The Savannah morning news. (Savannah, Ga.) 1900-current, 1903-03-15
WHEN WOMEN PROPOSE.

that she was in love with a man who
did not care for her. asked me not long
ago, says Dorothy Dix, in the New Or
leans Picayne, if there was any way
bv which a woman could win the af-
fections of a man. For the dignity of
nv sex, 1 Ionged to answer NO but
I have seen so many men married in
spite of themselves that 1 could only
assure her that the woman who went
out on a still hunt after any man was
pretty sure to bag him for a husband.
The old theory that man is the pur-
suer and woman the pursued in love-
making is a beautiful and romantic
legend, but it has few facts to support
it. Custom and convention deprive wo-
man of taking any active part in
courtship, but while this cripples her
energies and deprives her of fair play,
il does not bar her from the matrimo-
NAL game. 1t only forces her to arrive
by a circuitous route, instead of the
plain open path. Every man flatters
himself that he discovered the timid
and shrinking little violet he elects to
wear on his heart, but every woman
knows that nine times out of ten the
little foweret had her eye on him from
the start, and deliberately put herself
in his road so that he couldn't get
past her without breaking his neck.
The silent tactics with which a wom-
an conducts a courtShip are not digni-
fed. They are even a little under
handed, but they are tremendously eff
fective, and when a man finds that
woman is in love with him, and has
u II g.. L, L. 81, s.
~ lies in fight. If he remains within
the radius of her sphere, his name is
Benedict. Little by little he yields to
the fattery of being so adored. Her
Judgment and taste in preferring him
10 other men appeals to him, and from
having been perfectly Indifferent to
her in the beginning, he commences
thinking she is a fine woman, a dis
eliminating woman, superior woman,
the ideal woman he has been seeking,
and it is all over then but the wedding
presents.
And he never knows, bless his dear,
unsuspicious heart, how she turned the
trick For the things men don't know
about women, my sisters, let US all re-
turn thanks. 1t is our salvation.
The old idea that a girl never look
ed at man until he proposed to her,
and never thought of him as a possible
sweetheart or husband until he asked
her TO name the day, is too idiotic and
sentimental a pose for this practical
day. Long, long before any man Pro-
poses a girl knows whether he is go
ing to do it or not, for women are in
credbly subtle in these matters. More
than that, she knows when she is go
ing to let him propose, and she has.
taken the temperature of her affec-
lions to the last fraction of a5degree.
A girls heart isn't a box of safety
matches that doesn't ignite until you
scratch a proposal on it,. 1t is a piece
of finder that will go with spontaneous
combustion the moment a man she
loves looks at her, and when a girl
tells a man she must have time TO ex-
anime the state of her affections, she
means she is really going to look into
his rating in BradStreets, and, he will
do we'll if he withdraws his offer.
cNow, personally, + believe that the
convention that prevents women from
telling a man she loves him, and ask
ing him to marry her, works as much
unhappiness as any other one thing in
the world. 1 don't think that. there
can be any doubt that women are more
discerning in matters of the heart than
men are, and that if women could
choose their husbands, instead of hav-
ing to take what they can get, that
there would be fewer misfit unions.
it does to a. man. He has his business
and Thousand interests outside his
home, and if his wife prove uncon-
genial, if he finds that she Is 1Inre-
sponsive where he looked for sympa-
thy, narrow where he expected her to
be broad and liberal in her views, even
If she bores him, or is surly and ILL
tempered, while it is without doubt a
bitter disappointment to him, it is nor
the blighting tragedy it is to the Worr-
an who marries one kind of q man
and finds him to be another when she
gets him home.
IL is, therefore, more important that
woman should be pleased in her hus
band than a husband should be salts
fed with his wife, and if either one is
to have the advantage of picking the
ether out, it should be she. Nor, in
the end, would this be any the less to
the mans advantage, for the wife
makes the home atmosphere, and
happy and cheerful and contented wife
will make a pleasant home. The woman
who has gotten the husband she want
ed, the man who came up to her ideal
and fired her fancy, and who is forever
patting herself on the back for having
captured a matrimonial prize, is 60
ing to move heaven and earth to please
him, and if l were a man / would take
the woman who wanted me, in pref
erence to the woman 1 wanted every
time. 1t is so much easier to be
pleased than to try to please.
Perhaps no one realizes how much
the shiftlessness, the extravaganza and
the ill-temper of women is a quiet re-
venge they take on society for hav-
ing forced them to marry the man who
asked them, instead of the man they
would have asked, if they had been
permitted the honest expression of
their hearts.
There is, too, a pathetic side to this
matter in the increasing number of
lonely old maids, women who are too
line and true to give their hands where
the highest love of their hearts could
not go also. We see beautiful and ac-
complisheda women, refusing offer after
offer of marriage, and passing into
spinsterhood, and we know only too
we'll that they are the victims of a
superstition that in its way is as
cruel as the custom that makes the In
dian widow burn herself on her hus-
bands funeral pyre, for underneath
there women's old-maidenhood is the
romance of a blighted love. Deep
down in their hearts, throttled by