The Shasta courier., 1861-08-03
Curiosities of Courtship.


A proposal was written and sent by the
post in the days when letters travelled quiet
ly at the rate of ten miles an hour on the
mail coach. The anxious lover for the first
week breathlessly expected the reply, but it
lid not come. The next week he pined and
->s->lss2less+ still no. answer. The third
week he became indignant. " A civil ac-
acknowledgement was his due. She was heart
less and hirt" The next week he despised
her, and congratulated himself on his escape,
and, when at the end of it he received his own
letter back back from the dead-letter Office,
direct it, he had so completely outlived his
love that he never proposed to that lady at
ALL
l once saw middle-aged invalid making
love toa young girl. After making great eff
forts to secure an opportunity of meeting her,
he drew his chair close to hers, looked into
her face, sighed heavily, drew his chair still
closer, and, while she looked at him in as
tonishment, and l in the distance strained
my ears to hear what tender remark followed
all this prepar ition, heard him whisper
with great emphasis, Who is your doctor?"
l need hardly say that the proposal failed
which followed this well judged commence
ment.
A more pardonable case of a mans absorp-
tion in his own pursuits was that OF a very
shy lover, whose one idea was horses. He
never found courage to propose till he had
persuaded the lady to go into the stable and
lcok at his favorite horses. There he spoke,
and there she answered yes. But this was
natural and pardonable; shy man may need
this vantage ground, and feeling his own in
feriority in the drawing room, may yet be
aware of his superior knowledge and superior
power in the stable, where his horse is his
throne and he himself is king.
A marriage took place not many years ago,
in the great world, where the two lovers,
long attached) met under an archway while
each was taking refuge in London from a
sudden shower of rain. Neither fthem had
the least idea of the neighborhood of the 9TH
er, when the sudden meeting occurred which
decided the course of their future lives.
In another case the engagement was bro
ken off on account of limited means, and the
gentleman went abroad. Returning after
some years absence, he arrived late on the
railway platform. and rushed into the first
carriage he reached, just as the train was in
the lady he had so long been vainly endeav
of the happlest OF marriages.
Hans Anderson gives, in one of his books,
an amusing account of IA young man newly
appointed to some official position in the
Court of Copenhagen, ordering his Court
dress in great haste that he might be present
ut a ball where he meant to declare his at
tachment to beautiful girl whom he had
long loved All went smoothly, and he was
on the point of proposing, nay, had spoken
few preliminary words, when button gave
way on the hastily made Court dress. The
lover rushed abruptly away, and the lady,
hurt at his unlocked for departure, made an
engagement for a sleighing party next day,
where she received and accepted the offer of
another lover. Thus love, as well as life,
often hangs upon thread.
Always secure your retreat in love as in
war; This is precaution never to be ne
elected. Mr. A., brother to the late
Lord =, whose proud and naughty tenn
ger was proverbial, proposed to lady in Port
man Square Gardens. After being refused,
the rejected lover turned away from her in
great indignation, but finding the gate ofthc
garden locked, was obliged to return to the
lady to petition for the key. Another case,
still more trying, was that of gentleman
travelling in North America, who, after be-
ing Hospitality received in the house of an Of
fcer in high command there, proposed to his
hosts daughter the evening before his in
tended departure, and was refused. A deep
fall of snow came on in the night; the roads
became in passable; and the poor man. to
his unspeakable modification, was detained
for whole week in the house with the lady
who had rejected him.-London Journal.