Yet in spite of the varied resources at woman's command, we sometimes hear of one who yearns for the privilege of seeking man in marriage. The woman who longs for the right to propose is evidently not bright enough to bring a man to the point.
Still worse than this, there are cases on record where women, not reigning queens, have actually proposed to men. The men who are thus sought in the bonds of matrimony are not slow to tell of it, confining themselves usually to their own particular circle of men friends. But the news sometimes filters through man's capacity to keep a secret, and the knowledge is diffused among interested spinsters.
Hints
What men term "hints" are not out of place, for the proposal market would be less active, were it not for "hints." But these are seldom given in words—unless a man happens to be particularly stupid.
When the proposal habit is not firmly fastened upon a man, and he begins to have serious designs upon some one girl, she knows it long before he does. Incidentally, the family and the neighbours have their suspicions.
Woman, with her strong dramatic instinct, wishes the proposal to occur according to accepted rules. Hence, if a man shows symptoms of whispering the momentous question in a crowd, he is apt to be delicately discouraged, and if the girl is not satisfied with her own appearance, there will also be postponement. No girl wants to be proposed to when her hair is dishevelled, her collar wilted, and her soul distraught by pestiferous mosquitoes.
But an ambitious and painstaking girl will arrange the stage for a proposal, with untiring patience, months before it actually happens. When she practices assiduously all the morning, that she may execute difficult passages with apparent ease in the evening, and willingly turns the freezer that there may be cooling ice opportunely left after dinner, to "melt if somebody doesn't eat it," she expects something to happen.
When the man finally appears, and the little brother marches off like a well-trained soldier, with two nickels jingling in his pocket, even the victim might be on his guard. When the family are unceremoniously put out of the house, and father, mother, and sisters are seen in the summer twilight, wandering in disconsolate pairs, let the neighbours keep away from the house under penalty of the girl's lasting hate.
Sometimes, when the family have been put out, and the common human interest leads intimate spinster friends to pass the house, there is nothing to be seen but the girl playing accompaniments for the man while he sings.
Yet the initiated know, for if a girl only praises a man's singing enough, he will most surely propose to her before many moons have passed. The scheme has a two-fold purpose, because all may see that he finds the house attractive, and if no engagement is announced, the entire affair may easily be explained upon musical and platonic grounds.