The Lost Art of Courtship

[Illustration]

The Lost Art of Courtship

[Sidenote:  Liberty of Choice]

Civilisation is so acutely developed at present that the old meaning of courtship is completely lost.  None of the phenomena which precede a proposal would be deemed singular or out of place in a platonic friendship.  This state of affairs gives a man every advantage and all possible liberty of choice.

Our grandparents are scandalised at modern methods.  “Girls never did so,” in the distant years when those dear people were young.  If a young man called on grandmother once a week, and she approved of him and his prospects, she began on her household linen, without waiting for the momentous question.

Judging by the fiction of the period and by the delightful tales of old New England, which read like fairy stories to this generation, the courtships of those days were too leisurely to be very interesting.  Ten-year engagements did not seem to be unusual, and it was not considered a social mistake if a man suddenly disappeared for four or five years, without the formality of mentioning his destination to the young woman who expected to marry him.

[Sidenote:  Faithful Maidens]

We have all read of the faithful maidens who kept on weaving stores of fine linen and making regular pilgrimages for the letter which did not come.  Years afterward, when the man finally appeared, it was all right, and the wedding went on just the same, even though in the meantime the recreant knight had married and been bereaved.

Two or three homeless children were sometimes brought cheerfully into the story, and assisted materially in the continuation of the interrupted courtship.  The tears which the modern spinster sheds over such a tale are not at the pathos of the situation, but because it is possible, even in fiction, for a woman to be so destitute of spirit.

[Sidenote:  Without Saying a Word]

“In dem days,” as Uncle Remus would say, any attention whatever meant business.  Small courtesies which are without significance now were fraught with momentous import then.  In this year of grace, among all races except our own, there are ways in which a man may definitely commit himself without saying a word.

A flower or a serenade is almost equivalent to a proposal in sunny Spain.  A “walking-out” period of six months is much in vogue in other parts of Europe, but the daughter of the Anglo-Saxon has no such guide to a man’s intentions.

Among certain savage tribes, if a man is in love with a girl and wishes to marry her, he drags her around his tent by the hair or administers a severe beating.  It may be surmised that these attentions are not altogether pleasant, but she has the advantage of knowing what the man means.

Flowers are a pretty courtesy and nothing more.  The kindly thought which prompts them may be as transient as their bloom.  Three or four men serenade girls on summer nights because they love to hear themselves sing.  Books, and music, and sweets, which convention decrees are the only proper gifts for the unattached, may be sent to any girl, without affecting her indifference to furniture advertisements and January sales of linen.