August 5 - You: at the coffee shop, pretending to read W.B. Yeats. Brown knitted sweater, frizzy hair, worn jeans. Me: tall, soaking wet and my nose pressed against the window. Something passed between us when you noticed me. Please call mailbox #8675309 .
Ever see those ads searching for missed connections? Here's one from this day in 1758, originally published in the London Chronicle:
A young lady who was at Vauxhall on Tuesday night last, in company with two gentlemen, could not but observe a young gentleman in blue and a gold-laced hat, who, being near her by the orchestra during the performance, especially the last song, gazed upon her with the utmost attention. He earnestly hopes (if unmarried) she will favour him with a line directed to A.D. at the bar of the Temple Exchange Coffee-house, Temple-bar, to inform him whether fortune, family, and character, may not entitle him upon a further knowledge, to hope an interest in hear heart. He begs she will pardon the method he has taken to let her know the situation of his mind, as, being a stranger, he despaired of doing it any othe way, or even of seeing her more. As his views are founded upon the most honourable principles, he presumes to hope the occasion will justify it, if she generously breaks through this trifling formality of the sex, rather than, by a cruel silence, render unhappy one, who must ever expect to continue so if debarred from a nearer acquaintance with her, in whose power alone it is to complete his felicity.
Hone comments that "a description of the various afflictions and modes of relief peculiar to the progress of this disorder would fill many volumes."
There's no word on whether A.D. ever cured his heartache, but one wonders if contemporary approaches to the same illness are more successful than his. [EDBv1]
