LETTER NO. IX.
LETTER No. IX.
Pierrepont gives his Pa a line on the up-to-date
methods of courtship, relates an episode of
calf-love and has a fling at matrimonial
adages.
Chicago, Feb. 10, 189—
Dear Father:
I realize that you mean well by me and I accept your advice on courtship, love and marriage, and all that rot, in the spirit in which it is given. But really, my dear pater, you are hopelessly in arrears in your information on those subjects. Of course you know a lot about marriage. I cannot dispute that; it is too obvious; but in matters of courtship detail you are back in the stagecoach age, hopelessly old style.
Nowadays, if a fellow is "spoons" on a girl he makes it public in quite different fashion than when you "sparked Ma"—as you rather vulgarly, as it seems to me, express it. Methods have changed since your salad days, when courtship consisted of escorting the same girl home from singing school three weeks running and then going in the cherished "best suit" to "keep company" with her one or two evenings a week. The modern swain has an entirely different system, although I grant you that he makes an ass of himself quite as much as his predecessors. There is no more sitting in the back parlor with the gas low. All reputable back parlors are electrically illuminated and the situation is therefore changed. I do not say, however, that lamps are not sometimes provided by thoughtful parents of large families of daughters of marriageable age. The average young man, however, would regard the presence of a lamp in such circumstances as a danger signal, and run on to the first siding. No eligible young man likes to feel that he is walking into a specially set matrimonial trap.
As you may judge from the florist's bill brought to your attention, Cupid, nowadays, is very partial to flowers. In your day a straw ride once or twice a winter, a few glasses of lemonade or plates of ice-cream, and church sociables and picnics were about the only obligations attendant upon making a girl think herself your particular one. To-day hot-house roses and violets, boxes of chocolate, appreciated only when expensively trade-marked, matinee tickets, auto rides, dainty luncheons with chaperons on the side—but I could fill two pages in enumeration of the little, but expensive attentions which the up-to-date city girl demands. And all these things may mean much or little. Because a fellow runs up a florist's bill is no sign that his next purchase will be an engagement ring. Lots of fellows with lots of money buy lots of things for lots of nice girls and no questions asked. You certainly don't want your only son and heir to be a rank outsider.