The Lonely Life of the Seattle Bachelor

I was of the opinion that next to death itself, the greatest calamity that could befall one in this world was to get married. Lately, however, my opinion on the advantages of single blessedness has undergone a change. 'All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy,' and seeing that relaxation is necessary to a bachelor’s temperament, how is it that the means to procure that relaxation are in most cases so unhappy and abortive? Generally speaking, the amusements of a Western city fall under three heads: the theater, the saloons, and the variety shows.

For the average unattached young man, the saloon of today offers many attractions. The restraint or finesse which the atmosphere of a home imposes may here be thrown off, and a liberty is permitted in the way of speech and gesture which is agreeable compared with the somewhat repressive discipline of the family circle. Our youth generally enters these places innocent and unsophisticated, but soon the hardening influence of the place begins to tell on him, and a few short months leave him inured and callous.

And as to the variety shows, the performance on Second street is not the most chaste in the Territory. In one of the places I visited, the jokes were certainly a little broad and one of the dancers decidedly voluptuous. There is a too-long and rather dreary drama, too, reeking of scalps and red ink. A good many youths attend the place, and into their ears are poured the ribald jokes and innuendos of a thoughtless and not very nicely mannered crowd. As to the other places, too, we may assume the habitues are sufficiently sophisticated to avoid much harm. However, while the moral state of the variety show is little if any whit inferior to the average variety show of San Francisco or New York, they are not the sort of performance one would take his sister to see.