Pantaloons? Psychic love affair? What the hum am I reading? Oh wait, it’s a newspaper article from 1906. That explains everything.
The article reads like a train wreck. A much older woman is convinced that she and a much younger man are in psychic love. They write to each other for years, her talking to him about the wealth of life and he telling her to not worry about her age.
Unfortunately, when she talked about the wealth life had to offer, he thought she meant actual wealth. The gold digger was no doubt disappointed by what he discovered.
Her Heart Pants In Psychic Love
Lady of the Pantaloons Will Reveal to World Her Psychic Billets Doux
Journal Special Service
Philadelphia, Jan. 12. — Miss Susan B. Fowler, Vineland, NJ, who, at the age of 28, cast off skirts and donned trousers and at the age of 82 still wears ‘em, is about to publish for the uplifting of the carnal world her psychic love letters, written her during a psychic courtship of five years by a psychic lover, George Edward Fowler, a young Englishman, formerly of La Crescent, Minn., whose subsequent fate after paying one of his visits to the pantaloned lady is shrouded in mystery.
Like Tolstoi, whom, she also loves with a lesser psychic love, Miss Fowler lives a simple life. She sells apples, driving a donkey cart, and tills the soil for vegetables for much of the Vineland’s soup. Marriage, as it exists today, she thinks is the crime of the age, and it is to show the world what woman should require of man and man of woman, that she has decided to cast the joint Fowler-Fowler psychic product upon the fields of erring souls.
Incidentally, she hopes, too, that the applecart will be no longer necessary when the returns begin to come in.
Pioneer of Pants
Miss Fowler is one of Vineland’s greatest monuments. Before Dr. Mary Walker she was, yes, even before Lucy Stone and Susan B. Anthony. She is the pioneer of pants and all others are but imitators.
When Miss Fowler, at the age of 78, announced that she had discovered a true lover, Vineland rejoiced with her, but felt eager to see him. He was billed as George Edward Fowler of London. He wrote many letters, he seemed to fulfill the psychic bill and at last he came. He was a big, broad shouldered Englishman, with much more of a look of beef than psychics. Only the spiritual part of him was luggage, which consisted of a small satchel with lots of tags on it. He came, he was seen, he either conquered or was conquered. Anyway, he disappeared after a day. Vineland was racked with poignant anxiety as to his fate. Miss Fowler only smiled sweetly at the question.
“He found me in his psychic love,” she said. Incidentally, Fowler the male was about 40.
Light on the Mystery
Now with the announcement of the intention to publish the letters, the lady of the pantaloons also throws light on the mystery of the fate of her lover.
“He had urgent business in London,” she said, “so urgent that he had to leave late at night. We had talked all day on the beauties of psychic love. George found me his affinity in everything. Then he had to leave so suddenly. He was to return soon and we were to marry in psychic fashion. I did not hear of him for weeks. Then he wrote me that he had just fallen down a long, steep flight of stairs. I have not been able since to determine is the fall was fatal.
“All my letters have come back to me. I know the members of his family, who do not believe in psychic love, are trying to separate us. I do not know now whether we ever will be married. But it is time to give our letters to the world to show what psychic love is.
Volumes of Psychic Love
“I have had several offers of marriage and somehow George heard of me in England. He wrote me. It was a strikingly manly letter. My heart and mind equally were touched. I wrote. Our letters, short at first, grew longer. They are now volumes, exhausting psychic love. They will prove a new force to the world.
“Then George came — came all the way from London for me. He had thought me rich in worldly good and was so pleased to find me rich only in thought. He told me with tears in his eyes that his only fear was that he would find me in a sordid atmosphere of wealth, and this had caused him to postpone his visit so many months. He had not fully understood my reference to wealth in my letters. I meant spiritual, psychic wealth. He thought I meant worldly wealth and hesitated, but finally came to find out himself.”
Then He Went Away
“And then, after a brief day he went away. We both shed tears at the parting.
“‘What is the flesh?’ wrote George to me, just before he came over. ‘It is the veil of the spirit. Shall we thicken that veil or shall we lessen living only soul to soul on a psychic plane, until the veil is rent and the spirits twain made one and we wing away to the spirit land? What are the years? Nothing but errors of the flesh. The flesh ages, but the soul is ageless. Your body is 80 years old; mine is but 40. Ah, but our souls are the same age. I call to you, my psychic mate. I come to you that we may dwell forever in psychic harmony.’
“That is illuminative of George, unselfish spiritually and pure in psychic love.”
Just Psychic Mates
“Of course, we would not have been married by the rites of any church. We would wed by our own psychic rites. You would not call us husband and wife, but we would have been psychic mates.
“I have the same shrinking from publicity that most women have, so far as love letters are concerned, but I have decided that, in view of my well known position regarding woman’s sphere, it is my duty to make these letters public so that the young girls of today can profit by he thoughts suggested.”
The Neighbors Skeptical
Vineland believes George Edward was a fortune hunter who thought Miss Fowler rich and eccentric. They think G.E. got just what was coming to him. Miss Fowler, tho, believes implicitly in his sincerity. She still takes care of her farm alone. Sometimes the neighbors take a day off and help her catch up with the work, but she has maintained an independence thru misfortunes that would have crushed an ordinary woman. She unquestionably has won a warm place in the regard of every resident of Vineland, and the book will have many readers.
Source: The Minneapolis Journal. Newspaper. January 12, 1906
