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Otago Witness, Issue 1418, 25 January 1879, Page 23

Round the Sanctums.

~#— — — — THE STORY OF SOME GIRLS This truthful story is about some particular girls that Erastus Bailey of somewhere out in Michigan had on hand. There were six of Mr Bailey's girls, all daughtt rs, and all willing to be married, as the old gentleman was willing they should be. He had put them on the matrimonial market in one sweet bunch, utterly regardless of expense in the way of curl-papers, store-frizzes, hooks-and-eyes, and hair-pins ; they were displayed before young men, and middleaged men, and all kinds of men, on all kinds of occasions, but none of Mr Bailey's six daughters fished for a husband with any kind of luck ; not one of them made a catch. Other men's daughters went off like hot cakes, it seemed to Bailey, although neither he noi bis girls could sse any reason why men should be so miserably stupid. Bailey's girls were everywhere, and yet no man ever went where they were ; they were offared free of cost to anybody who would take them off the old man's hands, but nobody seemed to want cheap girls with red hair and pug noses. It will probably never be found out how the idea came to strike Mr Bailey, but he finally resolved to withdraw his girls from the market, and gave notice that not one of them would listen, to any kind of an offer of marriage. Only philosophers will know why he settled upon such a remarkable course as this, but he was himself a philosopher. Mr Bailey consulted with his six red-headed girls and then went down town and told everybody that he had put a stop to all fooling around his daughters, that he had locked them up and sent a man home with a club to keep the boys off if less determined measures failed. The eff ct was immediate and tremendous. In two days some of the boys began to watch when the old man left the house, and then they slid in to see his pug-nosed daughters, but they always slid out a few minutes before pa came home, When Mr Bailey was told of these things he put a padlock on the gate, and the boys jumped over the fence, rather liking the romance of the thing. In two weeks one of the girls lowered herself from a second storey window, ran off with one of the boys and got married. Old Mr Baile.y tore around in a dreadful way before the public, put some iron bars acrosß the windows to prevent the escape of any more girls, and congratulated himself on his acuteness. In another ten days the second girl had got off n some manner utterly inexplicable, and came back with a husband, and a third settled herself for better or worse with a bank cashier only a little while further on. This is all the matrimony that had occurred in that family at last advices, but the old gentleman is waiting with abundant hope that the other girls will glide noiselessly out through tha cellar or fly out of the chimney aud climb the fence and get married. With three girls on his hands still, he has bought a shotgun and chained au unusually ferocious dog in the backyard, and put an extra bolt on the back door. He gives regular warning of these things all over town every day— and hopes for the worst. It will certainly bo realised, for everybody knows, as well as Bailey, that when you lock up something there are always lots of people waiting for a good chance to break in and carry off ; and this always works the more so with a girl than anything else. A man who wouldn't steal your purse doesn't have any scruples about carrying off your girl. There is probably no moral to this story, but ie is an enduring lesson to all fathers ; lock up your daughters.— Philadelphia Times.