whitney gifford.

I like your beard.

Thomas Sanders, an early partner in and first treasurer of the Bell Telephone Company, in 1878.

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It seems, according to our old pal Orson Squire Fowler, that it’s not only women who despise the unmarried:

Celibacy is virtual self-emasculation. It destroys gender, either by inertia, if Amativeness remains inactive, or else by sensualizing it, if it is exercised. Every man unmarried at twenty-five who does exercise it is a libertine, but who does not is a virtual eunuch. Writhe under this, bachelors, as you may, there is no escape from this dilemma but in marriage. Either state unsexes.

“This excoriation is indeed awful. We thought you hard on the clergy, but, comparatively, you handle us with feline claws, them with gloves. Call us thieves, liars, cheats, swindlers, backlegs, even politicians, anything, but don’t, O in mercy, don’t call us eunuchs, mere unsexed things!”

This only calls you what your celibacy necessarily makes you. It but puts a natural problem plainly. Your own celibacy is your own castrator. You necessarily unman your own selves either by stifling your sexuality, if you love no female, or else by perverting it, if you exercise it out of wedlock. Better turn husband, and recuperate what little manhood remains to you, by at once initiating a true love marriage. Every male requires his female, and every female her male. “It is not good for man” or woman “to live alone.” Each was made for the other, as much as light and eyes, and are about as useless isolated. By common consent men look down upon the unmarried, perpetually hit them off by detracting jokes and ridicule, put them off with poor fare, as in boarding-houses, always “count them out,” except when wanted as makeshifts, and edge them round every way. If invited to a stylish party, it is to give some lady a chance to captivate, and save them and herself from this “lingering death.” Ever since “society” existed, “fathers of families” are aristocrats, dignitaries, privileged characters, enjoying special immunities and honors, and always ranking those who are not a pater-familias. What “old bach” ever “leads off” among the ton? It is married men who wield the influences and engross the honors of civic life, while you, baches, young and old, are nobodies, and never can be anybody till married.

From part 614, “Celibacy Deadens or Perverts Gender,” pp. 137-138.

I like your haircut.

Name: John Walter

Age: 61

Offence: Stealing a shilling

Sentence: 3 

Type of trial: Summarily

Height: 5 ft 4 ½ inches

Hair colour: Dark Brown

Eye colour: Grey

Complexion: Fresh

Trade or occupation: Litho printer

Marriage status: Widower

Number of children: Unknown

Birth parish: Marylebone

Residence parish: Ramsey

Entry date: 20th Oct 1872

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I think Orson might be a boob man.

As a female beautifier, no other toilet appendage bears any comparison with [the breasts]. Without them, or their cotton make-believes, any and all women, though dressed and painted to death in all other respects, appear insignificant, and unworthy of a second look. Men and women involuntarily turn from a flat female chest with disappointment, as if omitted to present something very important to good looks, and very desirable. As a face looks badly without a nose, so does the female chest without that full bust created by large and full breasts. Any woman is but poorly adorned if they are small and flattened, no matter how rich and gay her toilet; while she in whom they are large, round, and duly elevated, looks splendidly, though dressed in calico; for bountiful Nature has already ornamented her beyond all power of art to equal. Even a fine face with a poor bust disappoints, as showing a great want of something essential. The simple country maid in homespun, with a superb “bosom,” need not envy that jewelled princess who lacks it. Though till lately we have stoutly opposed “false bosoms,” yet women without genuine or else false ones do look so inferior, that, on reflection, we assent to their use as the “lesser evil.”

From “Sexual Science, Including Manhood, Womanhood, and Their Mutual Interrelations” by Orson Squire Fowler, 1870.

Better bring your mask if you want to dance before supper.

From the Puget Sound Mail; La Conner, Washington; November 8, 1879.