Fashionable Débutantes may sometimes safely sojourn by the sea, but it is a good rule never actually to immerse one’s body in the fluid.
The Strategy and Finesse of Proposing
Advance Leaves from 1921 Handbook of Courtship
THE PROPOSAL BY LETTER
A faint-hearted method—not at all recommended. Letters are all very well in their way, but, if a wooer wishes to get absolutely sure results, he ought, in person, to be on hand when the terrible moment arrives. Letters of proposal have any number of drawbacks. For instance: (1) They may miscarry and be delivered to the wrong candidate—some lady who leaves you cold. Or (2) the dear girl may accept you—by a somewhat precipitate telegram—before you have had time to think the thing over, in which case you will find yourself in the cart. (3) Letters sound so deucedly silly when the attorneys get up to read them in the courtroom for the benefit of the press. Finally (4), a letter never has the force of a good face-to-face recitation. The pen, though mighty, is hardly to be compared in efficacy with the three great aids to wooing: the capacious sofa, the soft-shaded lamp, and the smouldering fire. So, dismiss the page-boy and step around to Irene’s yourself.
THE PROPOSAL TERPSICHOREAN
There is only one certain way of making the modern débutante—like Muriel, for instance—capitulate, and that is to dance her into complete submission. Just accept every single engraved invitation that comes to you at your club—so long as it mentions dancing—and then go and dedicate yourself to the job of keeping Muriel turning. Remember, that, nowadays, hearts and thrones are oftenest won by revolutions. Remember that it is only in dancing, that a man inspires in a woman that close feeling of confidence so essential to bliss and felicity in the married state. So, if a maiden is even a little wary of your advances, or in any way disposed to fight you off, just get some willing friend to strafe the piano for you, then lift the diffident child out of her chair, give her position A, and launch out with her upon the whirlpools of the dance.
