There is a spice of romance in helping distressed and persecuted lovers; but young people should be very careful not to mix themselves up in such matters. Their own experience is too limited to qualify them for the task. Older friends must take the consequences of such interference. Sometimes their help is most ill-advised; still, for a time at least, the lovers will be intensely grateful to them. There is one thing that seems quite unjustifiable, and that is for a secretly engaged pair to make a friend's house their rendezvous without telling the friend exactly how matters stand. It is an abuse of hospitality, for it is pretty sure to bring unpleasantness to the friend, who will inevitably be blamed by the parents when the secret leaks out, or an elopement takes {[64]} place. Trains, telephones, and telegraphs have robbed the latter episode of all its old-world reckless charm, and it really seems hardly worth the doing.
In some cases a married friend may intervene to prevent any scandal from touching the wilful bride. If the young folks will not listen to reason, it is as well for their folly to be carried out as respectably as possible; but all such sympathy should be tempered by judgment, for the making or marring of two lives is in the balance, and the happiness of many hearts may be at stake.
{[65]}
CHAPTER XI
Foreign Etiquette of Engagements--Betrothal a much more Serious Matter than in England.
In no other country is an engagement so informal as in England. We find all sorts of ceremonies connected with the plighting of a troth which seems but little less important than the tying of the marriage knot itself. There is less spontaneity and exercise of private judgment on the part of the young people; in fact, there are several countries in which they are allowed no voice in the matter.
In Italy
girls are kept quite in the background, and have a very dull time. This makes them ready to accept any suitor their parents may choose. A meeting is arranged between the young people, and after that he pays stiff visits to her home, generally in the evening, but they are never left alone together, and he is not allowed to pay her any marked attention even before others. They may exchange photographs, and she may work him a little present; but it is all lifeless, passionless, and business-like. Among the peasantry there is more of the picturesque, and many quaint customs still survive. Marriage-brokers do a good trade, and get a percentage on each pair that they see through the ordeal of a wedding. In Frascati, parents with marriageable sons and daughters assemble on Sunday afternoons in the chief piazza. The men sit on one side and the women on the other. In the intervening space the candidates for matrimony walk about--the girls near their mothers, the youths under their fathers' eyes. By some mysterious process of selection they sort themselves into couples, or, rather, the parents make mutual advances on behalf of their children and they are betrothed.
{[66]}
In France