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.

THE PROPOSAL, A LA PASHA

If you think it demeaning and ignoble to be loved for your pelf alone, try to remember that no girl accustomed to the sort of things which she is forever seeing advertised, is going to marry a man who never gives her anything but roses, and, here and there, a chocolate or two. In giving presents to the little dear, try always to stick to jewels. True love thrives best in a young lady’s bosom, on a diet of pearls, rubies, emeralds, sapphires and diamonds. Oh, and another thing! If she marries you, you have a half equity in the stones. If she doesn’t marry you, you can force her mother to return them. Flowers fade! Bonbons vanish. But good diamonds shine on forever.

THE PROPOSAL BY TELEPHONE

In a great progressive city like ours, especially with stocks jumping up about five points a day—you can’t very well expect a chap to leave the stock-ticker in his club or in his cafÉ, trot up to the social zone and loaf round a girl’s house all day. And that merely to propose to her as soon as she has—at the end of an hour or so—consented to dress and give her hair and complexion the careful treatment which she always has to give them when she receives visitors. This is a very busy little world and a proposal over the wire often saves an immense amount of time—and sometimes two or three points margin at your brokers’. So, wherever she is, telephone! Don’t waste time. Call her up anywhere, even in her bedroom. This little sketch shows the delightfully intimate relationship which is sometimes established between the dining-room at a man’s Club and the bathing pavilion contiguous to a lady’s sleeping room. It was a scene such as this that inspired the composer who in a moment of supreme inspiration, wrote that lyrical gem entitled “Hullo, Central, Give Me Heaven.” In proposing by telephone, it is of course just as well to get the right girl on the wire. A friend of ours recently became a trifle confused—after being accepted by a female voice, to learn that the houri at the other end of the telephone was no less a dignitary than his lady-love’s maiden aunt.

LANDED AT LAST

The artist has mercifully drawn a veil over the hero in this scene. This is always the way you finish. You try out your proposals on different girls and find yourself landed at last with a big, masterful sort of sparring partner, a girl who grabbed you when you weren’t looking and marched you up the aisle with the Lohengrin record turned on at third speed. And, behind you and your big masterful girl, there stalks that dreadful mother of hers, and her soul-blighting Uncle Cyril, and her dreadful little twin brothers, and then—walking with a man whom you happen to hate—the bride’s sister Gertie, the bright little girl whom you really meant to marry.

THE NEWLY RICH ELEMENT

Heroic little bands like this annually advance upon the fashionable resorts, to make an overt attack upon society. These invaders come from the heart of the wilds, where the head of the family (merely a courtesy title) is known locally as the Gravel Roof King. Little family groups of this sort are not considered complete without four daughters, at least, each more painfully unmarried than the rest.