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Peck's Sunshine, a fiction by George W. Peck |
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A Cold, Cheerless Ride |
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_ Probably the most cold-blooded affair that ever occurred took place at a certain summer resort a couple of weeks ago. There was going to be a picnic, and a young man and the girl he was engaged to be married to started in a row-boat to cross the lake, taking an ice cream freezer full of frozen ice cream for the picnic. Just before arriving at the picnic the boat capsized. The boat was bottom side up, and the young man helped the girl on to the ice cream freezer, and he got on the boat, and after floating for half an hour they were rescued. The girl did not complain at the time she was put on the freezer, as she was glad enough to get on anything that would float, but after they got ashore, and she had a chance to reflect on the matter, and talk with the other girls, she concluded that his getting on the boat, which was nice and warm, and putting her aboard the ice cream freezer, which was so cold and cheerless, was a breach of etiquette that would stamp any man as being a selfish, heartless villain, and she refuses to speak to him, and has declared the engagement off. He is very much mortified over the affair, and tries to explain that he was more accustomed to a boat than she was, while he reasoned that she would naturally be more familiar with an ice cream freezer. It certainly looks to us to have been a cold-blooded transaction, and while the young man might have been rattled, and powerless to grasp the situation as he would if he had it to do over again, the girl is certainly justified in being indignant. An ice cream freezer is a cold and cheerless companion even when empty, but filled with congealed cream and pounded ice, and in water, it cannot but have been an Arctic exploration on a small scale. Besides the ice, it is a notorious fact that ice cream freezers are made of zinc, the coldest metal in the world, if we bar women's feet. "Sheridan's Ride" has been spoken of in poetry and in song, but it pales into insignificance by the side of this girl's ride on the ice cream freezer. If the young man had exhibited foresight, and had a side saddle buckled on to the ice cream freezer, the experience would have been robbed of much of its frigidity, or if there had been a thick blanket under the saddle, but he failed to take even that precaution. As it is we do not blame the girl for breaking off the engagement. In addition, we think any court would decide that he should pay for the ginger tea and cough lozenges that she had to take to cure her cold. _ |
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