DO MEN STILL PROPOSE?

Gisborne Times, Volume XXIX, Issue 3264, 8 July 1911, Page 4

DO MEN STILL PROPOSE?

FREEMASONRY OF MUTUAL AFi< ACTION.

The old conventions are disappearing out of fashion. As a witness remarked in a breach of promise case reported recentiv: ••People understand these tilings Jong before they speak of them. Young people of both sexes are throw n so much together now; that ail the old trite, stilted ceremonies that preceded marriage are thrown to the wands. A man ana a girl bicycle together with other members of their curb, boat together golf together, p.ay tennis, meet at dances and learn to know each other much more thoroughly than the day.-, when society frowned on anything so casual as the intimate acquaintanceship of nowadays- The formal proposal of marriage had its terrors. A man used to be afraid to speak it. and disinclined to write it, first because of the aw kwardness of the affair, secondly on. account of his anxiety to have a speedv reply. As to the long-discontinued habit of falling on the knees before asking the great question, any one who should do so nowadays would excite inextinguishable laughter from the lady. Everything is much more casual than it used to be. A man at a dance says to a girl “Would you like to dance this waltz, with me?” And a man attracts very much says, in the same simple way, “Do you think you could care for me?” Proposals lia\e been made in all sorts of eccentric places. One young man, at tea at a resturant. said to the pretty girl who poured it out, “I wish you would pour out my tea for me every day.” The day was soon fixed for "the ‘beginning of this agreeable arrangement. Another young- man, during the absence of a girl on a visit, wrote affectionate letters, in which he repeatedly said he was longing for her to'return. On the day of that return a sympathetic family deputed him to meet her at the station, and in the cab on their way home he said, “May I kiss you. Phyllis?” That was all. Phyllis quite understood. They are now married and happy.

There are on record many instances of equally informal methods. A young man has been known. To ask a girl lie admires: “How much do you think a young couple could live on?” suggestively adding the amount of his own income. It was not a bad way. It worked out in the search of a flat, and its eventful occupation by a happy pair.

In the middle of a waltz an enamored partner whispered into a pink ear: “You are a dear girl! I'm not nearly good enough for you, but if you thought you could- The answer was equally unconventional. “I thought you were beginning to like me. I'm so glad. Compare these very casual ways with tiie prunes and prisms days of precise and- formal etiquette, when the suitor had -to approach the girl through a more or less terrible father.

“We drop into it,” said the witness before quoted, and it- is certainly true that the freemasonry ~f mutual affection tears away much of the ceremony that used to he regarded as proper to such occasions. Anthony Trollope iiad a prevision v of the coming change, when lie made_ Mary Thorne’s young lover propose in. the words: “M ill vou Won’t you? Marv dear?” *

i>ome_ conventions are necessary, buta multiplication of them is inconvenient, and therefore many of them are gradually disappearing. If men no longer propose, in so many words, asking if gins will accept them as husbands. the change is all in favor cf a more cheery and agreeable state of things.