PROSPECTING FOR A WIFE.

Otago Witness, Issue 1340, 4 August 1877, Page 4

PROSPECTING FOR A WIFE.

The other night old Blinkus, seeing his son getting ready to go to a ball, proceeded to give him some wholesome advice on women : — " Tom, my boy," he said, filling up his pipe, " I see you are getting your fancy togs on for a ball. Now, I don't object to balls, or any other kind of natural amusement ; but I want to give you a little advice, Tom ; look out for the women you will find there. A man who goes around after women is a good deal like a prospector hunting for a mine. You see a woman at a ball, and she's all frizzled up and rigged out in silk, and powdered and painted, where her skin shows itself. These surfacb croppings look pretty well ; but if you locate on the strength of 'em, you'll get fooled every time. A woman of that kind is just like a salted mine. Don't you take any stock in her. She won't wash. If you want to prospect a little further, slide up and take an easay of her conversation. Ah, my boy ! Three per cent, of intelligence, twenty-five of fashionable etiquette, and the rest frivolity, conceit, ignorance and vanity, mixed up in about equal parts. Drop her right away. Such rock won't pay to mill. If you got a patent for the claim, you'd never see a dividend come out of it as long as you lived. The assessments to keep the upper works in repair and the lower levels from cavin' in, would land you in the poor-house on a lightning express, and some tine morning you'd wake up to find your claim relocated by somebody else." The old man shook the ashes out of his pipe and continued : "Sometimes you'd strike a plain girl in a common sort of a dress. She won't be good looking, maybe, and won't have any airs. The surface indications won't show much, but before you've prospected long, you're likely to come to some good indications that'll pay to follow up. Rich stringers of conversational quartz and spurs of intelligence, showing up finely the deeper you go. Pretty soon you'd strike a well defined vein of solid practical sense. That's the sort of a mine to freeze to". Locate it as soon as possible, and get out your patent papers, and you'll have a regular Bonanza to fall back on for the rest of your life. If you think the good claims are all taken up, you're badly fooled. This town's full of 'em. I'm an old prospector, and I've j travelled around a good deal. If my time wasn't taken up with my own mine, I know where there are lots of prime locations only waiting for some practical miner to come along and develop. A woman's heart, Tom, is a mighty curious thing. Take it ift all

its dips, spurs, angles, ramifications and sinuosities, and. its's more of a puzzle and mystery than the whole Comstock lode. Some fellows try to work it, and by pure luck, strike it rich right off, in places where old experienced prospectors never s'posed there was anything. Gitting a title to the property ain't the only thing ; it's keeping up the proper developments, and seeing that jumpers don't get in and enroach on your claim. Some of these domestic mines require an awful amount of money for machinery, and some of 'em can run on about nothing. Whenever you get one of 'em, and find you can't run it to advantage, the best thing to do is to throw up your job as superintendent, and shutdown the work 3." — Virginia Chronicle.