Part 8 (1/2)
[Sidenote: Disillusion]
To the girl fed upon fiction, the first proposal comes in the nature of a shock. Disillusion follows as a matter of course. Men, evidently, do not read fiction, or at least do not profit by the valuable hints to be found in any novel.
A small book ent.i.tled: _How Men Propose_, was eagerly sought by young women who were awaiting definite experience. This was discovered to be a collection of proposals carefully selected from fiction. It was done with care and discernment, but was not satisfying. The natural inference was that the actual affairs were just like those in the book.
[Sidenote: ”In Books?”]
Nothing can exceed the grace and tenderness with which men propose--in books. Such chivalrous wors.h.i.+p, such pleasing deference is accorded--in books! Such pretty pleading, such knightly vows of eternal allegiance, as are always found--in books!
The hero of a few years back was wont to make his offer on his knees. He also haunted the home of the beloved maiden, deeming himself well repaid for five hours wait if he had a fleeting glimpse of her at the window.
Torn hair was frequent, and refusal drove men to suicide and madness.
The young women who were the cause of all this trouble were never more than eighteen or twenty years of age. Mature spinsters of twenty-five figured as envious deterrents in the happy affair. Many a story-book marriage has been spoiled by the jealousy of the wrinkled rival of twenty-five.
[Sidenote: The First Proposal]
The violent protestations of the lover in the novel were indeed something to be awaited with fear and trembling. With her antic.i.p.ations aroused by this kind of reading and her eagerness whetted by interminable years of waiting, Mademoiselle receives her first offer of marriage.
She is in doubt, at first, as to whether it is a proposal. It seems like some dreadful mistake. Where is the courtly manner of the lover in the book? What is the matter with this red-faced boy? Where is the pretty pleading, the gracious speech? Why should a lover stammer and confuse his verbs?
Mademoiselle recoils in disgust. This, then, is what she has been waiting for. It is not at all like the book. Her lover is entirely different from other girls' lovers--so different that he is pathetic.
Her faith in the gospel of romance is sadly shaken, when the next experience is a great deal like the first. No one, in the book, could doubt the lover's meaning. Yet in the halting sentences and confused metaphors of actual experience, there is sometimes much question as to what he really means. A girl often has to ask a man if he has just proposed to her, that she may accept or refuse, in a gracious and proper way.
[Sidenote: The Ordeal]
In a girl's early ideas on the subject, she has much sympathy for the man who has to undergo the ordeal of asking a woman to be his wife. She thinks he must contemplate the momentous step for weeks, await the opportunity with expectant terror, and when his lady is in a happy mood, recite with fear and trembling, the proposal which he has written out and learned, appropriately enough, by heart.
Later, she comes to know that after the first few times, men propose as thoughtlessly and easily as they dress for dinner, that they devote no particular study to the art, that constant practice makes them proficient, and that almost any girl will do when the proposal mood is on.
She discovers that they often do it simply to make a pleasing impression upon a girl, with no thought of acceptance. Many an engagement is more of a surprise to the man than to anybody else.
Because fiction comes very near to the heart of woman, she invariably follows its dictates and shows great astonishment at every proposal. The women who have been thus surprised are even more rare than days in June.
[Sidenote: The False and the True]
When a man begins to compare a girl to a flower, a baby, or a kitten, she knows what is coming next. She spends her mental energy in distinguis.h.i.+ng the false from the true--which is sufficient employment for anyone. There is not enough cerebral tissue to waste much of it upon unnecessary processes.
It is very hard to tell whether a man really means a proposal. It may have been made under romantic circ.u.mstances, or because he was lonesome for the other girl, or, in the case of an heiress, because he was tired of work. Longing for the absent sweetheart will frequently cause a man to become engaged to someone near by, because, though absence may make a woman's heart grow fonder, it is presence that plays the mischief with a man. No wise girl would accept a man who proposed by moonlight or just after a meal. The dear things aren't themselves then.
Food, properly served, will attract a proposal at almost any time, especially if it is known that the pleasing viands were of the girl's own making. Cooking and love may seem at first glance to be widely separated, but no woman can have one without the other. The brotherly love for all creation, which emanates from the well-fed man, overflows, concentrates, and naturally becomes a proposal.
[Sidenote: Written Proposals]
Other things being equal, a written proposal is apt to be genuine, especially if it is signed with the full name and address of the writer, and the date is not omitted. Long and painful experience in the courts of his country has made man wary of direct evidence.
But a written proposal is extremely bad form. A girl never can be sure that her lover did not attempt to fish it out of the letter-box after it had slipped from his fingers. The author of _How to Be Happy, Though Married_, once saw a miserable young man attempting to get his convicting letter back by means of a forked stick. The sight must be quite common everywhere. Proposing in haste and repenting at leisure is not by any means unusual.
Then, too, a girl misses a possible opportunity of seeing a man blush and stammer. One does not often get a chance to see a man willingly making himself ridiculous, and the spectacle is worth waiting for.
[Sidenote: Confusion and Awkwardness]