The midland journal. (Rising Sun, Md.) 1885-1947, 1891-05-29
Long Engagements.

Owing to the complications of modern
life, and the large increase in the list of
creature comforts which polite people
have come to regard as necessaries, mar
riage has become vastly more serious
undertaking than it used to be, and is
deferred until a later period of life.
People in cities who have been used to
wear good clothes, and to have servants
to wait on them, and to go out of town
in summer, no longer marry when the
girl is Is and the man %. The man is
apt to be nearing 30 before his income
will stand the matrimonial strain, and
the lady is proportionately experienced.
1t would not be quite accurate to say
that, though it is harder to get married
than it was, it is as easy as ever to be-
come engaged. That would not be quite
true. The difficulty of getting income
enough to marry does defer, and even
prevent, great many betrothals; never
theless, engagements do often happen
when the prospect of marriage is remote,
and reasonable percentage of them last
until marriage ends them. Long en-
gagements are not popular, but enough
OF them are running to make the be-
havior of their benefciaries fit subject
for comment in the interest of human
happiness.
All the world loves lover, but lovers
make serious mistake when they pre-
sumo too far on the strength of the
worlds regard for them. The polite
world loves its lovers exactly so long as
they are interesting and agreeable. When
they cease to be SO its sentiments toward
them take the form of anxiety to have
them married, which may indeed be so
extreme as to result in practical efforts
to put them in the way of pairing, but
which is more apt to take the form of
what is vulgarly known as the cold
shoulder. Lovers who are intelligent
and who are disposed to make them
selves agreeable ought to be exception
ally charming They are enveloped in a
pleasant blaze of sentiment which makes
them interesting. So long as they are
nice, all kind people are in a conspiracy
to indulge them and make them think
that life is lurid with rose tints Their
politeness is the more appreciated be-
cause it is thought to involve especial
self sacrific, and whatever they do for the
community's amusement is rated above
its ordinary value because they have
done it.
All the worse, then, when lovers re-
gard themselves as temporarily exempt
from the ordinary obligations of polite
ness, and abandon themselves to spoon
ing and mutual absorption. The sort of
courtship that goes on for hours behind
closed doors, that insists upon seclusion
and resents third person, that thinks
first Of the beloved object and not at all
of any one else-this may do for six
weeks intermission between maidenhood
and marriage; but long engagements
should be conducted on radically differ
ent lines. Was there ever a dearer sweet
heart than Lorna Doone, whose maidenly
reserve allowed John Ridd one kiss day,
and no spooning whatever? And doyou
remember Mary Garth, so true to her not
any too eligible Fred, and yet SO straight
and strict with herself? Engaged or not,
she must surely have been welcome
companion in any house, Fred orno Fred.
And again that dame in silver gray who
married John Halifax-be sure that her
betrothal was modest and unseltish one.
-[Scribner's Magazine.