Life — October 4, 1900 — page 14: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

«LIFE » Man Proposes, But— T is surprising, in this scientific age, that no organized method has been introduced in such an important matter as asking a girl to say yes, While, in other directions, we are systematizing our lives more and more, lovers, who in the majority cf cases have had no previous experience, are allowed to blunder along in the most aimless and inconsequential and fruitless manner. Not that we should depart from that laudable incoherency, that delightful foolishness, which are ever-recurring symp- toms of a world-wide malady. Indeed, these emotions are entitled to the utmost respect. Though inexplicable, they are none the less inevitable; though apparently incongruous, they are none the less necessary, and should be recognized, sifted into their component parts and developed along established evolutionary lines. Just as there are good and evil in the world, so there are successful and unsuccessful proposers. It is doubtless our constant endeavor—within our dim lights—to reduce the unsuccessful to a minimum, nay, to a total eclipse. But to get the highest results, the necessity for following certain prescribed ruies is not always duly perceived. This knowledge is of slow growth, but we must make a beginning some time. Temperament, worldly standing, age, intellectualities in love affairs are all subjects toobig to grasp at one handling. We may hope now only to indicate modes of proposing and their rela- tions to the end in view. It is a threadbare fact that an element of foolishness enters into all love matters, and as we examine this element, its transcendent importance becomes plain. When we see an ill-favored, wizened, in- significant, will-o’-the-wisp of a man united to a quivering mountain of a woman—both living in that absolute harmony of soul- fusion which is the despair of mere material intellects — we gasp, and wonder what magic, what mystery of affinities,drew these two together, What did he say to get her? What did he do that she should (figuratively) fall into his arms? In truth, he won her by the measure of his incapacity, and this is the secret of love's success. What a man’s inherent, recondite strength is, the woman always knows. It is an insult toher intuitive woman's mind for him to dis- play it'to her at critical moments. She meas- ures—and always accurately—the depth of his love by the height of his idiocy. Herein, somewhere, is the key to the citadel. To win the maiden of his clioice, then, a man must be, for the time, a very proper, fool. This might not be a difficult rule— many have a natural gift in this direc- tion—were it not that a particular kind of foolishness is essential. There is a fine, special strain of idiocy, not natural, not always achieved by patience, but seemingly spontaneous, complete, leaving nothing to be desired, that the true lover vaunts as his own particular attribute. How, by premedi- tation, by design, by conquest of hitherto unknown sources of power, may this be attained ? The time is short. While you are planning, arranging, sorting your emotions, laying out ways and means of attack, lo! the other fellow has come and taken her away. Is this, then, to admit our case to be altogether hopeless? To state that love, so evanescent, may not be reduced to a system? Never! Your other lover—alas for him !— has succeeded the first time. You, the unhappy, the truly agonized, more for- tunate defeated rival remain, the world before you. To succeed the first time! That is lasting failure. Yet err not upon the other side, and acquire a habit of frequent proposing without tangible result. This is the last end of man—to be rejected without pain. There is a point somewhere along this road, between the first providential failure and what might be the last sad success, where a man has the right to propose and to be accepted. Idiocy has come to him in its true solution. He is then the right kind of a fool. And when he finds this spot, let him strike while the iron is white—he has earned a Tom Masson, “@RACIOUS! 18 THAT THE TATTOOED LADY OVER THERE?” “NO} THAT 18 MERELY THE RESULT OP GETTING SUNBURNED IN AN OPEN WORK Dness.”” comicbooks.com