“I have read your advice to so many of the other sex that I hope you will be good-natured enough to help a man out with his troubles. I am very much in love with a young lady who, I am sure, thinks more of me than she does of any one else, but whenever I talk of marriage she either changes the subject or else jests about it. I cannot seem to make her understand that I am serious. Can’t you give me a word of advice?
“Edward.”
We are very glad to help Edward or any others of the sterner sex with their troubles. Very probably the young woman of your desire realizes perfectly that you are in earnest, but wants to become convinced of her own sincerity before she lets you talk to her seriously about matrimony. We think she must be a very level-headed young woman, and if you can win her affection and marry her you may feel that you have secured a prize. The girl or woman who is slow to decide upon so serious a matter as marriage is far more to be esteemed than those who take the step hastily and unthinkingly.
“Your kind advice to others has made me bold enough to ask your help for myself, for I am terribly perplexed. My fiance went to the Philippines with his regiment over a year ago, and we have corresponded ever since. Of course, I think a great deal of him, but about six months ago I met a fellow who has been awfully attentive to me and who now wants me to marry him. Do you think it would be doing very wrong for me to break off my engagement and marry this other fellow, who says he loves me very much indeed?
“Mabel K.”
We don’t envy either of your lovers very much, Mabel. A girl whose nature is as fickle as yours is not fit to be the fiancee or the wife of one of Uncle Sam’s brave boys in blue, and if the absence of one man and the presence of another works so great a change in your feelings we doubt whether you would relish Grace Shirley’s opinion of your actions. We think that your soldier lover would be well rid of you. The men who are defending the honor of their country deserve women of honor for wives and sweethearts—women whose devotion will not grow less because of absence, and to whom the attentions of other men will be no temptation to forget their lovers over the sea.
“While my betrothed and I are truly fond of each other, we always quarrel over one subject. He does not like me to play on the piano at all when he is here, but wants me to devote all the time to him. Sometimes I have no chance to practice during the day, and am obliged to do so in the evening. As I expect to have to provide my own pin money at least in this way after marriage, I do not feel that I should give up my entire evenings to conversation. Do you think I ought to do so?”
The man who is not able to provide his wife with pin money has no right to ask a woman to marry him. Since he has done so, and you have accepted him, you ought clearly to make him understand that your cultivation of your talent is a necessity because of his inability to provide you with what every woman has a right to expect from her husband. No woman ought to marry a man who cannot support her or who expects that she will have to earn her own pin money. We are sorry that you are engaged to one of so little manliness and capacity, and you should think a long time before binding yourself irrevocably.