Are you wise to the fact that everything is changing in this old
world of ours, and that since the advent of fuss-wagons even the
old-fashioned idea of courtship has been chased to the woods?
It used to be that on a Saturday evening the young gent would draw
down his six dollars worth of salary and chase himself to the
barber shop, where the Dago lawn trimmer would put a crimp in his
moustache and plaster his forehead with three cents worth of hair
and a dollar's worth of axle-grease.
Then the young gent would go out and spread 40 cents around among
the tradesmen for a mess of water-lilies and a bag of peanut
brittle.
The lilies of the valley were to put on the dining-room table so
mother would be pleased, and with the peanut brittle he intended to
fill in the weary moments when he and his little geisha girl were
not making googoo eyes at each other.
But nowadays it is different, and Dan Cupid spends most of his time
on the hot foot between the coroner's office and the divorce court.
I've got a hunch that young people these days are more emotional
and like to see their pictures in the newspapers.
Nowadays when a clever young man goes to visit his sweetheart he
hikes over the streets in a benzine buggy, and when he pulls the
bell-rope at the front door he has a rapid fire revolver in one
pocket and a bottle of carbolic acid in the other.
His intentions are honorable and he wishes to prove them so by
shooting his lady love if she renigs when he makes a play for her
hand.
I think the old style was the best, because when young people
quarreled they didn't need an ambulance and a hospital surgeon to
help them make up.
In the old days Oscar Dobson would draw the stove brush cheerfully
across his dog-skin shoes and rush with eager feet to see Lena
Jones, the girl he wished to make the wife of his bosom.
"Darling!" Oscar would say, "I am sure to the bad for love of you.
Pipe the downcast droop in this eye of mine and notice the way my
heart is bubbling over like a bottle of sarsaparilla on a hot day!
Be mine, Lena! be mine!"
Then Lena would giggle. Not once, but seven giggles, something
like those used in a spasm.
Then she would reply, "No, Oscar; it cannot be. Fate wills it
otherwise."
Then Oscar would bite his finger nails, pick his hat up out of the
coal-scuttle and say to Lena, "False one! You love Conrad, the
floorwalker in the butcher shop. Curses on Conrad, and see what
you have missed, Lena. I have tickets for a swell chowder party
next Tuesday. Ah! farewell forever!"
Then Oscar would walk out and hunt up one of those places that
Carrie Nation missed in the shuffle and there, with one arm glued
tight around the bar rail, he would fasten his system to a jag
which would last for a week.
Despair would grab him and he'd be Oscar with the souse thing for
sure.
When he would recover strength enough to walk down town without
attracting the attention of the other side of the street, he would
call on Lena and say, "Lena, forgive me for what I done, but love
is blind--and, besides, I mixed my drinks. Lena, I was on the
downward path and I nearly went to hell."
Then Lena would say, "Why, Oscar, I saw you and your bundle when
you fell in the well, but I didn't know it was as deep as you
mention."
Then they would kiss and make up, and the wedding bells would ring
just as soon as Oscar's salary grew large enough to tease a
pocketbook.
But these days the idea is altogether different.
Children are hardly out of the cradle before they are arrested for
butting into the speed limit with a smoke wagon.
Even when they go courting they have to play to the gallery.
Nowadays Gonsalvo H. Puffenlotz walks into the parlor to see Miss
Imogene Cordelia Hoffbrew.
"Wie gehts, Imogene!" says Gonsalvo.
"Simlich!" says Imogene, standing at right angles near the piano
because she thinks she is a Gibson girl.
"Imogene, dearest," Gonsalvo continues; "I called on your papa in
Wall Street yesterday to find out how much money you have, but he
refused to name the sum, therefore you have untold wealth!"
Gonsalvo pauses to let the Parisian clock on the mantle tick, tick,
tick!
He is making the bluff of his life you see, and he has to do even
that on tick.
Besides, this furnishes the local color.
Then Gonsalvo bursts forth again, "Imogene! Oh! Imogene! Will you
be mine and I will be thine without money and without the price."
Gonsalvo pauses to let this idea get noised about a little.
Then he goes on, "Be mine, Imogene! You will be minus the money
while I will have the price!"
Gonsalvo trembles with the passion which is consuming his
pocketbook, and then Imogene turns languidly from a right angle
triangle into more of a straight front, and hands Gonsalvo a bitter
look of scorn.
Then Gonsalvo grabs his revolver and, aiming it at her marble brow,
exclaims, "Marry me this minute or I will shoot you in the
top-knot, because I love you."
Then papa rushes into the room and Gonsalvo politely requests the
old gentleman to hold two or three bullets for him for a few
moments.
Gonsalvo then bites deeply into a bottle of carbolic acid and just
as the Coroner climbs into the house the pictures of the modern
lover and loveress appear in the newspapers, and fashionable
Society receives a jolt.
This is the new and up-to-date way of making love.
However, I think the old style of courting is the best, because you
can generally stop a jag before it gets to the undertaker.
What do you think?