The morning call., 1890-12-14
MARRYING FOR A TITLE
How Count Peter Wins the Am.
erican Girl and Her Mother.

There are probably ten thousand young
American girls at this moment who are
hoping to marry a titled man, such as young
Count Peter, whom ono Of these met last
year at Baden, and who made every minute
Of her life delightful, writes Mrs. John Sher-
wood to Harper's Bazaar. And to her mother,
who had passed her life in some dull town,
where she had never byan chance found a
man who cared to amuse her, and no one of
her own family who had either time or inten-
ton of making her life particle less dull,
this pleasant young Count Peter is very re-
markabe revelation. He has absolutely de-
voted himself to her. to her shopping, TO
her delight in seeing pictures aud hear
ing music, he has gone on, like the second
calendar wanting an eye. opening doors
for her. To her daughter and herself
all over Europe he has been their
good genius. He has got them tickets
which no one else could do to see pal
aces, to enter the sacred spots usually
closed. For the first time in her life mann
ma has felt herself an object of supreme in
teress to somebody. Her husband was
good man and true, and she loved him, but
he had no petits SONS. he did not tell her
that she was looking very well; that she was
more attractive in gray velvet than in
brown merino; he never kissed her hand,
or pushed out footstool, or took her to
the opera. making little dinner before
he would have died for her, he
did not amuse her. So it becomes
the difference between rich brocade and
brown linen. Her life is to her an entirely
new thing, and, with that native love Of re-
finement which belongs to woman's nature,
she is delighted with this renued luxury,
which shows her that heavy feeds and
mere spending of money (as they did a:
home) were very small part of the luxury
which life cont aims. Count Peter opens for
her new world.
One must eat the well-ordered dinner at
the Cafe des Ambassadors with party of
which all the men are ScrupulouSly dressed !;
the women cestumed by Worth; must dine
in the BoS OF a fine summer night and hear
distracting band playing Hungarian airs !;
must 60 next day to the races with somebody
who can tell the name and history of every
| fine lady who sits in the seats reserved Tor
tho wives of the Jockey Club; must enjoy
the delicious air Of n Partisan spring; must
inhale the fragrance OF heliotrupe and lilac
with this pleasant fellow on the back seat of
the well-appoinled landau, this agreeable
and well-manuered, modest, almost boy,
who knows so much about dead Kings and
Queens, and who is:on speaking terms with
most live ones-.O know how thoroughly
mamma was won before the young lady is
even asked tor.
Then Count Peter receives from land
lords, servants, coachmen, even the great
Worth, kind of attention which seems to
these unsophisticated women to be the
guinea stamp. 1t atfirms all that they have
read and believed of royalty, that a
noble being, born of a different
blood, is ranging himself and his rare
accomplishments entirely for their benefit.
Perhaps he permits 1T to leak out that an
ATchduchesS is waiting for him. He may
say to mamma in great confidence that there
Is nothing so sad as the way marriages are
managed abroad, and the sons and daugh-
tiers Of a lofty house married for their titles
and not for themselves. How miserable
at tho pretty daughter) compared
with one where the heart alone
is consulted And so on. He wins
them both; he offers hand. heart and title !;
he is accepted; and then, when it is too late,
comes the news that Count Peter is an inn
poster. that even his title is doubtful one.
and that he only wants money. The init
mate acquaintance of six months perhaps.
the kind interest, the real gratitude for real
services. cannot be effaced by even such a
revelation, and in nine cases out Of ten the
marriage takes place.
An then the disappointment The gla-
mOur disappears, the mysterious doors no
longer open, the guide, the explainer of dy-
nasties, the man of picture-galleries, the
dinuer-giver, Is no more. He may, when he
chooses, still be the well-bred man, but he
forgets his manners very soon, and then,
after few years OF neglect and cruelty, the
deluded wife and the more deluded mother
come home several Thousand dollars out of
pocket, and wonder that they could have
been so foolish. Or they continue to live in
Paris or some other foreign city, Count Pc
ter saying to all his friends: "She wanted
title. and l wanted money. She has got
the title, but they have not paid me the
money" and ten to one the sympathy is
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