Response to a Matrimonial Ad

The Ad

The Reply

Dear Advertiser:

This letter might be redundant: one, because I was shown your ad by an unhelpful friend 15 days after it appeared; and two, because the reasons that prompt me to write are far from matrimonious.

I am a tired, bored, old man of 125 whose misfortune it is to have a heart that throbs and yearns like that of a 25-year-old, and would like to cultivate a very fair attractive slim sophisticated girl of 23, or less, or more, Dad in high position permitting, in the almost impossible hope of an interesting, intellectually stimulating correspondence, and companionship.

I am married, but that is as inconsequential as the fact that I was foolishly involved in the search for God, the purpose of existence and the discovery of an absolute order in the apparent cosmic lawlessness, painlessly proving all who did not agree with me, wrong.

I have acquired the lasting wisdom that nothing lasts not only because it cannot, but also since it need not, and that overlooking the transitory pleasures of mirth, physical warmth and trivial hankering have been acts of supreme stupidity which I have so far been perpetrating. Now, to dispel my sense of alienation, I search for euphoria, amnesia, insensitivity, and lost treasures of youthful frivolity.

If you are free and unencumbered, even in spite of a possible impending marriage, and are bored with the routine of existence, I crave a reply from you; and even if I were to say that the chance of your writing to me is almost none, I will admit that I will be hurt if you do not.