THE MAN TRAP.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XVI, Issue 281, 25 November 1881, Page 1

THE MAN TRAP.

{Truth.) "What a life she leads, this miserable vendor of womanhood for rank or gold ! All through the season she has baited her trap with every wile known to her, every glittering charm which she could conjure from art or nature. And what weary work it has been ! If anything could make one forgive the iniquity of this human commerce, it would be the weariness to flesh and blood tbat it brings. Each natural impulse subdued, each human feeling crushed down, her face a mask, her voice an echo, ber heart atrophied, her conscience in spiritual irons, her days spent in setting her trap, her nights in examining her take and its chances. What a life ! No galley-slave's is more severe, no trickster's, forger's, blackleg's, more dishonourable. And the season comes and goes, and she is left still unbought. Her trap bas been well baited, but no prey has bfen secured. Mabel and Maud, Hilda and Victoria have all been purchased in the marriage market, and she is left like a forlorn ple.ge unredeemed Her milliner's bill is large ; her mother's resources are scanty ; the youngest sinter must come out next season, for twenty, ripe, and round, cannot be called callow seventeen for another year. And then where will Bhe be ? Tbat unspoiled freshness will tell powerfully against ber faded charms — charms touched up delicately and artistically granted, but always faded and always touched up. The chances of ultimate failure are multiplying, against her and she is nofc in a position fco chose. Bait with her strongest, bait with her boldest 'the time ia passing and .he must secure her quarry now or never. She cares not who it may be, so long as ifc is some one, whose name stands well afc his banker's. Let ifc be the successful tradesman, with his half-century on hiß shining pate, his defective breeding, his nouns and verbs in hopeless disagreement, his h's in unending pie, the roots of his family tree in a dunghill, and he the first cotyledon of the growth, his insolent o_.ent_.ioD, his insufferable catronace ■■-. '• * ■ _3 .

of moneyless merit, and his more insufferable flunkeyism to all who can "give him a leg up ;" his moral skin as tough as a rhinoceros's hide, his disbelief in all but himself and bis success ; let ifc be he in his most rampant vulgarilyj and he is welcome to the girl ■_ho has at least the education a,nd the bearing of a lady. Lefc ifc be the brutal young heir to an old name or a fine estate—the man of thirty who has crowded the vicious experiences of a long lifetime into the nine years of his majority.

.*-.!.'. _n _jf_!i_;_______ig__s. % R Once more (says a paper received by the mail) tbis British climate of ours is driving the farmers to despair. A few weeks of tbe most unpropidous weather bas nearly neutralised tbe ricb promise of tbe early summer, and a large percentage of this year's cereal harvest ib irretrievably ruined. Tbe aspect of tbe country throughout last week was woebegone in tbe extreme. Tbe incessant downpour of many consecutive days has flio.ed tbe low-lying lands. Io the Midlao'is, rivers b.ve tisen and floods ore oaf. There and elsewhere the harvest bas been gradually commenced before tbe cisastrous change, and fields upon fields of cut crops are under water, the sheaves standing like liitle conical islands ou the surface. Where the laud is higher the ears have turned almost black Irom the long drenching rain. Further north matters look a lilile more hopeful. The lateness of the season hes been the saving of the northern farmers, and backward crops which were piuing for moisture have now had more than enough. The outcry and lamentations of the agriculturalists are general, and landlord, are ..ginning to tremble for their rents. The Marquis of Waterford and his friends were mobbed recently whie hunting with the Curraghmore hounds. He haa resigned the mastership. The dogs were stabbed with pitchforks and the hunters pelted with stones. In Kildare the Land League ;has given notice that if either the Marquis of Drogheda, the Earl of Mayo, Lord Cloneurry, John La Touctae, or William Blauher appear in the field the hunting will be stopped. The gentlemen named are the principal landowners in the county, and resident ob tbeir estates. A