Omaha Daily Bee Newspaper, September 6, 1903, Page 33

*(Copyright, 1903, by E. B. Warner.) T HAVE here, sir,” said the per- suasive bookseller, ‘' ‘The Love Letters of a Disillusioned Duch- ess.’ Quite the latest success, [ assure you. Or, perhaps, you would prefer ‘Confessions of a Disgruntled Widower,' or ‘Heart Throbs by an Iix- Bweetheart.' They are all good selling lines Just now.” “Take 'em away!" commanded the sun- burned man who was buying books to read on his tenth voyage to the tropics. “They make me tired. Sickly, sentimental stuff without a word of truth or nature in them. I'm not buying any of that slush. Now, if you could sell me some real, artle un- affected love letters like those I've seen down around the Equator, 1'd stand for a few dollars.” For the real thing in love letters one must get away from the published episto- lary effusions of literary people and study the quaint, fll-written, misspellcd missives of the natural man who lives in barbarian or half-clviljzed lands, far distant from the centers of light and learning. Iere Is a simple, heartfelt screed written by a negro In Jamaica to a widow whom he Joved. It is a genuine Creole valentine: “Mrs. Agostiss R——, “I hope you know Valintine is now in seson. I will take the pleasure to write you this, my hearth is yours and you are mine, but you do not know it. I love you as the bee love the flower. The flower may fade, but true love shall never. My love for you is a love that cannot be fade. You shall be my love here an in heaven for ever. The Rose in June is not so sweet as when (wo lovers kisses meet. Kiss me quick and be my honey. I still remaln true lover, “JAMES."” James is an honest and prosperous black man In the mountains of Jamaica. It is pleasant to know that “Mrs, Agostiss” listened to his simple appeal and became *“his honey."” As a rule, however, the negroes in the West Indies do not write their own love letters. They entrust the delicate task to a professional letter writer, usually the colored schoolmaster of the village. As these schoolmasters are imperfectly edu- cated, and anxious to alr the little knowl- edge they possess, their letters are apt to be amusing. They are fond of quoting from the ‘‘SBong of Bolomon,” a favorite part of scripture with them. Here is an exam- ple from a letter written to a girl named Ann Williams: “My dear love, at present my love for you is so strong that I cannot express. 8o I even write that you may see it. It is every man deauty to write a formil letter. ‘“My pen is bad, and my ink is pale, but my love will never fail. King Solomon say that lLove is strong as death, and Jealousy {s cruel than the grave. lLove me tittle, bear me longer; hasty love is not love at all. This is the first time I sat down to write you about {t. “I love my Dove. Your love is black and ruby—the chefer of ten thousand. You head is much fine gold. You lock are bushy and black as a raven. Your eyes was the eyes in a river, by the rivers of warter. Your cheeks as a bead (i. e., bed) of spices as sweet flowers. Your lips is like lilies. Your hand as gold wrdng. Your legs as a pillar of marble "Gt upon sockets of fine gold. Your countenance as a Lebanon. Your mouth look to be more sweet. Your sweet altogether. “I have no more time to write as I am #o tiard and full time to go to bead. I will ®mow close my letter with love.” The following letter was written by a native of British Honduras to his sweet- heart: “Dear lov, I Is wrote you a letter to beg of you to make me your Jover, but you is not wrote mo again. I is dead of lov every day when you look g0 hansom. 1 cane (i. e., cannot) sleep, cane eat. 1 dun no how 1 feel. 1 beg you to acep af me as your lover. The rose is not sweet as a kiss from you, moy lov. “Do meet me tonight at th2 bottom gate an give me you lov. Miss Lucy toots (i. e, teeth) so green 1 is like one car of carn, an her eye dem is so pretty. Lard! 1 wish I never been born Poor me, Garg'! (i. e George) 1 lov Miss Lucy to distraction. “Yours truly, “GARG PLUMMER." “"Answer me s=one, lov.” Some quaint dnetimes run across in the artle stles, “Dearest love, writes an educated, Christianized native of Sierra Leone, “if it is not true lgve from the decpest part of my heart, would 1 sit down to write you a letter, my Dear?"’ By this reasoning everybody who writes a love letter must nec rily be in love. Another jealous and calculating lover says: “I writ to hear from you wether you intend to make me a fool. I is not a puppy show that you think you find any better than mea. { witch (wish) to rend the yam-hed for plantin in you garden, but 4 do not know wether { will reap the benetit of it.” It is curious that the language of lovo nearly alwa runs to rhetoric, even in the of people who have litile or no education, or are not far removed fron what is called barbarism. All the world over the lover likes to express hi: heart throbs in the most ornate and picturesque language he can think of. Here, for example, s a letter which was written by an Indian “babu’ to his telovei in Madras, to propose marriage. He had had a Kkind of English education and thought it would be more impressive to write in English than in the vernacular, He earn¢d a precarious livelihood by writ- ing petitions to the British authorities for other natives, so he naturally drafted his love letter in the form of a petition: “May it please your Bweetest Fxcellence: “Your petitioner now approaches you to solicit, crave and implore an inestimable boon, being aware that you have been dele- gated, nominated and constituted and ap- pointed by the Queen of Love to preside over her liege subjects as Archon or Ex- ecutive in this Orient dependency of Her vast Dominions, se “Greater art thou than the famed Sem- framis, Queen of Babylon, or Her the Kast- ern Sheba, or the Egyptian glorious Cleo- patra of celebrated memory, Anthony's loved Queen. Greater art thou in the hearts of men than Britain's Queen, the revel of whose drum circles the world, and Sol or Phoebus never sets on, Pardon this egotistical digression and resume the subject, “Your Petitioner by love for you is sen- tenced to a torture worse than Prometheus, who stole fire from heaven. Your Peti- tioner now humbly appeals to your clem- ency and trusts that your Excellence may be pleased to take compassion on a poor, destitute and bereaved widow’'s son and ‘restore him to happiness, as did the Prophet of Jehovah, the good Elijah at Zarepath, that other widow's son, to life. ““Had your Petitioner the wings of Pe- gasus, fly he would to Parnassus to consult the Oracle of Delphl to learn of his hoped liberation from Tartarus, suffering the pun- ishiment of Sisyphus or a second Tantalus.” The following letter was written by a native of Jamaica. It is quaint and ob- scure in places, but it breathes a very real love: “Dear Eliza: I take the liberty of my- self to inform you this few lines hoping yYou may not offend (i. e., be offended), as often is, I had often seen you in my hearts, There are myriads of loveliness in my hearts towards you My loving in- tentions were really unto another female, but now the love between I and she are very out now entirely “And now his the excepted time 1 find to explain to my lovely appearance, but whether if their be any love in you hearts or mind towards me it is hard for | to know, but his 1 take this liberty to inform you this kind, leving and affectionate letter “l1 hope when it received into your hand you recelve with peace and all good will, pleasure, and comforts, and hoping that you might answer me from this letter with a loving appearance, that in due time boath of us might be able to join together In the holy state of matremony “I hoping that the answer which you are to send to me it may unto good intention to me from you that when 1 always goine to write you again 1 may be able to write ng, my dear, lovely Eliza. Your affectio e lover, affraied (. e, afraid), J. 8. Dear Eliza, wether if you nte willing or not, please 1o sent me an ansure back. Do, my dear.” A lover I8 seldom slow to utter his reproaches by word or pen, when his jeal- ousy is aroused. Witness this letter written by a native of Port-of-Spain, Trinidad, to his sweetheart: “My dear Jemima: “I has not heard from you for dis 2 weeks gorn. Has you forgot de day wen you mek me promise to be my true luv? You must know dat I has heard a lot of tings about you which has been sorely disappoint me in you. *“l1 have heard dat you stan at your gate and tark to a fine dress coachman. 1 have heard dat you go to church wid him I have heard dat you am promise to me but you luv him. O Miss Jemima, dare is goind to be a ball party at Miss Morgans on Wednes- day night, do come thare to you Dear lover, “GEORGIL. “Many kisses me swect luv.” The Japanese, with their true artistic feeling in all the affairs of life, excel in the art of writing a love letter. Etiquette in Japan obliges people to always speak scornfully of their own qualitics and possessions, and to enhance those of others, Thus a Japanese lover finds it doubly easy to praise his loved and depreciate himself, as is the way of lovers all the world over. Here is a good cxample of the Japanese love letter. “Beloved! Touching my forehead in the dust before thy anugustness, I entreat you to listen to my despicable words. Miscrably I long for you, who are set as far above me as is the red eye of Fuji-San from the peasant in the valley. Miserably 1 desire the sweet consolation of your beneficent love, T who am beneath your honorable loveliness as far as the ox in the fields is beneath the crane flying in the hcavens. Bweeter {s thy face than the peach blossom, more graceful thy form than the swaying of the honorable bamboo. ‘Will not the Bouls of our august ancestors smile gra- clously on our wedding, that your honorable greatness may compensate my despicable shortcomings?" In such a style do Japanese lovers write Real Love Letters from the Tropics to one another, but after marriage they Japanese husband is forced by his code of good manners to say to a friend: W1l you honorably deign to enter my despicable house and visit my miserably degraded wife?’ She has become one of his posses- slons and must be decried as such, It I8 worth while noticing that all these letters were written by men, and obviously the women must have given them away. The women's replies have been carefully guarded by the men. In view of this fact, a well known American woman seems to have libeled the masculine sex when she recently wrote this solemn warning to girls {n love: ‘“The very moment a girl begins to feel tender toward a man she begins to want to express herself In mixed metaphors and high-falutin' phrases, in effusions in which she gives herself away on every page, and bankrupts the dictionary for endearments Of course, she thinks only one person will see them, and ecven to him she adds the postscript, ‘burn this." But only one man in a hundred has a particle of honor in re- gard to a woman's letters, and the hune dredth man is carcless. The locked desk @ a fiction of novelists. Be assured of this, that if other people don't read your letters it i= because they don't want to, not be- cause they don't have a chance. Don't call a man pet names until after you are mars ried to him, and then you won't want ta® Repairing a Blunder After the services were over and the cone gregation had been dismissed a stranger came forward and spoke to the pastor, “I beg your pardon,” he sald, *“but will you please let me look over the morning collections? By mistake I contributed a button, thinking it was a coin." “Why, certainly, brother,” replied the preacher, grasping his hand warmly. '‘We are always glad when anyvbody wishes to correct a mistake of that kind.” The baskets were brought and the gtranger began an Inspection of their cone tents, “It was my Knights of Friendship but- ton,” he said, *“solid gold, and 1 wouldn’t lose it for—ah, here it i{s! Thank you ever so much."” And in his joy at recovering the emblem he forgot to replace {t with a coin.—Chicago Tribune, Pointed Paragraphs Ma'e gossips are the worst of the breed. Dirty streets and dirty politics are twin evils. The thread of a love story usually winds up with a tie. Mustard plasters come under the head of drawing instruments, Shads should be pretty sure of anything they feel in their bones. A man doesn't necessarily lead a dog’s life because his wife pets him. When an individual minds his own busi ness he is one kind of monopolist, Too many men waste valuable time talke ing about the things they are going to do, Ocecasional’y women make fools of men, but they are not responsible for all the fools. Don't think because a man is taking les- sons on the harp that he doesn't expect to live much longer. When a rich old man marries a young wife and expects her to keep his memory green later on he is the victom of a homer made green goods game.—Chicago Newa PAWNEE CITY BAND-ONR OF THE CRACK MUSICAL ORGAN(L ATIONS OF THE STATA /