

"Chicago is a burglar's paradise," says a jurist who is in a position to know. Aside from that and a few other defects it is a good place to live in if one isn't particular.

Europe has now definitely decided that Tolstoi was insane. This may be true, but it seems as though a little more of that sort of insanity wouldn't hurt Europe any.

If the fashion of wearing tight trousers and padless coats comes into general use we know a great many supposedly brawny men who will dwindle woefully in appearance.

Many readers of newspapers have wondered at the meaning of those oft-repeated words found at the end of mysterious disappearance stories: "Detectives have been assigned to the case."

The Spinster in Society

1896

It is difficult to see who would take her place socially, should the spinster vanish from the land. A gracious lady, tactful beyond the dreaming of the young girl, to whom the world is still a place of enchantment, in which, half unconsciously to herself, she poses as the principal figure, the spinster smoothes away embarrassments, does the right thing, speaks the right word in the right place, and keeps the wheels of life running without friction. To her, serene, well bred, tranquil, aware of good and evil, tolerant of that which is mere crudity and inexperience, severe only where falseness and cruelty challenge, soft spoken, sweet mannered, or possibly brusque and spicy, yet none the less charming.

If a woman of wealth, the spinster holds in her capable hands the threads of many charities, advising here, bestowing there, withholding or endowing, as she deems judicious. Perhaps she develops in her own person rare gifts — music, painting, embroidery — attaining in each a degree of excellence which only leisure and taste in combination can arrive at. Very likely she prefers to seek out gifted younger people, boys and girls, who need that some one should believe in and help them on, and to these she is a patron saint. Many lines of work are open to her which marriage would have closed, since the wife and mother must exclusively devote to her home and sphere of action talents and sympathies which the spinster may use in the service of her age. Though the one be more blessedly happy, the other is not without rewards and compensations.

Poor in this world's goods, the spinster fills equally a most important niche. Her modern education makes her an independent factor in many fields, a not-to-be-despised competitor in the market and the shop. And since probably she need not remain a spinster unless she choose, society owes her its thanks for her generosity in keeping herself at its service, and making so winsome a feature of its moving panorama. — San Francisco Chronicle.

Forty Ideal Age for Women

1920

English Artist Sweeps Away Time-Honored Ideas Having to Do With Spinsterhood

There is a flurry among English spinsters. A prominent artist has come to the conclusion that a girl of forty should be man's ideal. He sweeps away all the time-honored rubbish about spinsters at the age of forty being mostly interested in eats and canaries. Here is what he has to say about the new old girl.

"The ideal age for a woman from the viewpoint of the man who studies the sex as an artist is forty years. The woman of forty is at the perfection of her beauty and has attained a settled mentality which she did not possess as a girl in her teens, or as a young woman in her twenties and thirties. At forty she is an ideal companion, pleasantly matured, tolerant and understanding. Only the ignoramuses in life find joy in the society of young girls or undeveloped women."

During the war and since many women of the so-called "sweet-and-forty" age got married, a considerable number of them widows. This has led to frequent lamentations by younger women that, with the huge number of unmarried beauties about, it is unpatriotic for Cupid to show such favoritism for widows and spinsters.

Crowded Mass Transit Train — The Fat Man and The Spinster

1905

ON STRANGER'S LAP SPINSTER RODE IN CROWDED ELEVATED TRAIN

Situation Enjoyed by the Other Passengers, but Decidedly Distasteful to the Principals — Fat Man Finally Succumbs to Fate

The elevated train was chock full when the very stout man got on at Thirty-third street. There wasn't room between platform and platform for a famine victim; but the stout man, like all stout men, didn't see how he could make any difference. He stepped upon the platform buoyantly, mashing a messenger boy flat against the door and spreading a lemon-faced little spinster all over the window like jam or butter.

At Twenty-eighth street half a dozen people got out. Instantly there was a rush for seats and standing room left inside the car. But alas! when a fat man gets wedged in a doorway, who else can penetrate it? Again, like all fat men, the fat man was lucky, and, strange as it may appear, he managed to get one of the seats recently vacated.

When he had sat down the little spinster gathered herself together and found a foothold in front of him, and the others, with some new passengers just taken on, crowded in after her and packed themselves like sardines. They were squeezed so tight that the spinster reached for a strap to keep from being pushed over on the fat man's head and shoulders. But just as she made a grasp somebody else caught the only remaining strap. The bell rang sharply and the train started with a jerk. The little spinster lost her breath and balance, toppled for a moment on her toes and then sank struggling down upon the fat man's lap.

The fat man gasped and the spinster gave an awful cry of consternation and reached for the floor. But there was no floor! Every inch of space was covered by the feet of the determined passengers. The moment she sat down they had spread out over her space. Then she blushed. Some people looked her way and laughed, but nobody moved. She couldn't wedge her knees down from the altitude they had assumed at the first lurch.

She continued to struggle and strain to reach a strap, while the fat man sat helpless with that energetic mite of femininity going through the jiu jitsu exercises on his knees. At the next station more people got on and the fight of the lone spinster became more difficult and desperate.

Flesh and blood, even 300 pounds strong, could stand it no longer. Like a mountain rising and casting off the small cities on its surface, the ponderous one rose and pushed the sardine-like passengers out of his magic circle. The spinster slid off his knee like a drop of water off a duck.

"Madam," said the fat man, lifting his hat gravely, "will you do me the honor to take my seat?"

"Well, it's about time!" snapped the ruffled little spinster ungratefully. — New York Press.